Beers from 23.0–23.9% ABV
The serpent that encircles the world... beer at the edge of the possible, and the edge of myth.
The 23.0% to 23.9% band... a strength so extreme that no beer has yet been logged here on Hop Horizons. This is the realm of world-record attempts and freeze-concentrated legends. A band whose story is almost mythical.
Jörmungandr, the World Serpent of Norse mythology, was a monstrous creature large enough to encircle Midgard, the world of humanity, and grasp its own tail. According to the myths, its release of that tail would signal the beginning of Ragnarök, when it would face Thor and bring about the thunder god’s death even as it was itself slain. There can be no more fitting guardian for the 23.0–23.9% band: a strength so distant from ordinary beer that it seems to lie at the edge of the known world. For now, Hop Horizons looks out upon it from an entirely empty shore.
No beer in this band has yet been logged by Hop Horizons. That absence is hardly surprising. Many examples are experimental batches, anniversary creations or brewery-only releases produced in tiny quantities. Some disappear almost immediately into private collections and bottle shares; others are poured only at festivals or never distributed beyond their country of origin. Encountering one is a rare event, and drinking one is rarer still.
At twenty-three per cent, ordinary brewing has been left far behind, although no single technique owns the band completely. Some brewers use freeze concentration, repeatedly removing water-rich ice until the remaining beer becomes almost unbelievably dense. Others begin with an enormous barley wine or imperial stout and move it through several successive spirit barrels, allowing time, blending and the wood itself to reshape its strength and character. France’s 90 BPM and La Débauche represent the power of cold, while River North and Anchorage reach similar heights through elaborate programmes of multiple barrel maturation. All of them push the definition of beer to its limits and then a little further.
This territory is not solely a product of the modern strength wars. In the 1990s, the small English Parish Brewery produced Baz’s Super Brew, a beer recorded at 23% ABV. Guinness recognised it at the time as the strongest beer in the world, an extraordinary achievement years before freeze-concentrated record attempts became an international contest. It survives now as a historical curiosity and as evidence of the same slightly irrational human urge that drives today’s strongest beers: the desire to discover how far brewing can possibly be pushed.
The beers below have not yet been logged by Hop Horizons, but each is known to have entered the 23.0–23.9% range. Where the strength belongs to a particular batch, vintage or set of barrels, that release is identified explicitly.
Eight World Serpents known to have reached the edge of the possible.
Parish Brewery
A landmark in British brewing history. Parish Brewery produced this extraordinary strong ale during the 1990s, when Guinness recognised it as the strongest beer in the world. Its achievement long predates the internationally publicised strength wars of the following decade.
90 BPM Brewing Company
An extreme freeze-concentrated interpretation of 90 BPM’s fruit-rich, dessert-like Gelato family. Very little information or beer appears to have escaped into the wider world, making it an almost perfectly mythical inhabitant of this otherwise empty band.
La Débauche
Built from approximately two tonnes of malt and subjected to an exceptionally long boil, this immense beer spent four months in former XO Cognac barrels before enduring ninety-six hours at approximately −25°C. The result is a dense meeting of pastry stout, Cognac oak and freeze concentration.
Anchorage Brewing Company
Anchorage transferred its immense barley wine through four sets of barrels during approximately thirty months of maturation. Willett rye, Booker’s bourbon, Heaven Hill malt whiskey and Hemingway rye barrels contributed successive layers of caramel, dried fruit, vanilla, spice and oak.
River North Brewery
Created for River North’s eleventh anniversary, this stout travelled consecutively through Colorado whiskey, Kentucky bourbon, Colorado bourbon and Colorado single-malt whiskey barrels. The four-stage construction carried it to an unusually precise 23.15% ABV.
Kuhnhenn Brewing Company
An experimental stout whose strength has changed between releases. Kuhnhenn records that one edition reached as high as 23.5%, placing it among the strongest American stouts produced without becoming part of a widely distributed commercial range.
Neptunus Bier
Neptunus took its imperial stout Erebus and concentrated it through deep freezing. Only a very small number of drinkers appear to have encountered the resulting ijsbock, but its recorded 23.5% places it firmly among the strongest Dutch examples of the method.
BrewDog
One edition from BrewDog’s barrel-aged Death or Glory project, identified by its specific cask numbers. After four years in wood, it combined burnt sugar, dark fruit, vanilla, roasted nuts, coffee and maple-like sweetness at 23.5%.
No beers have yet been logged by Hop Horizons in the 23.0–23.9% range. Should one eventually be added, it will appear below, broken down strength by strength—but a beer this powerful remains a rare catch indeed.
Bars are on a 0–100% scale; a missing bar (—) means no scored beers at that strength, not a score of zero.
No beers at exactly 23.0% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 23.1% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 23.2% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 23.3% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 23.4% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 23.5% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 23.6% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 23.7% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 23.8% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 23.9% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.