San Diego-Based Stone Brewing, the ninth-largest brewery in the United States, recently unveiled its newest creation – a pale ale brewed using recycled water that “comes from the toilet.”

Aptly named ‘Full Circle’, the unique beer is made with 100% recycled waste water from the Pure Water demonstration plant in Miramar. Chief brewer Steve Gonzalez admits being skeptical about using recycled water to make beer and asking for analysis results before even considering it, but says that Full Circle turned out to be one of his best works yet, probably in the top three pale ales he’s ever brewed.

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Our senses of taste and smell are diminished at very high altitudes, and airlines apparently take this into consideration when developing their food menus, but until now, no one had tackled this issue when it came to beer. Luckily, one airline has recently announced a beer brewed specifically for consumption at 35,000 feet.

Betsy Beer, a brew formulated with the “ingredients, aroma and necessary carbonation to taste great both in the air and on the ground”, is the brainchild of Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific in collaboration with McCann Worldgroup. It’s named after the company’s first ever airplane, and is produced Hong Kong Beer Co. using UK-sourced hops called ‘fuggle’, honey from Hong Kong, as well as dragon-eye fruit also known as ‘longan’.

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Virginia-based  brewery the Veil Brewing Company has taken the dessert beer category to a whole new level with its innovative “Hornswoggler” brew, a a chocolate milk stout aged on hundreds of pounds of Oreo cookies that even has icing chunks in it.

They say Oreos go best with milk, but the guys at the Veil Brewing Company apparently decided prove that beer works too. And they hit it out of the park. After launching the Oreo-flavored brew on January 24, the 64 cases available sold out almost instantly. The company then sold what little they had left as on-draft at the brewery, in Scott’s Addition, Richmond. That didn’t last very long either, and now the brewery is getting bombarded with questions about the next batch.

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If you’re looking to get a head start before a wild night out with your friends, this Shower Beer created by Swedish brewery PangPang in collaboration with creative agency Snask will probably do the trick.

The shower hardly seems like the best place to enjoy a nice, cold brewsky, yet some people have been doing it for years. However, the problem with showers is that they’re usually quick, so you don’t have the time to gulp down a whole bottle of your favorite ale. To solve the problem, a group of ingenious Swedes have come up with a smaller, stronger beer designed to be consumed while showering.

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Dutch beer maker De Prael Brewery claims to have discovered the holy grail of alcoholic drinks – a pilsner-style brew laced with ingredients that greatly reduce the chances of next-day hangover and leave drinkers feeling fresh.

Thomas Gesink, the owner of Amsterdam-based De Prael Brewery, says he came up with the formula for his revolutionary beer after being challenged to create an alcoholic brew that would allow consumer to go to work the morning after without having to deal with the symptoms of hangover. So he and his team of brewers started researching what ingredients they would need to add to achieve their goal, while making sure that they didn’t affect the taste of the beer.

While the exact recipe for this 4.5%-alcohol hangover-free beer remains a closely-guarded secret, Gesink revealed that the main wonder ingredient is vitamin B12, which prevents headaches. “It is actually the only vitamin which can be dissolved in water, and that is why you can brew with it,” he said. The unique beer also contains sea salt to prevent dehydration, ginger and willow fibers, which are known to have a cleansing effect on the body.

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Until recently, having an alcohol-free night at the local bar left you with only a few bland options – water, a sweetened soft drink or a non-alcoholic cocktail. But that was before someone had the brilliant idea to create Seedlip, the world’s first alcohol-free spirit.

Ben Branson, the mastermind behind Seedlip, claims he came up with the formula for his unique spirit while reading John French’s 1651 book, “The Art of Distillation.” In it he found a large number of remedies for various ailments, and while some included alcohol, a lot of them didn’t. “It’s easy to forget that alcohol had its origins in medicine. That quickly moved to drinking for pleasure, and it seems we forgot about the non-alcoholic side,” Seedlip Ben (the name he usually goes by) says. “I’m not a distiller and I’m not scientific, but I thought that was interesting. So I bought a little still and starting playing around in my kitchen.”

Using various herbs he was growing in his backyard, a copper still, water and steam, Ben started experimenting, and eventually realized he could make a liquid that smelled and tasted like whatever plant he put in the still. He calls it his “eureka” moment because it got him wondering if he could make a drink like this and, if anyone else had done it before. It turns out they hadn’t, at least not commercially, so he ended up marketing his final formula for Seedlip as the world’s first non-alcoholic spirit.

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Bellion Vodka is the world’s first commercially-available alcoholic drink made with NTX technology, which significantly reduces the damage caused by alcohol to our liver and DNA.

While some of us may enjoy frequently consuming high quantities of alcohol, our livers certainly do not. Because our body doesn’t have a way of storing alcohol, it must metabolize it quickly, so the liver has to work overtime to filter the alcohol from the bloodstream and detoxify the body. While it’s being doing that, the liver is not processing anything else (stuff like carbohydrates or fat). According to the Cleveland Clinic, if alcohol is consumed often enough, it can lead to a dangerous condition known as fatty liver, an early stage of alcoholic liver disease which can eventually lead to cirrhosis.

But thanks to the revolutionary NTX technology, we apparently no longer have to worry about the harmful effects of alcohol on our liver and DNA. Developed by Indian entrepreneur Harsha Chigurupati and his team at Chigurupati Technologies, NTX is a “proprietary blend of ingredients” that works by shielding the liver from the harmful effects of consuming alcohol without affecting the taste of the drink itself. It sounds to be good to be true, but during human trails the technology has managed to reduce the negative effects of alcohol on the liver and DNA by 93%.

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Viscous Coffee, a café in Adelaide, Australia, sells a cup of super-coffee that contains five grams of caffeine – 80 times more than a normal cup of java and half the dose considered to be lethal. Called the “Asskicker”, the strong beverage comes with a health warning for people with heart problems and blood pressure issues.

A cup of espresso has about 60mg of caffeine, while a serving of standard filtered coffee has about 150mg of it, depending on how it is prepared. The Asskicker contains five full grams of caffeine, which Viscous Coffee owner Steve Benington says is enough to provide 12 to 18 hours of “sustained up-time”. But the high caffeine content means it shouldn’t be consumed in one go, but slowly, over a period of four hours.

Benington says he came up with the idea for the Asskicker when an emergency department nurse asked him for something that would keep her awake and alert for an unexpected night shift. “She consumed her drink over two days and it kept her up for almost three days — I toned it down a little after that and the Asskicker was born,” he recalls. Nowadays, the complex concoction is made with four espresso shots, four 48-hour brewed cold drip ice cubes, 120ml of 10-day brewed cold drip and is finished with four more 48-hour brewed cold drip ice cubes. “Each cold drip ice cube is approximately equivalent of a bit more than two shots of espresso in caffeine,” Benington explains.

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There’s no denying that water plays a huge part in the overall quality of coffee, which is why most respectable coffee shops use filters to get rid of excess minerals or chemicals that might negatively impact the taste of their brews. But now there’s an even better way to ensure that your morning cup of coffee tastes just right – introducing Aquiem designer coffee water.

The brainchild of a group of entrepreneurs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Aquiem is “enhanced water” that has first been purified to zero mineral content and then enhanced with all-natural essential minerals to enrich the flavor, consistency and even the aroma of coffee. “What you definitely do not want is to have things like zinc and lead, fluoride, chlorine and large amounts of calcium in the water. All of that effects the taste of the coffee,” Aquiem co-founder Rob Vidacovich told Daily Coffee News. “What does have a favorable effect on coffee are things like magnesium, potassium, and a certain right blend of calcium.”

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Capitalizing on the Japanese work culture that makes insomniacs of employees,  Coca Cola Japan has recently released a new beverage that the company claims can help people get a better night’s sleep. Aptly named ‘Glaceau Sleep Water’, the drink is perfect for those who have trouble nodding off every night and are desperate to experience deep, uninterrupted sleep.

Sleep Water is apparently enriched with a special ingredient called L-Theanine, an amino acid that is believed to decrease anxiety and stress while improving relaxation. Theoretically, this should result in better quality sleep, so it should work even for people who don’t have time for a full eight hours of slumber. The company claims that only a few hours of Sleep Water-induced rest are more than enough to feel rejuvenated the next morning.

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Inspired by a brewery in Oregon that used yeast harvested from a man’s beard, an Australian company is launching its own bizarre brew made using the navel fluff of employees. 7 Cent Brewery, in Gisborne South, Victoria is all set to reveal their unique beer at the 2016 Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular (GABS) festival this month.

“We are really interested to see if the idea of drinking something that originated from a brewer’s belly button is too much for even the most hardened beer geek,” the company’s blog states. “Some say why? We say why not?”

To isolate the yeast strain, co-founders Doug Bremner, Brendan Baker, and Matthew Boustead swabbed their own belly buttons and streaked the collected samples out on agar plates. They allowed the plates to incubate and then “found all sorts of interesting things growing, including what appeared to be colonies of yeast.” Bremner said that the yeast strains were tested to ensure they were sterile. So the beverage might sound disgusting, but is completely safe to consume.

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Getting a cold drink might seem like the perfect way to relax after a long, hot summer day, but for most Chinese the opposite is true. They routinely consume hot beverages with their meals and all through the day irrespective of the weather. So don’t be surprised if on a balmy day, you see a Chinese person sipping hot water from a thermos!

While the western world might find this bizarre, the Chinese actually think that the Western habit of chugging ice-cold water is very strange. The idea of consuming anything at room temperature or below is, according to them, bad for your health. “In the big family I was brought up in, no one would dare to pour even room temperature water,” journalist Nicole Liu writes for the LA Times. “Doing so would risk a chorus of criticism, with parents, aunts, cousins, and grandparents chastising you almost simultaneously: ‘Cold water gives you cramps!’”

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The Oxbow Brewery in Newcastle, Maine, has come up with a brand new brew that combines two of the state’s summertime favorites – beer and lobster. The offbeat lager, called ‘Saison dell’Aragosta’, is made by cooking live lobsters in unfermented beer.

‘Aragosta’ is Italian for lobster or crayfish. The name was chosen to honor Giovanni Campari, the brewmaster of one of Italy’s finest breweries, Birrificio del Ducato. According to Tim Adams, co-owner of Oxbow, Giovanni travelled all the way to Maine last summer to work with him. The duo initially wanted to brew an “esoteric German beer that was low in alcohol and used wheat along with barley.” They wanted a tart and acidic flavor profile, with salt playing an important role. But the evening before they set to work on the new brew, they happened to eat lobster rolls for dinner. That, instead, proved to be their inspiration.

“Giovanni turns to me and says, ‘We gotta put some lobster in the beer we’re brewing,’” Adams said. “I was slightly taken aback and hesitant, but I couldn’t say no to him. The guy traveled all the way from Parma to Maine.”

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Popular whisky brand Johnnie Walker has launched a bizarre new product that they claim will enhance the taste of your drink. ‘The Johnnie Walker Boldest Wax’ collection is a flavored mustache wax that when applied generously makes every sip of whisky taste better!

Priced at about £7.99 ($12) a pot, the hand-mixed waxes are made of 100 percent natural beeswax. They come in three flavors – Piperine Pepper, Citrus Essence, and Ginger Root – and are designed to complement the Johnnie Walker and ginger cocktail serve. They supposedly carry a scent that “lingers beneath the nostrils.”

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In a bid to cash in on the latest beauty trend of consuming collagen, Japanese company ‘Suntory Holdings Ltd’ has released a special brew of collagen-infused beer.

The trend has Japanese women believing that eating copious amounts of collagen – the structural protein of connective tissues – will lead to beautiful, younger-looking skin. The seemingly innocuous trend has caught on rapidly – stores are filled collagen-laced beauty products, and women are willing to gulp spoonfuls of powdered collagen mixed into protein shakes. They also flock to restaurants that serve foods naturally high in collagen – pig trotters, chicken skin and shark fin.

But the collagen-infused beer, called ‘Precious’, is a stroke of marketing genius – now women can get drunk and beautiful at the same time! Suntory announced the new product on April 7 – it is a light beer, containing 2 grams of collagen and 5% alcohol per can. Their tag declares: “Guys can tell if a girl is taking collagen or not.”

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