There's Something (Shell) Fishy About This Seafood-Inspired Beer

A brewery in southwest England has given one of its beers a real shellfish twist. The Wild Beer Co used 30 live lobsters ― plus cockles, Kombu seaweed, sea salt, sea herbs, star anise and saffron ― to produce its 7 percent brew, called Of The Sea. Initial reaction to the concept was “mixed,” the company’s co-founder Andrew Cooper told HuffPost during a tasting at its brewery near Shepton Mallet in Somerset this month. “But we’d far rather brew something genuinely interesting and one that gets an emotional reaction from people than just another beer,” he added. Inspiration for the drink came from the mutual love that Cooper and his fellow brewery co-founder Brett Ellis share for the dish lobster bisque. And following a brewery team “bisque off,” they decided to take the plunge and transform the idea of the highly seasoned soup into a beer. They dropped the lobsters and other ingredients into the boil for 12 minutes, before removing the crustaceans and stripping them of their meat. Staff enjoyed a team lunch of lobster rolls as the shells were grilled to intensify their flavor and then put back in at the end of the boil. They then extracted all the food debris, added saison yeast and left it to ferment for one week and to undergo a period of maturation for two weeks. Only 120 Of The Sea kegs and 8,000 bottles, costing around $4.40, were put on sale, making it a limited edition. Lobster-infused beer is not new, with...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news