This Brewing Festival Will Use Your Urine To Make Beer

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Don’t run just yet — we promise it’s not as bad as it seems. This urine brewing festival is making a new purpose of your bathroom trips, and it’s extremely environmentally friendly.

Travel and Leisure reports that more than 50,000 liters of urine from last year’s Roskilde music festival were used to brew Pilsner for this year’s harvest, specifically for Nørrebro Bryghus, a Dutch restaurant and brewery.

How exactly was the urine utilized, you wonder? We’ll start by answering your major question: No, there is no actual urine in the Pilsner beer.

The festival recycled the urine collected throughout the weekend — the Danish Agriculture and Food Council calls this process “beercycling” — and used it as fertilizer for barley, the main ingredient in a classic Pilsner.

Why does it work? Urine is rich in nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, which are all necessary nutrients for a plant’s health, and it doesn’t contain the same health risks as feces (which can pass on diseases like salmonella).

If we were asked to try the beer, we wouldn’t necessarily say no. Besides, we’re all for saving the environment, one beer at a time.