Beer Arms Race Gets Even Dumber
You may have noticed our coverage of the global ABV war that is pitting brewer against brewer in the quest to produce the holy grail of the beer business: the world's strongest brew. Alcohol content has little to do with a beer's quality, but hey, just as some guys need red convertibles to compensate for their, um, inadequacies, some brewers need a ridiculously large ABV in their beers. The latest entrant into this silliest of arms races is the Dutch brewery Brouwerij en Distilleerderij, makers of Obilix, a 45-ABV beer that promises to taste like... alcohol. How could it not?
3:36 pm
It does seem a bit bass ackwards. i wonder if BrewDog will have a snarky response to this one as well....
4:26 pm
So where do you draw the line? Some older laws concerning eisbocks said that after a .1% increase in abv(from freezing) it is no longer a beer. Do we use that definition (effectively removing the eisbock category altogether)? Tactical Nuclear Penguin supposedly still smelled a bit like beer, but it tasted like crap. And then whats the next step? What about beers that absorb some alcohol from the barrels they were aged in? Or how about beers that use cane sugar (or other non-barley sugars) to increase their abv? I agree its gone too far, but where is the line?
I personally think highly attenuative yeast seems natural compared to distilling, and all that other nonsense. But I'm curious where other people think it stops being a beer and is a spirit made from beer products?
5:58 pm
To me, this is like spending your life on a quest for the perfect grilled cheese sandwich.
Even if you win, all you've got is a grilled cheese sandwich.
This just doesn't have anything to do with drinking beer, because it's about the manufacture of undrinkable beer.
12:12 pm
MTD, I sense a degree of prejudice on your part.
If you find the "perfect" martini or Manhattan, it's still "just" a mixed drink, right? If you find the "perfect" wine, it's still just a wine... The "perfect" single-malt Scotch or bourbon is still just glorified moonshine, right? If you find the perfect sushi, it's still "just" fish and rice, right?
For the record, I completely agree with the whole "strength wars" stuff right now as being the equivalent of a stupid comparison-of-naughty-bits contest and publicity gimmick. But having sampled at least one of these "extreme" beers, the comparison is less that of a "beer" than it is to a carefully-crafted mixed drink, and there are no shortages of either "mixologists" or people eager to sample their wares.