The United States is no slouch when it comes to putting weird stuff in beer, as we’ve seen recently with the Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware adding scrapple and actual rocks from the moon to limited offerings, but Iceland may have just taken the whale testic-… I’m sorry. The cake. I meant to say Iceland may have just taken “the cake.” Got whale testicles on the brain right now, for a fairly understandable reason.
You see, Brewery Steðji in Iceland just announced that they are rolling out a new beer called Hvalur 2 to honor the Icelandic midwinter month of Thorri, and that beer will be flavored with testicles from the endangered fin whale. Endangered Whale Testicle Beer. From Iceland. Happening.
“We want to create a true Thorri atmosphere and therefore we decided to put smoked testicles from fin whales into the beer for flavoring” says Dagbjartur Arilíusson, one of the owners of brewery in Borgarfjörður.
“The testicles are cured according to an old, Icelandic tradition, lightly salted and then smoked. We put a lot of effort into this and it’s a long process.” [Visir]
I’m sure you have at least a few questions about all of this, so let’s try to address those.
Just how many testicles are we talking about here?
According to the brewery, each batch of the beer will be flavored with one whale testicle. This represents both (a) the smallest number of full whale testicles they could possibly use, (b) still an awful lot of whale testicles for a beer.
How can they make a beer with a body part from an endangered animal?
With government approval, that’s how. It turns out this is actually Brewery Steðji’s second go-round with beer made from whale parts. There was a pretty understandable public outcry when they announced the first one, which led to a hurried attempt to get the last-minute go-ahead from the necessary officials. This time, they got their whale testic-… ducks in a row first, resulting in this actual sentence from an Icelandic news source: “Helgi Helgason, the director of Vesturland Public Health Safety, confirms that the company is authorised to sell beer containing whale testicles.”
Fair enough. Let’s say I’m throwing a big Super Bowl party on February 1 and I want to purchase this Icelandic beer made with the salted and cured testicles of the endangered fin whale to serve to my guests. Will it be available in time?
This is a bad idea.
ANSWER THE QUESTION.
Yes. Hvalur 2 will be available in Icelandic liquor stores beginning January 23.