So… stop us if you’ve heard this one: A man walks into a hospital, complaining that he’s feeling dizzy and lethargic. The doctors give him a breath test, and he returns a reading of 0.037 – yet he says he hasn’t had a drop to drink.
That’s what happened recently in the US, and it had the medical staff positively baffled at the time. Not knowing what was up with the poor chap, the doctors isolated him and monitored him closely for 24 hours, periodically testing his blood alcohol levels. The readings dropped… went back up… dropped again… and then shot back through the roof.
Flummoxed, the doctors performed a simple test for infection – and found that the 61-year-old, who was an avid homebrewer, had a yeast infection in his gut. Specifically, it was Saccharomyces cerevisiae – better known as Brewer’s Yeast.
The levels of yeast in his gut were so high that he was, literally, brewing beer in his own intestines.
The medicos have labeled it “Auto-Brewery Syndrome” and while there have only been a handful of reported cases anywhere in the world, it sounds to us like this old fella might just be in the running for a prize as the most unique brewery on the planet.