The ABV Atlas
The Primordials · 24.0–24.9% ABV
The Primordials
Beers from 24.0–24.9% ABV
The formless first things. Beer at the strength where its very definition dissolves.
The 24.0% to 24.9% band... past the last named monsters, into the formless deep. No beer has yet been logged here on Hop Horizons, and at this strength "beer" itself begins to lose its shape - reached by ice, exotic yeast or methods blurring the line entirely.
The Primordials are not a beast but a state – those formless, nameless beginnings that came before anything had shape or order or the appearance of the world as we know it. Again and again, the world of myth begins with a formless deep. Chaos, Ginnungagap, waters over which the spirit moved. The 24.0-24.9% band belongs to the Primordials, because it is here that the Atlas leaves behind all its named beasts and passes into realms where even the very definition of "beer" begins to revert to the formless. What is a beer, really, that has almost a quarter alcohol content?
Where "beer" loses its shape
Below this level, it was clear enough what was being made, be it stout, barley wine or eisbock. Up here, everything gets hazy and twisted. This broader world beyond 24% has a stunning diversity of approaches, as though all possible avenues to the impossible were being followed simultaneously. There are the freeze-concentrated eisbocks and Baltic porters the barrel-aged American barley wines, freeze-concentrated double IPA... even amazingly the yeast-fermented IPA, brewed by Japan's Repubrew to this level of alcohol content by means of special yeast, which is truly an engineering feat. And lurking just beyond is the alcoholic "root beer", which is scarcely even a beer at all. There can be no style for the band, because at this level, style itself breaks down.
The two paths to the formless void
Nearly all of these have been reached in one of two ways... The first and most common is freeze distillation taken nearly to its breaking point, freezing out and removing water over and over again until there is only a small fraction of what started out as beer left. The second, less common path is fermentation to extreme limits, in which bizarre yeast strains capable of withstanding incredibly high levels of alcohol are encouraged to ferment beyond any possible normal limit. The Japanese IPA is the best-known example of the latter.
Beyond...
No beer has been entered into Hop Horizons within this range, and this too is not surprising, as such strong beers are brewed in microscopic amounts by only a handful of the most hardcore brewers in the world: De Struise from Belgium, Borg from Iceland, AleBrowar from Poland, Smedsbo Slott from Sweden and Germany's own ice-brewing pioneers among them. To taste a few of these is rare enough, but to collect them is virtually unheard of. This page reaches out into a world of beer that is already far beyond the realm of the ordinary.
No beers have yet been logged on Hop Horizons in the 24.0–24.9% range. Should one ever be, it will appear here, broken down strength by strength.
This category at a glance
Unique beers by exact strength
Average score by exact strength
Bars are on a 0–100% scale; a missing bar (—) means no scored beers at that strength, not a score of zero.
Every strength in this range
24.0% ABV
No beers at exactly 24.0% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
24.1% ABV
No beers at exactly 24.1% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
24.2% ABV
No beers at exactly 24.2% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
24.3% ABV
No beers at exactly 24.3% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
24.4% ABV
No beers at exactly 24.4% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
24.5% ABV
No beers at exactly 24.5% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
24.6% ABV
No beers at exactly 24.6% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
24.7% ABV
No beers at exactly 24.7% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
24.8% ABV
No beers at exactly 24.8% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
24.9% ABV
No beers at exactly 24.9% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.