Would You Try This Belly Button Beer?

The interesting thing about beer isn't how great it is, how delicious it tastes, how much variety there is within the world of brewing. It's how simple it is.

Fundamentally, beer is malts, hops, yeast, and water. Of course, there's plenty more that can go into it (not sure where the magic is added along the way), but at its core, that's beer.

And that can lead to some interesting and innovative ideas. I mean, yeast can grow anywhere. A lot of beers, especially now that sour ales are popular, are brewed with wild yeast, allowing whatever happens in nature to dictate the fermentation and flavor of the beer.

But yeast can also grow... on you. As evidenced by Rogue's Beard Beer, yeast from the human body can be used to make beer. Which is why this one is interesting, if not entirely disgusting: Belly Button Beer from 7 Cent Brewing in Australia. Here's the beer in their words:

Perhaps the first beer in the world fermented from yeast captured from the brewer’s belly button fluff; there will be a little bit of 7 cent in every glass.

Some say why? We say why not?

The process of isolating our own yeast strain involved swabbing samples of each of the brewer’s belly buttons and getting our full science on by streaking out the samples on agar plates.  After allowing the plates to incubate, we found all sorts of interesting things growing, including what appeared to be colonies of yeast.  Positive controls were used to help us identify yeast colonies and negative controls were used to ensure our techniques were sterile.  We selected individual yeast colonies and grew them up until we had pitchable quantities for trial batches.

The beer, which is a Witbier in style, will be launched at the 2016 Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular this month.