WEIRD OR WHAT

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What’s the ‘Weirdest’ Beer You Ever Tried to Brew?

No idea or ingredient is off limits in today’s brewing world. There are beers made with Maine lobsters and Mangalitsa pigs, candied ginger and gingerbread cookies, human urine, Norwegian money, and yeast harvested from beard hairs (no, seriously).

“Like all brewers who were previously homebrewers, I dabbled in a lot of weird sh*t. But I think the weirdest beer I brewed was an imperial stout with Atomic FireBalls candy. I was hoping for a nice cinnamon-roast-sweet thing, but it ended up tasting exactly like beef jerky. That was a dumper. Another weird beer was my second brew ever, which was a fruited ‘lambic.’ I brewed this one with my college roommates, and we pitched a tube of White Labs Brettanomyces yeast, and nothing else for primary fermentation, not knowing that their pitch rates for Brettanomyces at the time were one-tenth the size of a normal pitch. Then to top it off after the extremely slow fermentation, we threw a bunch of old freezer-burned berries into the plastic fermenter. That one tasted like an old, dirty rubber band and freezer-burned berries. Ew.” — Mitch Ermatinger, Co-Owner and Head of Fermentation, Speciation Artisan Ales

“My weirdest brew was a one-barrel batch of a kettle sour we did with Little Hug Fruit Barrels, those little sugary, fruity drinks we called ‘quarter waters’ as kids. We used no actual water, replacing it entirely with 800 containers of blue raspberry Little Hugs in the mash and sparge. The yeast struggled with the preservatives, fermenting very slowly and stopping a bit earlier than we had hoped. The final beer was bluish green, with a touch of sweetness, but tasted better than we feared. We also served it with lemonade as a shandy. People still ask us when we’re brewing the Little Hugs beer again.” — Ryan Diehl, Co-Founder and Brewer, Imprint Beer Co.

“The weirdest beer I made was a dry stout with mussels, about nine years ago when I had just discovered oyster stouts and I wanted to interpret it in a Neapolitan way. I still hadn’t opened the Birrificio Flegreo, but I dabbled in homebrewing and I decided to give it a try using mussels directly in the boiling process. The experiment turned out well and resulted in a slightly salted beer with a rich and persistent foam. I called it Stout & Co. because the Italian word for mussels is ‘cozze.’ I will absolutely retry the experiment!” – Chiara Bolognino, Co-Owner and Brewmaster, Birrificio Flegreo

“As homebrewers, there was a time we were experimenting a lot with the possibilities of gruit, changing hops for herbs. We tried all kinds of different herbs from our garden: alehoof, yarrow, mugwort… One of the most extreme versions was a test beer we made with gentian root, added both at the end of boil and on the cold side, together with bitter oranges. Because of our wild-yeast culture, the lactobacillus produced a lot of lactic acid. So it started pretty sour, but then gave way slowly to a long lingering bitter finish, as gentian root is one of the most bitter herbs. We took the beer to a festival in Amsterdam, Carnivale Brettanomyces, and it was definitely a love-it-or-hate-it beer. On a professional level, we made this beer again, but we decided to use aged hops in the beginning of the boil, just to temper the lactobacillus, and to use a bit less of the gentian root, to balance the beer more.” — Tom Jacobs, Co-Founder and Co-Brewer, Antidoot Wilde Fermenten

“My supply rep stopped by the brewpub and happened to be carrying a small baggy of food-grade glitter. He asked me if I was interested — I know this sounds like a drug deal! — and I told him I wasn’t sure, so he left the glitter behind. A few weeks later I was blending a keg of What a Trip, a 10 percent ABV Belgian tripel with a prickly pear puree when out of the corner of my eye I noticed the small glitter baggy. It was just sitting there tempting me! I must have felt the magic in the brewery that day because I didn’t hesitate to sprinkle the glitter in the keg along with the puree. The result was quite magical. The beer tasted just how I expected with complex fruity esters, spice characteristics, and a melon-fig sweetness from the puree. While the glitter didn’t affect the taste of the beer, it was a feast for the eyes! When poured into a glass it danced around like stardust.” — Nacho Cervantes, Head Brewer, New Original Breweries