March 10- Beer Made with Odd Ingredients

Here are a few examples of beer made with out of the ordinary, or disgusting sounding, ingredients. I've picked 2 of the weirdest ones I've heard of. These descriptions have been taken off of the website.

Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel

This imperial Oatmeal stout is brewed with one of the world’s most expensive coffees, made from droppings of weasel-like civet cats. The fussy Southeast Asian animals only eat the best and ripest coffee berries. Enzymes in their digestive system help to break down the bean. Workers collect the bean-containing droppings for Civet or Weasel 

What do you think of that? Sound good to you? I had a bottle last night in Aberdeen and the bar and it was spectacular.

Dogfish Head Chicha

Chicha is the quintessential native corn beer throughout Central and South American. Indigenous versions with local variations exist in Chile, Bolivia, Colombia and many other countries.

Dogfish Head Chicha is most closely based upon Peruvian brewing traditions. We've sourced indigenous ingredients to make the most authentic interpretation possible: organic pink Peruvian pepper corns, yellow maize and organic Peruvian purple maize. We also use local (US) strawberries - a traditional chicha ingredient that we chose to source locally as we were worried Peruvian strawberries would spoil in transit.The most exotic and unique component of this project, from the perspective of the American beer drinker, happens before the beer is even brewed. As per tradition, instead of germinating all of the grain to release the starches, the purple maize is milled, moistened in the chicha-makers mouths (which we did right here three weeks ago in our Rehoboth brewery), and formed into small cakes which are flattened and laid out to dry. The natural ptyalin enzymes in the saliva act as a catalyst and break the starches into more accessible fermentable sugars. On brewday the muko, or corn cakes, are added to the mash tun pre-boil along with the other grains. This method might sound strange but it is still used regularly today throughout villages in South and Central America. It is actually quite effective and totally sanitary. Since the grain-chewing (known as salivation) happens before the beer is boiled the beer is sterile and free of the wild yeast and bacteria you would find in modern Belgian Lambics. Dogfish Head Chicha is 6.2% ABV, cloudy and unfiltered. It has a beautiful-purple-pink hue from the Peruvian corn, strawberries, and tree seeds - it's dry, fruity, complex, and refreshing. We hope you enjoy drinking this beer as much as we enjoyed making it!

How about that? Drinking other peoples saliva? Would you? I know for a fact I would given the chance to try something to unique and weird.

These types of beers have existed long before the modern brewing process. It is nice to see that Dogfish and Mikkeller are willing to spend more time, money and effort on beers this outrageous beers that just offer something different.

It may be getting to a point where people think it is too much but isn't this what craft brewing is all about? Changing perspectives and turning the industry upside down? You can't really say they are doing anything new, especially with chicha, but it is different to the mass market of people getting into the craft beer scene. 

Weasel shit and spit. Maybe we should make a beer with both??