Today’s weird yeast strain: Chair yeast from the guy who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Roald Dahl is a childhood treasure. James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and the Fantastic Mr Fox are just a few of his better known classics. Deservedly, there’s a Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in the village of Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, England, where the famous scribe lived for some 36 years. In that museum, there is chair in which Dahl presumably sat and wrote (we’re imagining) about oompa loompas, gigantic magical fruit and mischievous, anthropomorphic foxes.

Well, yeast found on that very chair (and other items owned by Dahl like a blanket and some pencils) will be used to make a beer and celebrate the author’s centenary year (he, unfortunately, passed in 1990). It’s also being used to promote a dinner theater show. From WalesOnline:

40ft Brewery, which is based in a large shipping container near Hackney, came up with bizarre idea — dubbed Mr Twit’s Odious Ale — to accompany a “gloriously gruesome interactive theatrical dining experience” being staged in honour of the Cardiff-born children’s author underneath Waterloo station between September 4 and October 30.

We do like the idea of drinking someone’s essence in a beer (even if it’s butt essence). The brew coincides with Dahl celebrations, happening all over England, to commemorate the 100 years since his birth. The beer itself is an homage to Dahl’s The Twits, a weirdly awesome tale of Mr. and Mrs. Twit (“the smelliest, nastiest, ugliest people in the world”) who hate everything except playing cruel jokes on each other. They also have caged monkeys. Apparently, the CBB offices are an homage to this book as well. Back to WalesOnline:

“Because it’s in honour of The Twits we knew we couldn’t just do some tasteless lager, so it will have a smoky vibe and tons of character.”

Culinary eccentrics Sam Bompas and Harry Parr, whose Dinner At The Twits event the beer accompanies, will also be treating their guests to a live wormery to mirror the ‘spaghetti’ supper favoured by Mr Twit in Dahl’s 1980 book, along with a bird pie with feet and claws sticking out of the crust and fruit vodka with a scented helium balloon chaser.

Now that sounds like a party.