A Danish brewery is drawing on 50,000 liters of urine collected from the largest music festival in Northern Europe in producing a novelty beer aimed at the more adventurous drinker.
The beer named “Pisner” – a word-play combining pilsner with local slang for urine – contains no human waste, but is produced from fields of malting barley fertilized with human urine rather than traditional animal manure or factory-made plant nutrients.
The Pisner Beer is being labeled at Norrebro Bryghus in Hedehusene, Denmark, May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Julie Astrid Thomsen
The Pisner beer is stored in a container marked with a sign at Norrebro Bryghus in Hedehusene, Denmark, May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Julie Astrid Thomsen
Visitors taste Pisner beer at the Norrebro Bryghus in Hedehusene, Denmark, May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Julie Astrid Thomsen
“When the news that we had started brewing the Pisner came out, a lot of people thought we were filtering the urine to put it directly in the beer and we had a good laugh about that.” – Henrik Vang, Chief Executive of brewer Norrebro Bryghus.
Using human waste as fertilizer on such a scale is a novelty, said Denmark’s Agriculture and Food Council, which came up with the idea for what could be the ultimate sustainable hipster beer and has already named the concept “beercycling.”
“If it had tasted even a bit like urine, I would put it down, but you don’t even notice,” said Anders Sjögren, who attended Roskilde Music Festival in 2015.
The 50,000 liters collected from that festival resulted in enough malting barley to brew around 60,000 bottles of Pisner beer.
This year, Gucci Mane, The Weeknd, Tinashe, A Tribe Called Quest and others will hit the Roskilde Music Festival.
Drink up.
(Reporting by Julie Astrid Thomsen for Reuters; editing by Terje Solsvik and Ralph Boulton)