Whisky Made From Diabetics' Urine 226
It's doubtful that any other distillery will come up with a whisky that tastes like Gilpin Family Whisky because of its secret ingredient: urine. Researcher and designer James Gilpin uses the sugar rich urine of elderly diabetics to make his high-end single malt whisky. From the article: "The source material is acquired from elderly volunteers, including Gilpin's own grandmother, Patricia. The urine is purified in the same way as mains water is purified, with the sugar molecules removed and added to the mash stock to accelerate the whisky's fermentation process. Traditionally, that sugar would be made from the starches in the mash."
Still not as good as my "Orphan Blood Rum" (Score:5, Funny)
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Next up: brewing in zero-G
This ties in with the space junk story "The space age has filled Earth's orbit with all manner of space junk, from spent rocket stages to frozen bags of astronaut urine..."
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I somehow doubt that there are any diabetics in orbit.
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frozen bags of astronaut urine...
Hehe, looks as if astronauts aren't any better than truck drivers [roadsideamerica.com]...?
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Re:Still not as good as my "Orphan Blood Rum" (Score:5, Funny)
You just flushed an on-topic "Frosty Piss" opportunity down the drain! I'm infurinated at the waste. Now wee'll have to make doo with bad puns...
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Yeah it's also not a single malt. Single malts use sugars from one SINGLE malt with no additional sugar, at least strictly speaking.
Still there's a sucker born every minute and I'm sure some idiots will buy this stuff. Personally I think the creator should just piss off.
Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
I figured it was the same reason they use it in American light beers.
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So very true...
Re:Great! (Score:4, Funny)
That reminds me of that old Monty Python Joke...
Q. Do you know why American beer is like making love in a canoe?
A. It's fucking close to water.
Anyways, I don't understand how Americans can drink that watered down [crap*] like Budweiser or Coors after tasting "real" beer like the Germans or Ale that the Bristish make...
* No offense intended if you actually _like_ that stuff...
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For what it's worth, some of us actually do enjoy the American style as well as the fuller more flavorful styles.
Budweiser and Coors is crap. If you're looking for a halfway decent American lager, try Pabst Blue Ribbon or Narraganset. Much better flavor while still being an incredibly light beer.
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PBR is legendary... in a certain sense of the word legendary.
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For what it's worth, some of us actually do enjoy the American style as well as the fuller more flavorful styles.
Budweiser and Coors is crap. If you're looking for a halfway decent American lager, try Pabst Blue Ribbon or Narraganset. Much better flavor while still being an incredibly light beer.
A friend of mine who is a. into good beer and b. emigrated to Germany fifteen or so years ago, had something to say on this issue. One of his friends is in the beer transport business in that fine country. That his, he is responsible for shipping mass quantities of brew from here to there (via train, truck and boat) and he takes that responsibility very seriously. Now,his take on matters was very interesting. He points out that American breweries actually do turn out some respectable product (and do so in i
Made for shipment (Score:2)
Some styles just ship better. IPAs for instance were specifically designed to withstand transport. A subtle flavor profile with low ABV like a Pilsner lager probably responds very differently to abuse and age.
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Some styles just ship better. IPAs for instance were specifically designed to withstand transport. A subtle flavor profile with low ABV like a Pilsner lager probably responds very differently to abuse and age.
I have no idea what you just said but it sounded great.
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Hey...Budweiser is awesome! It's just a shame some enterprising individual in the late 1800s started selling (clydesdale) horse piss disguised as beer and stole the name to lend some credibility to his swill.
If you want great beer, go Czech...German and British are merely well above average. There's a reason why the Czechs are the #1 per capita beer consumption country in the world [wikipedia.org].
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There's a reason why the Czechs are the #1 per capita beer consumption country in the world [wikipedia.org].
Yep, there's a reason all right, which may or may not have to do with the quality of their beer.
Having said that, one of my favorites is Pilsner Urquell.
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When I was there, I learned that Pilsner Urquell is brewed to 12%, and then watered down to 3.1%.
Also note that Budweis is also a Czech town. So aren't they really the ones to blame for lame beers?
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* No offense intended if you actually _like_ that stuff...
Corporal Hicks: None taken!
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Bud is a great chaser to a neat jigger of Jameson but Coors is just gross.
America is making some pretty amazing beers these days though that the curious or international crowds should try.
I recommend these small breweries as their beers are generally available regionally or nationally in the USA:
Yuengling, (A Real American Lager) Victory or Sly Fox (PA)
Ommegang, Lake Placid and Brooklyn (NY)
Anchor Steam (CA)
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I also want to plug Dogfish Head, in Delaware, consistently turning out a huge variety of extremely high-quality and creative beers. I'll also second the Victory recommendation, especially Hop D
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As a brit living in America I've found that there are some extremely good beers here nowadays, especially around Portland, OR. I just drank a very good IPA from Terminal Gravity - live beer. The yanks have come a loooong way from Bud (which is now EU owned FWIW).
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As to why...
I'm currently living in Wisconsin, the home of many such "piss-water beers". Also the home of some of the best beers I've ever had. Belgian style abbys and tripels, German style hefeweizen, English porters, Irish stouts, lambics, bachs, pilsners, etc. Take the best beers in the best traditions from Europe, and you'll find them here, recreated with 95% accuracy.
So why do people drink the crap beers? That's an easy one. If you want
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The way I understand it, the homogenous mass-market American beer has something to do with the way the industrial revolution impacted the US. Cheap beer arrived with the railroad and squeezed out the competition.
Then, prohibtion killed the industry for a while.
We have Jimmy Carter (yes, Carter!) to thank for re-legalizing home brewing in the US. That set the stage for a craft brewing revival that seemed to peak in the late 90s along with dot-com. Many of those micro-brews survive, along with a number of
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"real" beer like the Germans or Ale that the Bristish make...
You mention German and British beer, and fail to mention Belgian beer? Those people really know how to make good beer. Best beers in the world.
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"real" beer like the Germans or Ale that the Bristish make...
You mention German and British beer, and fail to mention Belgian beer? Those people really know how to make good beer. Best beers in the world.
Absolutely. Oh, except the Dutch beers of course. Heineken is the biggest beer supplier in the world! (unless you count Budweiser as being beer as well =( ).
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I dunno about you, but I like being able to sit down in a restaurant or bar, and just order half a liter of the beer they have on tap without worrying that it could taste crappy or watered down.
Doing that here in Germany, you'll get a lot of different flavors depending on which region you're in, but you'll never get anything that tastes like it's been watered down or high in urine content :P. Even Kölsch, which is very watery by German standards, is quite nice compared to something like Bud Light...
Sco
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I'm an American and resent the offensive comparison of innocent urine to our loathsome fake "beer".
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At least this guy is brewing with it instead of just bottling it right from the "tap"
Re:Great! (Score:4, Funny)
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It certainly brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "wee dram".
How is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
Americans have been making beer from urine for a century. I don't see how Whisky is a stretch.
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On what basis do you make the comparison? I mean sure, Bud is a bit nasty, but I have no fucking clue what piss tastes like so I don't know if they are similar.
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They're not really similar, piss is kinda salty, but Bud is a little hoppier. Maybe if someone had been drinking a lot of beer their piss would taste a little like Bud.
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In which case I'd say that fresh popcorn tends to smell more like piss than Budweiser . . . .
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Yep, in fact a lot of people don't realize that a now-antiquated term for diabetics' urine is "coors light". True story.
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So the lime variety is...?
Never mind, I don't want to know...
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Reminds me of the old saying about European beer vs. US beer -
"What we call lager, they call beer.
What they call beer, we call piss."
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What they call piss we call...???
Wine? :p
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Eh - our beer may leave something to be desired, but American whiskey is actually pretty darned good. I'd put Maker's Mark up against just about any of the foreign whiskeys.
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I'd put Maker's Mark up against a foreign whiskey, then I'd leave it on the shelf as I drank the foreign stuff.
I was at a bar once drinking Southern Comfort, the bartender suggested that if I liked the Southern Comfort, I'd probably also enjoy Maker's Mark. I have no idea where he got that idea from, Southern Comfort is, if anything, a little too sweet and smooth, but the Maker's Mark was like drinking sandpaper it was so rough. Not to bag on all American booze, but Maker's Mark is not the one I'd call out.
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Just because your average beer guzzling nitwit doesnt know a hop if it hits him in the face, and therefore drinks bud, coors, etc, doesnt mean there arent some REALLY GOOD BEERS coming out of America! (I am a beer nut BTW, spending a month in Europe was what I call my "beer puberty") Some of my favorites come from the states. Dogfish head has some wonderfully complex brews, my favorite being Red and White. Some names off the top of my head that rock are: Three Floyds, Dogfish Head, Lost Abbey, Stone, Sam A
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I know in the days before Sam Adams, your statement about US beer was the truth.
Today, the US is easily the beer brewing capitol of the world. And its not even close. There are thousands of microbreweries putting out amazing beers. The sad fact is they don't really cost all that much more than the crap flooding all of our supermarkets.
Seriously, go out and find some beers by Stone, Dogfish Head, Great Divide, etc.
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Baker's 7
Booker's
Basil Hayden
Black Maple Hill
Old Potrero
And if you are partial to rye whiskey:
Sazerac 18
True, they won't taste like Scotch whisky, but that is the point. None of the singles taste the same, and having a bourbon or rye now and then adds variety.
m
Can't forget the old joke (Score:2)
Why is American Beer like making love in a row-boat?
:-)
Re:Can't forget the old joke (Score:5, Funny)
It's the only way Canadians can get a girl wet.
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Put it back in the horse.
--
Table for two, piss for one.
It makes sense (Score:2)
It makes sense - you drink piss to get pissed.
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I don't personally like Yuengling, but that's hardly relevant.
It's quite clear that "American beer" generally refers to the product of megabreweries, which is the common face of beer in America. The criticism of American beer is properly understood, whether you agree or not, as a criticism of mainstream American taste for accepting such crap. I think that whatever one's tastes, there will be an American beer (perhaps very obscure) that comes pretty close to satisfying it. The same cannot be said of other co
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Fun fact: Anheuser-Busch InBev is a Belgium company. If you really want to stretch it you could say Budweiser is no longer an "American" beer.
(really though, that statement is quite a stretch. I mean, calling Budweiser a beer?!?)
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Well, as long as the jingle is still "Budweiser: the great American style lager" I reckon it still counts as an American beer.
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Hah! Especially funny since a lot of bars will call Killian's Red (Coors) an import. :)
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What's even worse is living less than 200 miles from Shiner, TX (home of Spoetzl Brewery, only place Shiner beers are brewed) and finding so many restaurants that price it (or even call it!) an import.
I don't have a problem with someone charging me for a "premium" beer, but FFS, if I live in Texas and the beer is from Texas, how can you call it an import?
(The even bigger grumble is that Shiner only costs about seven bucks more per 1/2 bbl... your typical keg.)
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It's not the dumbest thing I've had a Texan say though.
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Normal Yuengling is a lager not an ale. At least know what you are drinking.
Yuengling is far less watery garbage than say rolling rock.
My God... (Score:2)
...uses the sugar rich urine or elderly diabetics to make his high-end single malt whisky.
The whiskey is made of PEOPLE!
Now pardon me while I find a toilet.
Human vices drive innovation (Score:2)
Of course, now when someone says "this beer tastes like piss", you can tell them, it actually is piss. They then have the choice of running out and screaming "The booze is piss, people!"
Serious question (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why do they have high blood sugar? (Score:2, Insightful)
The article says these are elderly diabetic patients. There's no reason for them to have higher blood sugar than anyone else - Banting and Best discovered insulin before most of them were even born.
Sounds like either neglect or abuse to me.
Try this gin (Score:3, Funny)
It's made from tears and broken dreams.
Doesn't scale well (Score:2)
All together now... (Score:2)
Too! Much! Information!
So how, uh, did he get the idea? (Score:2)
I suppose it does look like corn mash liquid.
Fly agaric and urine-drinking in Siberia (Score:3, Informative)
In Siberia, reputedly, there were tribes in which the religious shamans ate fly agaric, a psychedelic mushroom, to attain a religious experience, and his followers would then drink his urine, which contained the psychedelic substance, in order to share in the experience.
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Well I've heard of a 'sugar high', but this really is taking the piss.
The summary misses one rather important point from the original article: 'It's more of an art piece'. We are now entering the realm of sharks in formaldeyde, paintings rendered in HIV-positive blood, and unmade beds exhibited in galleries. In other news, an Artist is crafting Teddy bears from cured placentas (no, really). Normal rules do not apply.
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Well I've heard of a 'sugar high', but this really is taking the piss.
When you're done taking the piss, I've got a really good idea what we can do with it. I just need to dig out my old distillery.
Home Brew. (Score:2)
Enough with the American Beer Bashing (Score:2)
Sure Budweiser and Coors deserve to be slammed, but America has a nearly endless selection of great beer. I'll take a local brewed double IPA over anything I've had during Oktoberfest in Munich. People who slam American beer probably weren't into beer to begin with.
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Perhaps you hadn't heard. Anheuser-Busch is now owned by belgian InBev. Both Coors, and Miller, are now owned by canadian Molson.
The argument that americans produce the world's pissiest-tasting beer in the world doesn't hold much weight anymore. Especially, when the largest american owned brewery is the Boston Brewing Company which brews the Sam Adams line of beers. Sam Adams might not be the greatest beer ever brewed, in the average beer drinker's, or beer snob's, opinion. However, its hardly the stereo
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Actually, not really true. The two companies merged, and control is shared between the Molson and Coors families. So, certain Canadians claim Molson's was taken over by Coors, and certain Americans claim the reverse. Later, they reached an agreement with Miller to do joint marketing, but it wasn't clear from the articles I read if this involved any change of ownership.
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Ah, I see, even more complicated than I thought. I suppose it really depends on your viewpoint of what constitutes an american company, or more specifically an american owned company. I would have like to been in the board room when they decided whose name, Molson or Coors, came first in the merged entity.
I get why Molson and Coors merged to better compete with big ol' Anheuser-Busch. Obviously, the mergers of brands associated with a particular national identity have done little to erode the definition
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Oktoberfest is about quantity not quality. I would very much like to taste some quality American beers though, I'm sure there must be some but they don't seem to be exported to Belgium. Only the piss-poor stuff makes it over here, unfortunately.
Pure BS (Score:3, Interesting)
is it? (Score:2)
I know... (Score:2)
...don't tell people it's from grandma's piss, tell them it's from seriously hawt, but still diabetic, babes. I bet it would be the shiz!
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Wait a minute...
You mean we can make whiskey made of people now?
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Why not, you can already make food from people [imdb.com].
Johny Walker Green Label (Score:2)
Johny Walker Green Label [itusozluk.com] is people!
Get it, green, soylent green. Oh I kill myself... what do you mean "yes please".
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It has a little wang to it.
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"Once fermented into a clear alcohol spirit, whisky blends are added to give colour, taste and viscosity, and the product is bottled with the name and age of the contributor."
So it's not a single malt [wikipedia.org]. It's a blend.
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Re:So what is the purpose of this? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Isn't it obvious? So we can get crunk in space.
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What has been seen cannot be unseen...
brown vodka (Score:2)
Put vodka in a burnt oak barrel for 18 months or more. Now you have something that tastes like (crappy) whiskey, and is no longer considered vodka. Many whiskeys are so heavily filtered (to give a milder flavor) at the distillation phase that they lost most, if not all, of the interesting volatiles from the malt that a fine scotch contains.
In the US really cheap whiskey can be just "grain neutral spirits" (industrial ethanol) plus caramel color and flavoring. There are special labels that are regulated in t
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almost. "Corn whiskey" fits your definition... As does "blended whiskey" which can be neutral spirits and flavoring mixed with aged whiskey. Everything else has to spend time in a new charred white-oak barrel. At least two years to become "straight ____ whiskey", bourbon, or tennessee whiskey. There are rules... And you should stay away from the cheap(est) stuff.
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No there is no "almost" about it. There are no rules to call it just whiskey in the US. Only to call it bourbon or a named whiskey (corn, rye, Tennessee, straight, or blended). Which you seem to understand by your penultimate sentence. So what is your point? Or you just felt like correcting someone when you have no additional facts or justification?
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Congress and the BATF beg to differ: US code federal regulations 27cfr5.22:
"(b) Class 2; whisky. ''Whisky'' is an alcoholic distillate from a fermented mash of grain produced at less than 190 proof in such manner that the distillate possesses the taste, aroma, and characteristics generally attributed to whisky, stored in oak containers (except that corn whisky need not be so stored), and bottled at not less than 80 proof, and also includes mixtures of such distillates for which no specific standards of identity are prescribed"
there are additional definitions for the "named" whiskeys, those for which there is an exiting "standard of identity".
fail - barrel aged (Score:2)
It's like you don't even read what you paste. Or compare it to what I said.
80-190 proof, stored in an oak barrel and also "includes mixtures of such distillates for which no specific standards of identity are prescribed". the rest of it isn't legally enforceable because there are no legal standards for "taste, aroma and characteristics" (and I looked!). There is no standard for the percentage of grain-based mash to "mixtures of distillates" either. Really, the definition of whiskey is pretty open ended in t
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(If you won't consider the possibility of local variation, neither will I!)