The ABV Atlas

There is the Kraken, the terrifying sea monster of Scandinavian sailors’ tales, believed to rise from the depths, wrap its tentacles around entire ships and drag them beneath the dark water. It is the perfect guardian of the 17.0–17.9% range: beers at this strength can conceal their force beneath layers of sweetness, malt and barrel character before pulling the unwary drinker down. Everything in this band belongs in a small glass, tasted slowly and treated with respect.

The abyss of the strength wars

This range lies unmistakably within extreme-beer territory – a place of enormous gravity, long fermentation, spirit barrels and experiments designed to test the limits of brewing. Its inhabitants include barrel-aged imperial stouts, powerful New World barley wines matured in brandy or whisky casks and immense Belgian-style dark ales. They are generally produced as expensive, limited releases, intended for sharing and drinking in small measures rather than by the pint.

The best examples logged here are not merely impressive because of their strength. They earn scores in the nineties through dark fruit, molasses, oak, coffee, chocolate and spirit character held together with surprising balance. At seventeen percent, alcohol can easily overwhelm everything around it; the achievement lies in making it part of the beer rather than its entire identity.

A classic cautionary tale

Yet the deep contains wrecks as well as treasure, and this band holds one of the most famous cautionary tales in American craft-beer history: Samuel Adams Triple Bock. First released in 1994 in its distinctive cobalt-blue bottle, with further editions following in 1995 and 1997, it was one of the formative modern attempts to create a beer of extraordinary natural strength. Its use of an enormous malt bill, maple syrup, unusual fermentation and barrel maturation helped establish the path that eventually led Boston Beer towards Millennium and Utopias.

Triple Bock also acquired an infamous reputation as surviving bottles aged, with many drinkers comparing its deeply oxidised, intensely savoury character to soy sauce. That reputation should not be taken as a universal description of every bottle – storage, vintage and decades of ageing produce considerable variation – but it has become inseparable from the beer’s legend. Its low Hop Horizons score records one encounter with a historic and extraordinarily divisive experiment, rather than a final judgement on every bottle ever released.

The land of strange things

The styles here refuse to behave themselves. Alongside the stouts, barley wines and Belgian-style ales sits a mead, while Wobblegate’s appropriately named What the Hell is Pommeau? reaches the band by an entirely different route. Pommeau is not ordinary cider: it is an apple mistelle or fortified apple drink, traditionally made by blending apple juice or must with apple brandy and ageing the mixture in wood. Its presence shows that the collection is already brushing against the boundary between fermented drinks, fortified drinks and spirits.

This is part of the fascination of the deep end. A low score may belong to a failed experiment, a highly unusual style or simply a drink that no longer resembles what the person tasting it expected beer to be. At this altitude, the style and the story matter alongside the number.

Landmarks beyond the collection

Hop Horizons already contains nine drinks in this band, so this is not intended as another catalogue. These six unlogged releases earn their place through historical importance, unusual technique or their representation of a different route to seventeen percent. Because several are vintage-specific, the stated ABV applies only to the edition named.

Below is whatever Hop Horizons has actually logged in the 17.0–17.9% range, ranked and broken down strength by strength.