Beers from 22.0–22.9% ABV
The unstoppable force. Beer ground to overwhelming strength by relentless cold.
The 22.0% to 22.9% band... deep in freeze-concentration country. This is eisbock territory above all, beers driven to overwhelming strength by cold rather than fermentation, with the wider world's rarest ice-beers carrying the page.
The word juggernaut derives from Jagannath, a form of the Hindu deity Vishnu worshipped at Puri, where enormous sacred chariots are drawn through the streets during the annual Ratha Yatra festival. Colonial-era European accounts distorted aspects of the procession and helped turn the name into an English word for an immensely powerful, seemingly unstoppable force. Used with that history understood, it is an appropriate symbol for the 22.0–22.9% category: a band in which beer is driven towards overwhelming strength, often by the relentless power of cold.
One technique is especially prominent at this strength: freeze concentration, commonly associated with eisbock. The principle is direct and severe. A strong beer is chilled until water-rich ice begins to form while much of the alcohol remains within the liquid portion. Remove that ice and the remaining beer becomes smaller in volume but stronger and more concentrated. Repeat the process and its alcohol, sugars, body, flavour and any imperfections become progressively more intense.
There is far more to the process than simply freezing beer. Remove too much water, or begin with an unbalanced base, and the result can become hot, aggressive and stripped of refinement: something behaving more like a raw spirit than a coherent beer. The finest eisbocks retain a recognisably malty identity beneath their strength, becoming colossal, warming drinks filled with dried fruit, toffee, caramel, bread and chocolate rather than undiluted alcoholic heat. Eisbock has a long association with the German brewing tradition, but modern brewers across Belgium, the Netherlands and elsewhere have carried freeze concentration far beyond the strength of its classical examples.
Hop Horizons currently contains only two beers in this band, both Estonian eisbocks still waiting to be scored. The wider world is less uniform. De Struise Brouwers, Brewery De Meester and Hertog Jan have all used freeze concentration to reach 22%, while American brewers have arrived through elaborate programmes of repeated barrel maturation and blending. Particular editions of Black Tuesday Grand Reserve, Chocolate Reign and River North’s anniversary stouts have entered the same range without presenting themselves as conventional eisbocks. Cold may be the defining force of the band, but the barrel room has produced juggernauts of its own.
The beers below have not yet been logged by Hop Horizons, but each is known to have entered the 22.0–22.9% range. Where a beer changes in strength between vintages or editions, the qualifying release is identified explicitly.
Eight further juggernauts known to have entered the 22.0–22.9% band.
De Struise Brouwers
A blend involving the celebrated imperial stouts Black Albert and Kate the Great, matured in port barrels before undergoing freeze concentration. Chocolate, dark fruit, port, oak and dense malt character combine in one of the most elusive members of the Black Damnation series.
Brewery De Meester
Created as an extreme anniversary interpretation of De Meester’s Christmas beer. Freeze concentration carries the original beer’s dark malt, dried fruit, caramel and seasonal richness into a still, exceptionally dense drink intended for the smallest servings.
Hertog Jan
An exceptionally scarce freeze-concentrated interpretation of Hertog Jan’s malt-rich Grand Prestige. The process magnifies the base beer’s caramel, dried fruit and warming character, taking a familiar Dutch strong ale into otherwise unrecognisable territory.
River North Brewery
Created to mark River North’s tenth anniversary, this imperial stout was moved through three successive sets of spirit barrels. Rather than relying upon freeze concentration, it reaches 22% through an unusually elaborate combination of immense brewing, prolonged maturation and repeated barrel influence.
The Bruery
The 2023 incarnation of this intensified Chocolate Rain relative reached 22.5%. Double bourbon-barrel ageing and additions of cacao and vanilla create a huge dessert stout in which chocolate, fudge, oak and spirit character dominate.
MAZURT Brewing Company
An American strong ale aged in Tennessee whiskey barrels before being freeze-concentrated twice. The combination of whiskey-barrel maturation and two stages of ice removal makes it an unusually direct meeting between American barrel experimentation and the eisbock principle.
The Bruery
The 2020 Grand Reserve was successively matured through three rounds of bourbon barrels. Each stage deepened the beer’s chocolate, caramel, vanilla, dark fruit and oak character, ultimately carrying it to within two-tenths of the next Atlas band.
River North Brewery
A blend of double-, triple- and quadruple-barrel-aged imperial stouts drawn from Colorado bourbon, rye whiskey, straight whiskey, single-malt whiskey and former honey- and maple-syrup whiskey barrels. It represents construction through blending on an almost architectural scale.
Below is everything Hop Horizons has actually logged in the 22.0–22.9% range, broken down strength by strength.
Bars are on a 0–100% scale; a missing bar (—) means no scored beers at that strength, not a score of zero.
2 unique beers · 2 not yet scored
No beers at exactly 22.1% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 22.2% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 22.3% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 22.4% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 22.5% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 22.6% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 22.7% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 22.8% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 22.9% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.