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Food

WATCH: Genius Dude Converts Car Windshield Wipers into Kombucha Fountain

"I regret everything. Everything's sticky. I don't even think I can get the smell out if I clean it."
WATCH: Genius Dude Converts Car Windshield Wipers into Kombucha Fountain
Screenshot via YouTube

“I know we don’t really get serious on this channel,” Daniel Tillotson says at the beginning of his latest YouTube video. “But don’t ever fucking try this at home.”

We’re not inclined to, not after watching the wet, sticky, soap-flavored aftermath of his self-described “Vegan Car Mod.” In the video, Tillotson drained his windshield wiper fluid, replaced it with raspberry-pomegranate kombucha, and extended the existing plastic hose so that his Subaru could dispense the ‘buch directly into his open mouth.

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Why would someone do this? “I've been asking myself that ever since I posted it. I don't even have an answer for you,” he said during an appearance on CBC Radio’s “As It Happens” program.

The Cochrane, Alberta man told host Laura Lynch that he spent about 30 minutes emptying and cleaning the windshield wiper reservoir in his 2006 Subaru Impreza WRX, before deciding that it was probably safe-ish to drink whatever beverage squirted out of it. And, because he wanted to keep it vegan, the beverage he chose was a bottle of what he described as “gas station” kombucha.

“I actually haven't tried [kombucha] before,” he told Lynch. “I bought it specifically for this video and the first time I tried it I took a little sip before I put it in and thought ‘Oh, I probably could have picked a better drink for this.’”

For a full day, he drove around, pressing the wiper fluid button and being, uh, rewarded with a mouthful of kombucha. “I sure wish there was a vegan alternative to the poison that’s in my windshield washer fluid,” he said before mashing the button. “Wow, is that raspberry pomegranate?”

Despite the fact that he said his car still has a lingering smell of fermented tea, is seems to have been worth the mess: with more than 98,000 views, it has become one of the most popular videos on his YouTube channel. (And he might want to update the one about selling his car to, you know, reflect the current state of the upholstery).

“[T]here's some content where I will spend weeks filming it and editing it and putting my heart and soul into it and it just doesn't take, no one cares about it,” he said. “It's always just the dumb stuff that people just latch on to—and now here we are.”

Here we are, indeed.