Alcoholic beverage makers are getting ever more experimental, with lentils and even dairy products the latest obscure ingredients to find their way into products.
Adelaide Hills craft brewery, Lobethal Bierhaus, this week released lentil beer, after being approached with the idea last year by pulse processor AGT Foods Australia.
Although the lentil pale ale is the first of its kind in Australia, Lentil beer has become popular in Canada.
The beer still has a high percentage of malted barley to aid with fermentation, but its makers say a lot of the flavour and texture comes from the addition of the pulse, according to an ABC Rural report.
A distillery in Byron Bay is also getting adventurous with the creation of a native rainforest gin blend. The distiller Eddie Brook infuses his gin with 18 different native botanical flavours from species native to the NSW North Coast, including raspberries, aniseed, myrtle, ginger, rye berries and finger limes.
A dairy farmer in the UK, meanwhile, has developed a way to distil whey, a dairy by-product, into premium vodka.
The product, Black Cow pure milk vodka (pictured above), is made by West Dorset dairy farmer Jason Barber who separates his milk into curds and whey, with the curds used to make cheese, and the whey fermented into a beer using a special yeast that converts the milk sugar into alcohol.
This milk beer is then distilled and treated to a secret blending process. The vodka is then triple filtered and finished, before being hand bottled.
