I don’t drink at all, ever, so all of the various mentions of various types of alcohol and their taste is entirely vague theory to me. But I was just thinking of all the different things used as bases for famous types of alcohol like rice, barley, potatoes, and grapes, and others that are less mainstream but apparently real like watermelon, strawberry, and dandelion. It made me wonder, if I wanted to start selling a type of alcohol that has never been commercially produced before, how hard would it be for me to find something unique that also would produce something people would be willing to pay for. Anyone do kiwi (the fruit, not the bird) or starfruit? Bananas? Carrots? How weird would I have to go to reach uncharted territory?
Probably pretty weird, I suspect. Given at least 13,000 years of humans knowing how to make alcohol (and a similar number of years of interest in consuming alcohol), I strongly suspect that nearly anything which can be fermented into booze has been attempted at some point.
A lot of stuff contains sugar, or you can add it. Seems to me the main problem is to produce something palatable, and that does not make consumers go blind.
Even simple fruit-flavored liquor— I don’t recall seeing any carambola booze ready-made and for sale in the supermarket, not sure why. And that is not “weird” at all. I mean, good luck buying fermented horse milk in the West, even though that is a completely well-known product. It’s going to be all about marketing.
Avocados are fruit. It’s there avocado wine?
Yes.
One that I realized recently that I’d never heard of was booze made from maple sap. But I went looking, and sure enough, maple wine is a thing.
That’s awesome. Of course, now I feel compelled to buy some.
Sounds like mead. This is a dangerous thread.
When I used to make home made wine I remember reading that you could make wine from pretty much any fruit or vegetable juice with the exception of tomatoes. But I’ve just googled it and there are tomato wines on the market now.
Create a new hybrid fruit and you can be the first to make a potable version.
I see some other things as well, but I’m not sure how many of them (including the above links) are wine/liquor with startfruit added vs the alcohol coming from the starfruit itself.
And some research on it, for some reason:
This is the answer. Anything that can be fermented has been fermented, if the fermentable thing has been around for a while. But if you create a brand new things that can be fermented, you can be the first to do so.
It’s not even just that people like to make booze. Most fruits will ferment on their own. Fermented grapes, mulberries, etc. almost certainly were discovered, not invented.
A guy went on Shark Tank once trying to sell them on booze he’d made from birch sap. Everyone on the panel was horrified by the taste, and O’Leary started howling “I’m blind! I’m blind!”
Incredibly, though, it’s a thing to this day. People sell birch beer and birch wine.
I thought maybe mushroom wine might not have been a thing. I was wrong.
Yeah, at this point, pretty much everything edible in the vegetable kingdom (and apparently also fungi) has been made into wine.
What about wine made from meat? What about vodka distilled from mash made from plant material that is not food - that is, stuff that’s toxic to humans like Yew foliage or Manchineel? In some cases, that might still be unsafe if the toxic components are volatile and might carry over in the distillation, but in a lot of cases it would be OK. I’m not volunteering to test it.
Not to mention the fact that alcohol can be made from milk: kumis is made from mare’s milk, and kefir is made from milk from cows, goats, or sheep.
The key seems to be that, to wind up with alcohol, you need to have a certain level of some sort of sugar in the source item; it’s probably harder to get at that when the source is meat.
Milk Stouts are pretty popular as well. OTOH, it’s my understanding that lactose is added because it survives the fermentation process, so maybe that doesn’t count since the alcohol would be coming from a different sugar.
Nice, old, local guy just died. He had made wine out of whey. Like watery milk or cheese, whey.
Yeah, the whole point behind the lactose in milk/cream stouts is it contributes sweetness (and body) as it does not ferment with typical brewing yeasts.
I wonder if you could put, say, a pig on a high-sugar diet and raise its blood sugar to a level where said blood would be fermentable.
Not that I would advocate such a thing, and I’m not sure diabetic pork blood wine would sell except maybe to hardcore Trekkies, but it’s an interesting thought experiment.
Wait, I’ve got it! Find an ancient seed inside of a geode, cultivate it, and sell Ancient Fruit wine! I’m reliably informed that that sells for a very high price.