Dogfish Head just keeps surprising.

You’ve heard of the brewery’s Theobroma…a beer based on the chemical analysis of pottery shards found in Honduras which revealed the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink. You’ve also heard of Midas Touch, a beer based on trace ingredients found in drinking vessels in the tomb of King Midas in Turkey. And you may have even tried Chateau Jiahu, the brewery’s attempt at recreating a 9,000 year old fermented beverage of rice, honey and fruit discovered in an archaeological dig in rural China. 

But I guarantee you’ve never tried anything like Dogfish Head Chicha, Sam Calagione’s latest mad science creation that takes an ancient Peruvian method of using the body’s natural enymes found in saliva to convert corn starch into fermentable sugar.

Yes, you heard me…they chew up the corn and spit it back into the brew.

The beer will be available exclusively at their brewpub in Delaware, so the odds of most of us trying it are extremely low. While some of their beers can be hit or miss (love their IPAs, but a couple others haven’t impressed as much), you gotta love Sam’s pioneering attitude and his knack for telling a good story through his beers. I think it’s a big part of what keeps people coming back for more.

Check out the video below, which documents the labor-intensive process, or read the New York Times’ article from yesterday’s paper.