Green Ant Gin is a unique gin made by an Adelaide distillery that is infused with green ants for an extra bit of citrus flavor and a hint of coriander.

Green ants have been a source of protein for Australia’s aborigines for thousands of years, and even though bugs are yet to catch on as food in the modern world, these little critters’s neon abdomens can still be used as a flavorful ingredient. Adelaide-based food company Something Wild came up with the idea of using the ants for their natural citrus flavor in a spirit that has won multiple awards since its launch in 2017. Created in collaboration with the Adelaide Hills Distillery, Green Ant Gin is made with Boobiala (a native species of juniper) as well as other botanicals like finger lime, strawberry gum, lemon myrtle, and pepper berry, but its secret ingredient is green ants, as evidenced by the handful of ants floating in every bottle.

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If you’re not into liquors, they probably all taste bad to you, but there’s a particular liquor that everyone agrees tastes horrible. It’s called malört and, over the years, it has been compared to battery acid, pesticide and gasoline.

Although Jeppson’s Malört is most often associated with the American city of Chicago, its true roots are in Sweden, where where “malört” is the word for wormwood, the key ingredient in this ghastly spirit. Wormwood is a notoriously bitter herb known for its ability to kill stomach worms and other parasites. The Swedes started infusing it in alcohol and using it as medicine for digestive problems in the 15th century, and it reached US shores with the first Swedish immigrants. The awful taste didn’t appeal to many, so it’s no wonder that malört faded into obscurity pretty much everywhere, except Chicago. For some reason, people here not only accepted its horrible aroma, they actually embraced it.

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Brooklyn-based startup Air Co. claims to have created the world’s first “carbon negative vodka” by capturing carbon dioxide captured from the air and using a solar powered machine to turn it into ethanol.

According to Air Co. co-founder Gregory Constantine, each bottle of carbon negative vodka sucks a pound of carbon dioxide from the air in its entire life cycle, or as much as eight full-grown trees. Unlike traditional vodka, which is made by fermenting starch-rich grains like wheat, or potatoes, in a process that can create around 13 pounds of greenhouse gases, Air Co. vodka is made only with water and carbon dioxide, and its production process actually removes carbon dioxide from the air.

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Tulips,  or flowers in general, are not exactly known as prime ingredients for strong spirits, but one small distillery in Holland (where else?) claims to have perfected a process that allows it to create a high quality vodka out of only two ingredients – tulip bulbs and water.

Dutch Tulip Vodka is the creation of 34-year-old Joris Putman, a filmmaker turned entrepreneur. Four years ago, he decided he was going to invent something, and although he didn’t know exactly what that something would be, he was sure it would involve his country’s national symbol, the tulip. Today, after years of hard work, countless experiments and trying to convince others that tulip vodka was actually a thing, Dutch Tulip Vodka is a big hit, and Michelin-star restaurants all over Europe are proud to have it on their menus.

All it took for Putman to come up with the idea of tulip vodka was a suggestion from his friends to make moonshine from grain. He wasn’t going to do something that others had been doing it for thousands of years, but the idea of making a strong spirit out of tulips sounded appealing.

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Kickstarter features the most awesome inventions! The latest one we’ve found is the ‘Whiskey Element’, a simple tool that claims to make cheap whiskey taste like fine expensive liquor in just 24 hours. “Customize your whiskey in 24 hours,” the product page reads. “It’s your whiskey, drink it the way you want.”

The product is the brainchild of a Portland-based company called Time & Oak. They argue that the best and most expensive whiskeys are made after they are aged in quality oak barrels. But if you can’t afford to buy the finest whiskeys, you can probably settle for their Whiskey Elements, which are nothing more than specially designed oak sticks.

By simply adding the stick to a bottle of cheap whiskey, they claim that you can replicate the taste of high quality liquor in no time at all. That’s because their ‘accelerated transpiration through capillary action’ can properly age cheap whiskey into a quality one by filtering impurities and infusing additional wood flavor in the spirit.

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