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The Race To Beer With 50% Alcohol By Volume
ElectricSteve writes "Most of the world's beer has between 4% and 6% alcohol by volume (ABV). The strength of beer achieved by traditional fermentation brewing methods has limits, but a well-crafted beer that is repeatedly 'freeze distilled' can achieve exquisite qualities and much higher alcohol concentrations. An escalation in the use of this relatively new methodology over the last 12 months has seen man's favorite beverage suddenly move into the 40+% ABV realm of spirits such as gin, rum, brandy, whiskey, and vodka, creating a new category of extreme beer. The world's strongest beer was 27% ABV, but amidst an informal contest to claim the title of the world's strongest beer, the top beer has jumped in strength dramatically. This week Gizmag spoke to the brewers at the center of the escalating competition. New contestants are gathering, and the race is now on to break 50% alcohol by volume."
After a hard days work, we know what high frequency traders drink...
If this tastes like crap, then no one will buy it... well, except for frat boys and the local street people.
We have had distilled beer in Scotland for years now. We call it, erm let me think ... oh yes, whisky!
America, Home of the Brave.
Beer at 50% ABV is called whisky.
This will make our Counterstrike drinking game MUCH more interesting.
Living With a Nerd
Is this really beer?
I find it hard to believe that this could be brewed naturally, i.e. using yeast to ferment the liquor. I find it hard to believe that a yeast can live in 50% alcohol, 27% was really pushing the limits.
I like beer. I like drinking beer. I like drinking a variety of beers. I don't like being falling down drunk. This race for higher alcohol content seems pointless and just limits the amount you can enjoy in one sitting.
Legal warning: IANAL, but I understand that freeze distillation is illegal in some jurisdictions.
Real beer is not in the "Distilled class". To high percentages of alcohol would kill the fermentation organisms. That is why alcoholic substances are distilled after the fermentation to obtain higher alcohol percentages.
Like beer, fermented grain is the basis for Whiskey. So, as others pointed out, "distilled beer" is not a wrong term for Whiskey.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
It's distilled ... you can make it as strong as you like, no magic needed.
No sig today...
One problem with freeze distillation is that it doesn't get rid of methanol. How are they getting around this problem?
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
From what I understand freeze distillation can be dangerous. Unlike evaporative distillation, freeze distillation concentrates a lot of unwanted impurities along with the ethyl alcohol.
As a brewer, distillation offends my sensibilities if you keep calling it beer.
+0 Meh
100 proof beer is like someone consolidating one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer into a single drink.
Has anyone here actually tried one of these >30% ABV beers? How was it?
The biggest problem with really strong beer is that it tastes like beer with spirit poured into it.
HTTP/1.1 400
I was already having trouble making it to the 9th inning without passing out.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I hope the US Govt. doesn't feel the need to ban such a beer from reaching the citizens. Limits on %'s that different alcohols can be sold at is just stupid in my book.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
I always thought distilled beer was called malt liquor. No?
It's just a novelty. Nothing wrong with that, but not my thing. Hell, I'd try it. But once you get past about 10% ABV you start to notice the alcohol more than the beer. I prefer ales in the 7-8% range, and after two of those I'll be satisfied. Beers like Sierra Nevada Torpedo, Stone Ruination, the entire line of Dogfish Head, or most anything from Belgium. Lagers or pilsners in the 5-6% range I'll drink three. Veltins is my top choice there.
Mankind has done a good job at getting sloshed since we crawled out of the primordial soup. Our techniques have produced palatable booze of all types...why would we need beer with such a high alcohol content?
Yeast limits the fermentation of sugars to alcohol. Once you get up around 17% to 20% ABV the yeast begin to die off. This is the natural limit of alcohol in beer. To distill the beer and increase the alcohol is to turn it into a distilled liquor and remove it from the realm of beer which is a fermented liquor.
Through selective breading or genetic manipulation of the yeast we may some day get a yeast that can produce more than the 17% to 20% but that is not the case today.
I found the article a bit misleading. If you distill it, it is a distilled liquor not a beer. This is like saying you made a beer from grapes, lol, it is not beer it is wine. lol
As if it needs to taste any worse. (Would you like a mixer for that beer?)
This coming, of course, from an already non-beer-fan. :)
R.Mo
"Relatively new" is a vague description, and so compared to the thousands of years in which we've been drinking alcohol, the hundreds of years that we've been freezing off water to increase the alcohol content is new. But the way it was described makes it sound like something discovered last year! Not so.
Damn! So much for that plan. I was going to my first AA meeting today.
proposed name: idleidle
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I thought Long Trail Double Bag was pretty stiff at 7.2%. I can't see why you would call this beer. That would be like calling brandy "extreme wine" - sure you could do that but why?
Instead of going through all this rigamarole with the freeze distilling and whatnot, wouldn't it be easier just to add more alcohol, like in fortified wines?
If I want strong beer I'll just stick to Westmalle Tripel (9.4%).
This is not the sig you're looking for.
I can just see it now, a guy is in a bar drinking his beer and smoking when suddenly... "Hey mister! Your beer's on fire!".
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
OK, so you distill wine, it becomes brandy. You distill beer - a beverage made by yeast-fermenting malt sugars fortified with hops (and without said hops, it's not beer, it's basically a barleywine) - and what to call it?
This sig no verb.
any beer over 12% starts to taste like scotch/bourbon. Its not much different than dropping a shot of whiskey into your beer. for the record they've been using ale yeast and heavier gravities to get beer up to 10 - 12 percent for a while without distillation. Of course the calories in those beers is insane.. like 400 cal beers but who needs to eat? LOL. Liquid Bread.
A long time ago, way back in history,
when all there was to drink was nothin but cups of tea.
Along came a man by the name of Charlie Mops,
and he invented a wonderful drink and he made it out of hops.
He must have been an admiral a sultan or a king,
and to his praises we shall always sing.
Look what he has done for us he's filled us up with cheer!
Lord bless Charlie Mops, the man who invented beer beer beer
tiddly beer beer beer.
The Curtis bar, the James' Pub, the Hole in the Wall as well
one thing you can be sure of, its Charlie's beer they sell
so all ye lads a lasses at eleven O'clock ye stop
for five short seconds, remember Charlie Mops 1 2 3 4 5
He must have been an admiral a sultan or a king,
and to his praises we shall always sing.
Look what he has done for us he's filled us up with cheer!
Lord bless Charlie Mops, the man who invented beer beer beer
tiddly beer beer beer.
A barrel of malt, a bushel of hops, you stir it around with a stick,
the kind of lubrication to make your engine tick.
40 pints of wallop a day will keep away the quacks.
Its only eight pence hapenny and one and six in tax, 1 2 3 4 5
He must have been an admiral a sultan or a king,
and to his praises we shall always sing.
Look what he has done for us he's filled us up with cheer!
Lord bless Charlie Mops, the man who invented beer beer beer
tiddly beer beer beer.
The Lord bless Charlie Mops!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
The ABV limit is regulated by the yeast's tolerance to alcohol. There are very few strains that could survive and exhibit anerobic respiration at 20%ABV. Even if they did, the bad ethers and esters produced would taste like crap. (or bitter apple, or banana, or cinnamon).
I suppose if you're comparing freeze distillation to beer in general, the technique is new. But applejack (freeze distilled hard apple cider) has been around since at least colonial times (in the US), which means the technique has probably been around quite a bit longer. Just because the author of TFA first heard of freeze distilling upon researching Bud Ice doesn't mean that's when the technique came to be.
Once you distill beer to achieve higher alcohol content, it's... not beer anymore. This is freaking ridiculous.
... not very much methanol is actually produced in the process of fermentation. Typically, methanol formation requires the presence of pectin, which wouldn't normally be found in wort, and even then, very little is formed. A bigger issue is the formation of fusel alcohols, which are removed in the process of heat distilling, but remain with the distillate in freeze distilling. These higher order alcohols can produce off flavors in the product, and some believe them to be contributors to hangover symptoms, although some studies dispute this.
Methanol in Prohibition-era hootch was present as an adulterant - in other words, it was deliberately added to bathtub gin because it was cheap, and the producers didn't particularly care about their customers' health. Much like melamine was added to various Chinese products to make them appear more protein-rich.
It's just made more strongly than normal beer, but it isn't distilled. As such, about the highest alcohol concentration you can achieve is around 12-15%.
Was that Sam Adams Utopia? I think that is something like $200 USD a bottle...the Dom Perignon of beer.
You can't get to 50% ABV using freeze distiallation. The azeotrope for ice-ethanol is near 40%. The sugar content of the brew affects this number as well, but you can't push it to 50%. Once you hit the fractional azeotrope, you're stuck.
Unless they're adding some sort of benzene molecule to furthur refine the ethanol, you can't get it to freeze any farther. And I sincerely hope one one thinks it's a good idea to but benzene or petrolium products into a beer.
From the title I thought someone had made a yeast that could survive in 50% alcohol. It'd make making homemade fuel a bit easier.
Nope, someone just invented liquor again. I guess that's good...
I got 2 bottles of Tactical Nuclear Penguin for Christmas. Let me just say that I would definitely call this beer, though you drink it like liquor.
It tastes like beer, its carbonated slightly and it is oh so fucking delicious. It has an unexpected potency to it.
I still have one bottle left that I'm going to let age for a while.
It might not taste like crap, though. I've had some damn tasty eisbock (Kulmbacher's) that was made by a less-extreme version of what they're talking about. It's not that I want a 50% ABV beer, but don't write it off immediately.
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Actually, it shouldn't really be a problem at all.
Methanol is a problem when you _only_ have methanol in your system, or at least more methanol than ethanol. The enzyme alcohol-dehydrogenase transforms it into formic acid which is poison to the mitochondria.
When ethanol is present too, though, that enzyme has a higher affinity to the ethanol than methanol. Given enough ethanol in the system, only trace quantities of methanol will be processed to something toxic, and the rest will go out via the kidneys and smaller quantities out the lungs.
So basically if you suspect you've ingested a small quantity of methanol, the best antidote you can get is to wash it down with a pint of vodka.
Which is to say that this beer probably has enough antidote in it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
the local street people
Goodbye $2 bottle of Mad Dog, hello $35 bottle of elite one-of-a-kind ale.
Of course they will need to throw away the brown bag and acquire a proper pint glass or white wine snifter.
Hey, maybe you weren't into it. I can understand. It's hot outside and I want my beer relatively light.. right now.
But the thing about beer is that higher alcohol tends to result in more flavor. Not counting freeze distillation (the topic here), or tasteless adjuncts (e.g. rice syrup), the way to pump up a beer's alcohol is to add more malt. That means more malt flavor, and sometimes malt flavor can be damn damn good. Try some doppelbocks or English barleywines.
Then it gets more complex, because if you wanna offset the malt sweetness, you have to hop it more, so again: more flavors. Try some American barleywines.
I know; it's June, so if you're in the northern hemisphere, maybe this isn't appealing right now. But if you're a beer geek you're gonna be beggin' for it in 5 months.
Sometimes the brewer wants more flavor, and increased alcohol is just the side-effect. And sometimes increased alcohol is good too. But this is a totally different thing than hard booze, and hard booze just can't compete with it. You're gonna have all kinds of people wanting to try this stuff who wouldn't touch vodka. That said, I think a 50% ABV beer is ridiculous. But c'mon, these are geek brewers. There are all kinds of limits they're probably pushing, and ABV is just one of them. If you think extreme brewing is just for fratboys, then blame the media for only presenting the fratboy dimension of it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
See/hear Tom Smith's "307 Ale"
or hear him at
"A bheer brewed in a tesseract..."
mark
The record for the world's most powerful beer goggles has been broken.
Now, genetic engineering of a yeast that can tolerate higher alcohol concentration without producing a lot of congeners - that would be something worth doing.
Its not a 'new' idea. 25 years ago, (when I was a poor college student), I and a couple of buddies had a desire for cheep ethyl alcohol (ethynol). We fermented yeast and fruit, and made (quite copious) amounts (I remember at one point having bottled more than 30 cases). Some of it was really smooth. It had a nice clean taste and had a clear to slightly pink color, but BANG! all of a sudden the room is slightly off center. Good stuff (usually about 18% which is where the yeast would die off). We didn't experiment with heating (distilling) it, but we did experiment with freezing it. Get a metal pot, pour the alcohol in, put it in the deep freeze and lower the temperature. 2 hours later, pour into a second pot. Ice will freeze on the metal pot, alcohol will remain a liquid. We didn't trust that we were freezing just water, so we would melt the ice and drink it too (very slight amount of alcohol) and after repeating the process 2 or 3 times, we would (by using our calibrated hydrometer to measure the specific gravity), determine that the alcohol content was about 36%. We found that that was a good place to stop. It still had great taste, but you had to go a bit easier on it. Still if someone were celebrating graduation, we could pull it out and use it for toasts, and it was really good. As I say, that was 25 years ago, and not a new idea.
I only had two beers.
This has already been done. With fermentation and old-school (no tech) technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awamori
This is normally 40-50 proof, but one variety, Hanazake, is 120 proof.
It's not normally exported outside of Japan, so almost nobody knows of it.
Using the same techniques, they should easily be able to get 100 proof beer. But it's not like this is something that hasn't been done before.
There does appear to be a "Weapons grade lager"...
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
You know what's really interesting? Because capsaicin is freely soluble in alcohol, one of the "best" ways to get rid of a mouth full of hot is to rinse with pure ethyl alcohol.
I put "best" in quotations because I'd rather have a mouthful of habanero than a mouthful of everclear.
So the question is, this crazy-hot schnapps you mention: does the burn stay around a shorter period of time? If the capsaicin is soluble in alcohol, does that reduce it's ability to bind to the right receptors on your tongue?
Just food (or drink) for thought...
With the first link, the chain is forged.
...Helping ugly people have sex? Does it do any better at fostering reproductive urges in the less-than-photogenic than your average brew? Inquiring minds want to know!
6% or 7% IPAs are good.
I also like the La Fin Du Monde at 9%, and Maudite at 8%... Both come in a cool bottle with a cork. Not sure if they are available in the US....
Anything above that sounds silly, as I can't imagine it tasting good. I brew beer at home, and never bother checking the alcohol level - I brew for taste, not ability to cause inebriation.
The Germans have been doing that for a few centuries - look up "Eisbock" on Wikipedia. It can reach 40% ABV, but those I know who've tasted it tell me it's pretty disgusting.
I always thought if the beer was over 19% it wasn't classified as a beer but rather a wine or spirits?
Have they figured out how to make it taste good?
Yes, yes, I know the controversy over freeze production "beers" but the 27% they're referring to is Sam Adams Utopias, which releases only 10,000 bottles in a production run. I was fortunate enough to sample some last night. However, this is not the highest percentage alcohol beer by conventional standards of what constitutes beer (malt, hops, water, yeast). That honor would go to Scottish brewery known as BrewDog for their 41% "Sink the Bismarck", ousting their 32% ABV Tactical Nuclear Penguin.
WHO FUCKING CARES
One article in idle about beer and suddenly Idle is the coolest place in town.
:)
Not a single Idle is pants post in sight !
You're all drunken hypocrites
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Lily Tomlin
Did you try an Augie? :)
Mmmmm Augustiner... (my fave beer anywhere)
Don't like the 'fest beers too much, although you soon get back into the spirit of them after a couple of days
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