A US New Hampshire craft distillery, famed for doing things a bit differently, is using invasive green crabs to flavour its latest creation, reports AP News.

In the past, Tamworth Distilling has made whiskey with the secretion from beavers’ castor sacs, turkey, and durian.

Despite a pound of crabs being used for each bottle of whiskye, the distillery claims that the flavour of the crab does not come through but instead, it tastes like “the sea breeze on a warm day down by the coast”.

According to Tamworth Distilling, the whiskey has hints of maple and vanilla oak and finishes with heavier notes of clove, cinnamon, and allspice.

Green crabs came on ships from Europe in the mid-1800s and landed on Cape Cod. Throughout much of the USA’s east coast the saucer-sized crustaceans have decimated marine ecosystems.

If they are caught when moulting they can be fried whole and eaten like a famous softshell blue crab. Unfortunately, it is a bit of a crap shoot catching them at this stage since they do not seem to moult all together or during a specific season. By using the crabs for whiskey, it’s a way of using hard shell crabs instead of dumping them in a landfill.

Photo: Tamworth Distillery