Cocktails are usually beautiful mixtures of alcohol and other ingredients meant to complement and enhance its flavor. Usually, bartenders use things like lime juice, soda water and simple syrup, not reproductive animal parts, ants and urine. But that’s exactly what you’ll find in some of the world’s most bizarre cocktails. Wanna know more about them? Keep reading.
The Sourtoe Cocktail
There’s a hotel in Dawnson City Canada that serves one of the most unique cocktails we’ve ever heard of: the sourtoe cocktail. And if you think this is code for some smart drink, think again – it’s a cocktail with a real human toe in the glass. And there’s one rule if you order the drink: “You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips have gotta touch the toe.” The thing is that it’s just one toe that’s being used for every cocktail. Legend has it that it belonged to an alcohol runner from the Prohibition era. After developing gangrene, he hacked it off and had it preserved in rum. It was found decades later and was made the pièce de résistance in the sourtoe cocktail.
Tezhi Sanbian Jiu
While it may be hard to pronounce the name of this spirit, it’s just as hard (for us Westerners, at least) to try to understand why people would do this. You see, this rice wine has been infused with male umm members. And this particular kind has three – seal, deer and Cantonese dog. It goes back to traditional Chinese medicine where it is believed that the potency of the steeped phalluses would transfer to the drinker. The drink is also said to have kidney healing powers.
Gilpin Family Whisky
James Gilpin was attempting to raise diabetes awareness by working with a by-product of Type II diabetes. Because those with the ailment can’t regulate the sugar levels in their blood, it leaves the body in urine. And that’s what James used as one of the key ingredients in his single malt whisky. He filtered the urine he obtained from the elderly (including his grandmother) to remove the sugar then used said sugar to make the alcohol.
Human Yeast Beer
Humans have been thinking of ways to make old things new for ages, so when chief brewer, John Maier, heard that a man had not shaved in his beard in more than 20 years, he took nine hairs and cultivated the yeast, launching the final product, “Rogue Beard Beer,” in 2014. It changed how many beer revolutionaries thought about cultivating yeast, and two years later, a Polish company tried to use hair sourced from another human body part.
Anty Gin
Anty gin has nothing to do with the sister of your mom or dad – the spelling should’ve been enough to figure that out. But it does have something to do with ant. A Nordic chef whose goal was to investigate “food diversity and deliciousness” brought out the flavor of wood ants using gin. Those chosen for the experiment produced chemicals to fend off predators. And so, each bottle of Anty Gin has the essence of 62 of the foraged bugs and costs £200.
