Strongest beer sold in real animals!

The End of History?

Master self-publicists Brewdog, a small Scottish brewery which specialises in shocks and creating moral panic, have brewed a new strongest beer in the world: it's called The End Of History, is 55% and costs £500 a bottle - only 12 bottles have been produced.  I have written before about their previous strongest beers, but this time the shock tactic is not just the strength, but the fact that the bottles are encased in stuffed animal coatings: seven dead stoats, four squirrels and one hare. You can read Brewdog's reasoning behind this beer on their website.

The beer itself has been described as a blond Belgian ale with touches of nettles and juniper berries (one of the key ingredients of gin) and in order to achieve the strength, it was created using extreme freezing techniques. 

Predictably, there have been reactions on two fronts. Firstly, the standard knee jerk reaction from the anti-alcohol campaigners, who completely miss the point that your average alcoholic isn't going to spend £500 on a bottle of beer, even if he had that kind of money to spare.

But also from an animal welfare point of view: on a good causes website I sometimes look at, someone wrote an item about this beer which has elicited 482 comments so far (far more than for more serious topics, so clearly little furry animals can cause you to lose your perspective). Many of the comments condemned the animal cruelty they assumed was involved, even though it was made clear that the animals were already dead, so no cruelty could have occurred. I commented twice that it's a publicity stunt, which has worked as they’ve all now heard of Brewdog, when they hadn’t before – but my words were swept away by a flood of horrified overreaction.

Funnily enough, the more pertinent question of bad taste never arose.

Even stronger strongest beer in the world!

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the German-brewed 40% Schorschbock had been proclaimed as the strongest beer in the world. It seems that Brewdog, the previous holder of this pointless record, has responded with a 41% abv quadruple IPA called Sink the Bismarck!, priced at £40 for a 330ml bottle.  You can only buy it from the brewer’s website. Brewdog suggest that such beer should be enjoyed responsibly like a nice dram or a glass of fine wine: "A beer like Sink the Bismarck! should be enjoyed in spirit sized measures."

Some people have found the name of this beer offensive, objecting to jokes about the wartime sinking of the Bismarck with the loss of 1995 men (which itself had previously sunk the HMS Hood with the loss of 1418 men). But Brewdog loves controversy and I've no doubt this choice of name was deliberate, especially as they were reclaiming the record from a German brewery. My view is that this name demonstrates the same mentality as football fans who make Hitler salutes to German football teams. Surely it's about time we British stopped being so WW2-fixated?

At this price, the beer is considerably dearer than a fine malt whisky; if I wanted a drink of such strength, I know what I'd prefer to spend my cash on.

Reassuringly strong?

Expect howls of outrage from the anti-alcohol campaigners when they hear about Schorschbock, a lager from the German craft brewer Schorschbräu. At 40%, it’s as strong as Scotch and probably not for swilling, not unless you like quick sessions. It’s apparently fermented by “a rarely-used method for producing ice bock, supplemented by extended cold-lagering for a minimum of six months.” Well, I’m sure that all means something to someone.  This brew, described as "whisky-like," has gone on sale in Scotland where it sells for £10 a glass.

I tend to view the arms race of ever stronger beers to be rather like the urge of some countries to construct the tallest building in the world ~ intriguing, but ultimately pointless. Last November, Scottish brewery BrewDog caused a furore among the alco-puritans with a beer called Tactical Nuclear Penguin, which at 32% was at that time claimed to be the strongest beer ever made; it costs £35 a bottle. This is where the campaigners show they haven’t a clue: problem drinkers will never spend that much on a bottle of beer when they can get a bottle of own brand spirits for under £7, so there's really no need to get all hot under the collar about it. Out of sheer curosity I’d be interested to taste these beers, but not at such prices.

Speaking of alco-puritans, Alcohol Focus Scotland has another of its alcohol-related polls on its home page, and this one asks whether alcoholic drinks should show the calorie content on the packaging. Like most of its polls, it’s getting a response it doesn’t want with 64% of respondents currently voting "no". Oddly enough, they don’t show the results of previous polls on their website, no doubt for reasons of space.