The ABV Atlas

Behemoth is the ancient terrestrial beast from scripture and lore – a being of such tremendous bulk that the whole earth shakes under its feet, immovable, unstoppable, on a scale not seen among any ordinary beasts. The Behemoth is the perfect protector for the 18.0-18.9% bracket, since the main characteristic of beers from this range is their sheer massiveness. These are huge beverages: thick, dense, slow pouring, containing a tremendous alcohol mass which could never be achieved only a generation ago.

The heavyweights

Nineteen-point-something is way in the middle of trophy beer territory. The inhabitants are giants – massive imperial stouts and Russian imperial stouts, aged in barrels New World barley wines, ice concentrated eisbocks, and even occasionally imperial IPAs brewed to the point of impossible with the hop content. The best examples reach the absolute pinnacle of what is possible: rich and full with dark fruits, oak, molasses, and spirits, warming like liqueur, destined to snifter and a long hour. As the scores in this bracket show, a master brewer can make something exceptional with the beer of this massiveness.

The American pioneers

It is also, historically speaking, hallowed ground for the American extreme beer movement. One brewery in particular has its roots firmly entrenched here — Dogfish Head and its continuous hopping and fermentation process 120 Minute IPA, and its World Wide Stout. Both beers show how the breweries of America could stand toe to toe with any brewer on earth when it came to sheer ambition. That two of them reside in this very bracket is no coincidence — 18% was a frontier these breweries meant to conquer.

Beyond the collection

With such rarity, and beers brewed in small batches each year, and which vary from vintage to vintage, there are only a few beers on record on Hop Horizons so far. But the world of 18% beers is a wider one, and some of them are worth being known, regardless of whether they have appeared in Hop Horizons or not. The cult brewery of America The Bruery chose this strength to be its signature — with its barrel-aged imperial stout Black Tuesday (released, appropriately, on the last Tuesday of October), along with siblings such as Chocolate Rain and Fat Twosday. Belgian brewery De Struise Brouwers' Black Damnation series took the imperial stouts to similar heights. Of course, an account of 18% beers is incomplete without mentioning Brewmeister's Armageddon, with the Scottish beer finding itself right at the heart of the 2010s strength wars, controversial as much because of the claims regarding the strength of beer as because of its strength.

Below is whatever Hop Horizons has actually logged in the 18.0–18.9% range, ranked and broken down strength by strength.