would you drink it?

After seeing this vodka distilled from cow’s milk, we didn’t expect to see too many more beverages distilled from milk. Despite all, here is Chinese Milk Liquor. The label is fairly sketchy about how it’s made. A very good website, teaching about Asian alcohol beverages, explains that this type of spirit is called Lai Jiu:

Literally “milk liquor,” it is made by taking cow’s milk, fermenting it, and distilling it. It is around 40% alcohol and it is as clear as water. I absolutely love the stuff. It has a sweet after-taste to it, like evaporated milk … . It gives one such a lovely high (much better than bai jiu). To my knowledge (and I’ve looked), it can ONLY be found in the province of China called Nei Meng Gu (Inner Mongolia).

The same website also covers Bok Bun Ja Ju (“man who pees in a pot”) but we’ll leave that topic for another day.

We were perusing some lists of shockingly exotic alcohol beverages. Nestled among the Baby Mouse Wine and the Mare’s Milk Wine, we found, at long last, the beer made with human saliva. It is otherwise known as chicha and it goes back thousands of years, to roots in the Andes region. The above video does an excellent job of describing why anyone would chew up maize, add some saliva, and then brew it into beer. The Dogfish site further explains:

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 …, 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...

Flying Dog has their “Good Beer, No Sh*t” Road Dog Porter as chronicled here. The Dog is not to be outdone by the Weasel. Whereas Road Dog, apparently, has no sh*t whatsoever, this ingredient is the centerpiece of Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch. It is made with weasel excrement. Literally. The label explains that:

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 Coffee. The exceedingly rare Civet Coffee has a strong, distinctive taste and an even stronger aroma.

Lest you be scared away by the “droppings,” here is at least one connoisseur who can vouch for it.