OT: Best Bottle of Beer Ever
Brew Dog has been in a battle to retain their title for producing the world's strongest beer. They've reclaimed the title now with "The End of History" at a 55% ABV. The best part? The bottle:
Via OddNews
Update: Brewdog's official blog video
The End of History from BrewDog on Vimeo.
..Here comes PETA. I hope they have a sense of humor.
for something like this. Which really makes it all the more funny
I'd drink beer out of that.
Why would the People Eating Tasty Animals group mind this?
I may have to lower my six beer limit.
Did you mean to say sixteen beer limit?
My sixteen beer limit died soon after I left active military service. I just cannot keep up with the young guns anymore.
Copy that.
At what point does it stop being beer and start being whiskey?
When you run out of beer...
Whiskey then beer, the way is clear.
Beer then whiskey, the way is risky.
Someone tried to tell me, "beer before liquor, never been sicker."
I always thought it was, "beer before liquor, get drunker much quicker."
"Beer before whiskey before jello shots before tequila shots before beer before beer before gin and tonic before beer, and you're going to lose your pants and hit on some big dude's girlfriend."
Not as catchy, I know... but in my experience, pretty accurate.
...used: "Liquor before beer, never fear. Beer before liquor, never quicker."
Technically, never. Whiskey is fermented then distilled, whereas beer is only fermented. There are other differences (namely subtle nuances between styles of whisky and styles of beer), but that's the big distinction. There's also a reason why you usually don't see such high ABV beers: the yeast required to ferment the beer tend to die horribly in such alcoholic environments. To produce these, you need specially selected and bred bacteria - costly and rare.
These yeasts that continue to produce alcohol at 55% ABV are some real damn alcoholics.
Where can I get my hand on some of this stuff?
....I have images of me leaving a bottle on the coffee table and my dog snagging it.
It's not photoshopped.
http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article.php?id=341
They made 12 bottles selling for either 500 or 700 pounds (depending on the style) each. They sold out in less than a day.
The one in my hand....till its empty...
Updated it with the video. Love that they are still considering this as a battle with the German brewers who made the Bismark.
I really need to engineer a strain of yeast with increased expression of alcohol dehydrogenase in my lab to homebrew high content beers.
Dragon's Milk FTW!
Is 55% possible with barley? They must be pouring some pure fermentable sugar in with the barley and some really aggresive yeast. That's a 110 proof bottle of beer. I gotta try one of those!! Initial gravity 5.0 final gravity 1.0 !!! The most important part is, what's it taste like?
That yeast would probably be considered an invasive species if released into the wild.
If it tastes twice as bad as Sam Adams Millenium, then it will taste awful (even without hint of squirrel).
A beer like that you're probably going to want to age before drinking. Most high alcohol beers benefit from aging. For instance, I had a six pack of Bell's Third Coast Old Ale. I had one bottle, didn't care for it and left it at the back of the pantry for two years. When I found it again, it was fantastic.
Taste is entirely personal, though. I actually don't like to drink anything stronger than wine (with the exception of a glass of port every now and then). I suspect this beer, even with the appropriate amount of aging, is not going to appeal to me.
P.S. I used to homebrew, and the finest yeast I could get was from WYE yeast labs in AA. Are they still around? The yeast came in a little sealed packet, you just pop the yeast and a few hours later, it was ready to pitch. At one time, they carried supplies at Bell's brewery, in their tasting room. They ground the barley for you and the whole works. The brewmeister at the time gave me a recipe that was almost exactly the Bell's Double Cream Stout, awesome!
Yeah, you can get the yeast at Beer Depot. You can also try Midwest Brewing Supplies in Dearborn.
...or Adventures In Hombrewing in Taylor.
Not quite 55%, but at 9.5% Final Absolution by local brewer Dragonmead (Warren, Mi) is a damn good beer.
I was on the golf course and landed a tee shot in some trees, where a squirrel got interested in it. I got up there and the little punk was trying to make off with my ball! (It was kind of embedded, so he couldn't really lift it clear of the ground) He wasn't even afraid of me. I got up there, and he looked up at me, and I stood over him, and nothing. I started to address the ball, and nothing! He just stared at me. Fortunately, he moved before I made him go squishy with my 7 iron.
Fantastic. They came out with Tactical Nuclear Penguin last year with was 32%. You can get higher alcohol by freezing the beer then getting rid of the frozen water. Presto, higher alcohol concentration. Thats often why beer with "ice" in the name have a higher ABV. IIRC thats how brewdog does it.
distilling by freezing rather than boiling?
Yep. I'm curious, however, as to whether or not it's less harmful to the flavor profile. Introducing heat would drive off many of the volatile compounds - your esters and such. I'm sure that some of these compounds would also get removed with the frozen water, but perhaps a significant portion would remain in the liquid distillate.
Any professional brewers out there? I'm just basing this on my experience home brewing and the lab work I did in biochem.
Basically, I think thats the gist of it. I don't know a whole helluva lot about the distillation process (for whiskey, per say). As you can, imagine you can't boil off beer and collect it over and over again as you would for whiskey.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but when one is distilling a spirit, it basically goes through two or three different distillation processes. The first is collecting the vapor which is used as the spirit as is the second (where the spirit is put through different levels of cooling where the steam is still removed and used). The final stage is used to condense it.
For ice beer, basically, you lower the temperature to about freezing, or just shy of freezing, and remove the ice crystals. Bam. Higher concentrate.