If you're like me, you always throw a little Pabst Blue Ribbon on meat. Some people use whiskey in their marinade.

At the Templeton Rye Distillery in Templeton, Iowa they are cutting out the middleman - they are trying to create pork that already tastes like whiskey. 

Anti-science hippies don't need to start throwing FrankenPig hysteria around, they are not genetically modifying swine using an evil whiskey genome, the Templeton Rye Pork Project consists of 25 purebred Duroc pigs that are being fed dry distillery grain. 

Templeton Rye Distillery co-founder Keith Kerkhoff says it isn't just about science, it's about perhaps creating a demand. “The whole aspect of giving back to your community, giving back to your state and producing something that creates jobs. It’s all about economic development,” he told Angie Sharp at WQAD. He has a point. No one toasted bread before electricity came along, it was dumb to bake bread and then roast it again. But once electric companies had electricity generated all of the time, they needed to sell it, so they started building stuff like toasters to use it.

So Templeton may be onto something. They have leftover grain and Iowa has pigs.


Keith Kerkhoff. Credit: WQAD.

How will they taste? I guess we'll know in June when the pigs are ready to be transformed into delicious food. You can try and request one, but I bet the waiting list is pretty long.

If you don't want to try and buy one, Templeton plans to hold a tasting in Des Moines for members of the Templeton Rye Bootleggers Society.

If this works, maybe the Punch Bros. can update their song:



H/T Pour Me Coffee