Last week, well-known craft brewery Dogfish Head announced that it would be making a beer using mace — both the red tendrils that cover nutmeg and the pepper oils used in the assault-dettering spray — as the main ingredient. Obviously mace (both types) make a really strange ingredient for beer. But if the mad scientists at the Delaware-based brewery decided to use it, we can trust that it’s not pure awful. Dogfish has a rep for being experimental, but their experiments are typically successful too.
The announcement led us to wonder what other strange beer ingredients brewers are using to make beer. From beard-based yeast, to bull testicles, to cat poop coffee, breweries all over the country have gone full-f*cking-wierdo. Sometimes to the benefit of the beer drinking masses.
Rogue Brewing — Beard Beer
Rogue Beard Beer is exactly what you think it is. It’s a beer made using “wild” yeast that is procured from a fairly strange place — the beard of Rogue Ale’s brewmaster John Maier. He’s been growing his beard since the late 1970s and he’s brewed more than 20,000 batches of beer so there’s definitely a lot to work with and this 4.8% ale benefits from that yeast diversity.
Fossil Fuels Brewing Company — Saison
Back in 1995, microbiologist Dr. Raul Cano found some prehistoric organisms frozen in amber. Among the organisms, Cano also found a few ancient yeast strains. And, instead of using the DNA to clone dinosaurs like in Jurassic Park, he and colleague Chip Lambert decided to team up with some brewers to create a truly unique beer made with 45 million-year-old yeast. Awesome and ancient.
Sapparo — Space Barley
This beer, brewed in 2009, was the first ever brew made with “space barley.” The barley was jettisoned to space for five months in 2006 as part of a research project between the Japanese brewery, the Russian Academy of Sciences and Okayama University.
All proceeds of the sale of this strange beer went to Okayama University (hopefully for more beer-based research).
Wynkoop Brewery — Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout
You’re probably familiar with the oyster, the bivalve mollusk that is delicious when served with lemon. So, when you hear the words “Rocky Mountain oyster” you’re probably fairly confused since there are no oceans anywhere near Colorado. Well, these “oysters” are actually bull testicles and Wynkoop Brewery decided to make a stout using them instead of their not-at-all-related ocean-dwelling cousins.
This 7.5% brew is made with malts, roasted barley, hops, and 25 pounds of roasted bull testicles. Best served with nuts.
Cannabia
Available since 1996, Cannabia is the first ever hemp beer. Made with a combination of hops and hemp seeds, this beer is actually meant to be skunky. This 4.8% beer begins as a traditional German pilsner before hemp, water, and sugar are added right before the end of fermentation.
If you enjoy the flavor of cannabis, without the high, then this is for you, as this beer doesn’t actually contain any THC.
Dogfish Head — IN YOUR MACE!
Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione is no stranger to odd beers. In the past, he’s used lobster, algae, and even sediment from drinking vessels found in King Solomon’s tomb as ingredients. His newest beer is a 5% coffee milk stout make with cinnamon chips, milk sugars, coffee, chicory, mace, and chili oils, the active ingredient in pepper spray.
Mikkeller — Beer Geek Brunch Weasel
Like Dogfish Head, Mikkeller is known for its envelope-pushing beer offerings. One of its strangest is its Beer Geek Brunch Weasel, an imperial oatmeal stout that gets its one ingredient from a very unique place. At first glance, the ingredients don’t seem all that weird. It’s made from water, malts, hops, yeast, and coffee.
But, this coffee isn’t Folgers. It’s Vietnamese ca phe chon coffee, one of the most expensive coffees in the world because it’s coffee made from the leavings (poop) of the weasel-looking Civet cats.
Twisted Pine Brewing — Ghost Face Killah
It’s nothing new for brewers to add spicy peppers to beer. But, few have the stones to add a whole slew of hot peppers, including ghost peppers, to their brew. Also known as Bhut Jolokia, the ghost pepper is the main ingredient of Twisted Pine’s Ghost Face Killah. If you don’t realize just how hot this pepper is, it’s the hottest pepper in the world and is 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce. So.. drink up?
