Cheers To Strange Brew!
Have you ever been thirsty and thought you could really go for a glass of cow urine soda right now? Does celebrating over pints of Belly Button Beer sound like your idea of a good time? Well, some people do! From snake wine to panda dung tea, here’s a list of the world’s oddest beverages to help quench your thirst.
1. Baby Mice Wine
This wine is not suitable for animal lovers or anyone with a fear of rodents. As its name suggests, the Chinese wine is made with less than three-year-old mice drowned in rice wine. If you don’t want to mistake it for a Chardonnay, the baby mice floating in the bottle is a sure giveaway.
Andriy Makukha (Amakuha) on Wikimedia
2. Snake Wine
This wine has bite! Ancient Chinese medicine claims that a slurp of snake wine refreshes your body. The serpent wine is made by steeping an entire venomous snake in rice wine. Apparently, the fermentation process eliminates the poison and is safe enough to drink, but don’t try this at your dinner party.
Jacek Karczmarczyk on Wikimedia
3. Kumis (Mare’s Milk Alcohol)
Traditional to central Asian countries like Mongolia and Kazakhstan, kumis is a sweet alcoholic horse milk. The milk of a mare is said to have more sugar than a cow and ferments well in the wine-like fermentation process. Given that it’s challenging to milk a horse, it’s common nowadays to find cow’s milk kumis with added sugar to enhance the sweetness.
4. Ant Gin
Native to Australia, ant gin is indeed gin distilled with ants. More specifically, they use green ants that add subtle notes of lime and coriander. If you’re lucky, you might end up with a few ants at the bottom of the bottle to munch on.
5. Tuna Tears Soju
How about a shot of tuna eye jelly to take the edge off? In Korea, the national drink is a rice wine called soju and if you’re passing by a “tuna house”, you can slug back a shot of tuna tears. Made from mixing soju with tuna eye fluid gives it a thick and jelly-like texture.
6. The Sour Toe Cocktail
In the Yukon in Canada, you can become a member of the Sourtoe Club by drinking Sourdough Saloon’s famous cocktail, made with your choice of alcohol and a dehydrated human toe. Legend has it that the toe belonged to a rum-runner who lost his toe to frostbite and it’s been preserved since the 1920’s. Their rule is that “You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips have gotta touch the toe!”
7. Kopi Luwak Coffee
How about you kick start your day with a fresh cup of steaming hot cat poo cherry brew? Originating from Indonesia, the specialty coffee is made from coffee cherries that have passed through a cat’s digestive system. Don’t worry, it’s assured that the digested cherries are cleaned before they’re roasted and ground.
Wibowo Djatmiko (Wie146) on Wikimedia
8. Hvalur
In Iceland, they like their beer with more than hops. One of the ingredients in Hvalur is a gigantic sausage made from whale testes that are smoked over a fire of sheep’s dung. The smoky nuts are plonked into a vat of beer until deemed ready for pint drinking.
photo: Dr.Hausderivative work: an-d (talk) on Wikimedia
9. Gau Jal (Cow Urine Soda)
Hindus in India believe that cows are sacred creatures and their urine has been used in medicinal practices for centuries. Gau Jal is a cola-flavored soda pop that is marketed as a health drink infused with cow pee.
10. Chica de Jora Beer
This ancient Peruvian beer went through a unique fermentation process. Usually, it was women known as “Virgins of the Sun” who carried out the duty of chewing corn kernels and spitting it out. Supposedly the saliva activated the fermentation process and the chewed-up corn was used to create beer.
11. Squirrel Beer
If only your dog could drink beer, this would likely be their favorite. In the United States, you can treat yourself to an expensive bottle of 55% beer that comes encased in a taxidermy squirrel. Some may argue that these brewers are making use of the roadkill for sustainable purposes.
Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash
12. Kvas
Russians don’t waste their stale bread, instead, it’s used to make booze. Kvas is created by hot water and old bread croutons that are left to ferment in specialized wooden tubs. The bitter taste is often masked with mint, raisins, or berries.
David Foodphototasty on Unsplash
13. Seagull Wine
Add another wine made with dead animals to the list. In the Arctic, seagull wine was invented and relatively easy to make. The not-so-secret ingredient was a dead seagull inside a bottle that was left to naturally ferment in the sun.
14. Placenta 10,000
This Japanese health drink is a peach-flavored jelly made with pig placenta. Some believe that consuming the placenta has many health benefits including boosting a new mother’s energy levels.
15. Panda Dung Tea
Given its hefty price, panda dung tea may be a good option for your royal tea party. It is believed that the tea grown in the panda excrement is healthy since a panda is on a nutritious diet of wild bamboo. Can you get more organic than that?
16. Bird’s Nest Drink
You may come across a rather peculiar beverage can in a fridge in Vietnam. A Bird’s Nest drink is in fact made with the nest of a bird and a white fungus. Somehow the odd combination tastes like cake batter.
17. Reindeer Antler Whiskey
Santa, hide the reindeer! A Thai whisky known as Yaa Dong is a “pickled medicine” made from fermenting rice with ginseng, herbs, and reindeer antlers. It’s said that the antlers provide healthy benefits including virtility, making this a horn-y beverage for several reasons.
18. Smoker’s Cough Shot
Was this a prank played by college buddies or does it actually soothe a dry throat? Either way, whoever desires a smoker’s cough shot has unique taste buds. The shot is made from a simple and disgusting combination of Jagermeister and a dollop of mayonnaise.
19. Ramune
If you’re a Harry Potter fan and the Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, then these soda pops might be for you. Ramune is a beverage company that makes specialty sodas in unique flavors ranging from bubble gum to curry.
20. Belly Button Beer
This might be the craftiest craft beer on the market. The Belly Button Beer was created by a brewery in Australia that used the founders’ navel fluff as brewer’s yeast. It sounds like they may have been a few pints deep when they came up with this idea.
KEEP ON READING
