Beers from 26.0–26.9% ABV
The things that walk between worlds. Beer made by taking almost everything away.
The 26.0% to 26.9% band... empty on Hop Horizons, and out in the world made almost entirely by subtraction, freezing the water away until what remains is more concentrate than beer. The void, quite literally, as a brewing method.
The Void Walkers are those that travel through the voids... the interworld spaces, the dark regions between living things, the silence between the stars. They belong to no land, sea or sky, owing allegiance only to the empty distances in between. They are the appropriate protectors of the 26.0–26.9% category for two reasons. The shelf here is completely vacant on Hop Horizons – a void. And most beers brewed to this strength in the wider world are created, more than anything, by removing something.
Consider how a beer is usually taken to 26%. Ordinary brewing yeast cannot ferment a beer anywhere near this strength unaided, so the most common answer is freeze concentration. The brewer freezes a strong base beer and removes some of its water as ice. The process is repeated until only a fraction of the original volume remains, darker, denser and dramatically stronger than before. It is beer-making by subtraction: strength created from the space left behind. That eerie method fits naturally with creatures named after the emptiness through which they travel.
The wider world of 26% beer is populated largely by the frozen and persistent. Several modern examples come from Russia, including creations by GANZA, Ability Brewing Project and the aptly morbid Dead Moroz series. Elsewhere, Belgium’s De Struise Brouwers made Black Damnation 05: Double Black by applying the eisbock process to bourbon-barrel-aged imperial stout, while France’s La Débauche has produced decadent pastry-stout eisbocks at the same strength. These are generally small-batch beers, expensive to produce and intended for tiny servings rather than ordinary drinking.
There is one shining exception that deserves to be singled out. Mikkeller’s Black Fist reached 26.1% without freeze concentration. According to Mikkeller, the beer began as its 18% imperial stout Black and spent two years passing successively through ten different bourbon barrels. Repeated exposure to spirit-soaked wood, together with concentration during ageing, carried it to its final strength. No deliberate removal of frozen water: just beer, bourbon barrels and a quite unreasonable amount of patience. In a league dominated by subtraction, Black Fist found another way into the void.
No beers in this band have yet been logged on Hop Horizons. The strength shown below belongs to the stated release or batch: several of these names have also appeared in editions carrying a different ABV.
De Struise Brouwers
Bourbon-barrel-aged Black Albert – otherwise known as Cuvée Delphine – subjected to the eisbock process. Thick, black and enormously expensive to produce, it is one of the best-known examples of a serious imperial stout carried beyond its natural strength by freezing.
Mikkeller
The band’s great exception. Mikkeller says its 18% Black imperial stout spent two years passing through ten bourbon barrels, eventually emerging at 26.1% without freeze concentration. It is probably the purest expression of the alternative, barrel-led route into this range.
BrewDog
A particular three-cask edition of BrewDog’s long-aged extreme beer. Other releases bearing the Death or Glory name have been listed at 21%, 23.5% or 25%, so the cask identification is essential when placing it in this exact band.
La Débauche
The eleventh Sacred Heart is a freeze-concentrated pastry stout built around crème brûlée, vanilla, caramelised sugar and dark chocolate. It is less an ordinary stout than a dense, intensely sweet beer dessert intended to be shared in very small measures.
La Débauche
The following Sacred Heart release remained at 26% but exchanged crème brûlée for the flavours of pecan pie. Its existence alongside XI shows that La Débauche treats freeze concentration not merely as a strength stunt, but as the foundation of a continuing dessert-beer series.
GANZA × Brewlok
A collaboration whose stark Russian name translates as “Pain”. Its published description is equally direct: a frozen stout. It is one of the more widely recorded representatives of Russia’s modern freeze-concentrated extreme-beer scene.
Ability Brewing Project
An imperial milk stout frozen repeatedly and flavoured with milk caramel, coconut and bourbon-associated character. It occupies the richest end of the band: dense, sweet and closer in drinking style to a dessert liqueur than a conventional stout.
Ability Brewing Project
A repeatedly frozen blend of imperial stouts conditioned with apricot, almond, pistachio and wood chips soaked in American bourbon. It demonstrates how the void may be created by subtraction, only to be filled again with layers of fruit, nuts and oak.
Mędiæval Bardcore
A macabre member of the recurring Dead Moroz sequence of winter freeze-concentrated releases. Its name, rarity and method could hardly be better suited to a band inhabited by things walking through darkness and absence.
No beers have yet been logged on Hop Horizons in the 26.0–26.9% range. Should one ever be, it will appear below, 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.
No beers at exactly 26.0% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 26.1% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 26.2% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 26.3% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 26.4% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 26.5% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 26.6% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 26.7% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 26.8% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
No beers at exactly 26.9% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.