Special ingredients, new experiments and brand new savours
Do you remember when you just had to ask for a light, a red or a dark beer?
You know, things change and also quickly and more and more passionate brewers offer us endless possibilities. Let’s take a step back. We are in 1516 and at Ingolstadt in Bavaria William IV is the first to regulate how beer should be made. With his “purity dictate” he decreed that it should be produced with only water, barley and hops. After all this time things have been turned upside down and the world of beer has opened up tomany experiments and achievements. We found so many of them, the choice was not easy. We cannot guarantee on taste and some of them could even risk to hurt someone’s sensitivity, but they’re so brilliant that will certainly feed curiosity.
Some are derived from the animal world, such as the Hvalur of Brugghús Steðja, born in Iceland and derived from previously smoked whale testicles. Upon its release, it provoked predictable reactions from the animal welfare environment. Talking about the same “product” Brewer Andy Brown from Wynkoop in Denver has developed a recipe with bull testicles. Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is made from Colorado malts, roasted barley, seven special malts, Styrian Goldings hops and 25 pounds of freshly sliced and roasted bull testicles.
Moving, but not much, we find the Mangalitsa big porter, awarded in 2011 at the Great American Beer Festival as best experimental beer and made with Mangalitsa pigs’ real heads and bones. And from the animal world it also comes the Kono Kuro beer of the Japanese brewery Sankt Gallen that obtains its beer with the use of elephant excrements. Pachyderms are fed with coffee beans that are washed and reused for production, after being once defecated.
Far less drastic was the choice the Abashiri beer brewpub Japanese brewery in Hokkaido, which used milk for the production of its Bilk. The name in fact comes from the union of the words beer and milk. It was composed (no more in production) by two-thirds of beer and the remaining third was milk. However the brewery did not stop here: using iceberg water, algae and other herbs, they manage to produce colored beer variants. Or at least that’s what they say. We can find them in blue, black, pink, cherry red and green.
Walking on the border between fantasy and reality we find the Rogue, a brewery in the United States which creates his Beard Beer using a wild yeast that grows between the hairs of his creator’s beard, the master brewer John Maier.
And how not to mention a more feminine “touch”, and the quotation mark is a must in this case. In Poland, producers have decided to blend the quintessence of femininity with beer (cit.). The proposed beer is the Bottled Instict of the Yoni Order, the first vaginal beer. In practice, together with water, malt, wood flakes flavored with cognac, hops and yeast, the production includes lactobacillus. It is taken from the vagina by swab, then treated in the laboratory to avoid other bacteria contamination and infused into the drink.
In our country pizza and beer go hand in hand so following this combination the brewery Pizza beer company created for a certain time a beer called Mamma mia!, thinking well to add a margherita pizza seasoned with tomato, basil, oregano and garlic to the must in infusion. The result is a beer that tastes like pizza. It seems to be no longer in production so, the verdict must have been: better to keep the two things separate!
Finally, a touch of Italy can be found in the Saison from the Oxbow brewing brewery that produces a lobster beer in collaboration with the master brewer Giovanni Campari from the Brewery of the Duchy. The crustacean of the Maine area is cooked in the must to obtain its delicate aftertaste.
