The ABV Atlas

The Void Walkers are those which travel through the voids… the interworld spaces, the dark regions lying between all living things, the quiet in the space between the stars. They have no allegiance to any land, any sea or sky, because they have allegiance only to the empty regions in between. They are the appropriate protectors of the 26.0–26.9% category for two reasons. The shelf here is totally vacant on the Hop Horizons site – a void. And the beers that have been brewed at this level of strength in the real world are created more than anything by removing things.

The void as method

Consider how a beer is crafted to be 26%. You cannot ferment at that strength – no living yeast could survive in it. So you freeze and remove the ice. You freeze again and remove even more, until what is left in your glass is not much of what you put in, and darker, stronger and richer for the process. It’s a way of making beer by subtraction. Every one of these beers has been shaped not by addition but by subtraction, and it is an eerie kind of beer-making process. It fits well with creatures named for the emptiness through which they travel.

A cold country, mostly

The world of 26%, once more, is populated by the frozen and persistent. Many hail from Russia nowadays - GANZA, Ability Brewing, the morbidly named Dead Moroz freeze concentrates - where the frost does half the job while the brewers finish off. There's also De Struise from Belgium with Black Damnation 05, a bourbon barrel beast reduced to size by the eisbock process, and BrewDog from Scotland which made a discontinued eisbock called Death or Glory. Those are beers made in the hundreds, drunk by virtually nobody, existing only to show how it can be done.

The one which did not freeze

But there is one shining exception which deserves to be highlighted. Mikkeller's Black Fist was made 26% strong the hard way - without using any freezing whatsoever, but by aging the imperial stout in ten different bourbon barrels, one after another. No ice, no subtraction but just time, wood and patience pushed to extremes. The one beer created by addition in the league of subtraction, Black Fist is particularly noticeable for that reason. Proving that there is always more than one way to reach the void.

Below is whatever Hop Horizons has actually logged in the 26.0–26.9% range, broken down strength by strength.