The ABV Atlas
The Elder Beasts · 27.0–27.9% ABV
The Elder Beasts
Beers from 27.0–27.9% ABV
The old things, from before the gods. Beer that has become something else entirely.
The 27.0% to 27.9% band... older and stranger than almost anything below it. One lone eisbock sits logged here at the time of writing on Hop Horizons, in a wider world ruled by freeze-concentration and by the most famous beer-that-became-a-spirit ever made.
The Elder Beasts are the ancient – older than the gods themselves, older than any known beasts, creatures from an age long since passed. Not necessarily evil, nor even antagonistic – just ancient, relics of an age which has now gone and grown old in its passing beyond recognition. They fit the 27.0–27.9% bracket because beer of such intensity has already ceased to belong to any category, so old is it and so distant from its former self.
Barely beer...
A quarter to a third. At this level of alcoholic content the term "beer" has carried an awful lot of meaning. Whatever the beer contains now has more in common with wine, liqueur, port or sherry – a small drink to sip like brandy. Unlikely to be carbonated and usually served as an after dinner drink. Aged and deep red in colour, tasting of fruit and old wooden barrels – and little to do with a pint of ale.
The famous one
And this is the native habitat of the most famous beer-that-ain't-quite-beer ever made… Sam Adams' Utopias. Several vintages of this beer – 2009, 2011, 2012 – can be found at 27-point-something, and it is the originator of all such beers. The uncarbonated beverage aged for several years in different casks, issued once in a couple of years in a shape of a copper brewery kettling, sold for hundreds of dollars and meant for sipping just like an expensive cognac. And it was Boston Beer that asked, in effect, what if a beer wanted to become a rare spirit?
And the cold labs
The remaining world of 27% is where it usually ends up nowadays – in the freezer. The BramBrass from Belgium, and a horde of Russian experimentalists such as Ability Brewing and Brewlok, arrive at the same strength via freeze-concentration, developing unusual freeze distilled stouts, mixes and meads bottle by bottle. Utopias arrived there through patience and wooden barrels - the cold labs arrived there through subtraction. Two utterly different approaches leading to one impossible figure, and this is exactly how the whole top of the Atlas looks like.
Below is whatever Hop Horizons has actually logged in the 27.0–27.9% range, broken down strength by strength.
This category at a glance
Score range 48.17%–48.17%, standard deviation 0.00 (population, over 1 scored beers). Most common style: pale mild (1). Most represented country: Scotland.
Top beers across 27.0–27.9%
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.
Style distribution
Every strength in this range
27.0% ABV
2 unique beers · average score 48.17% · 1 not yet scored
27.1% ABV
No beers at exactly 27.1% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
27.2% ABV
No beers at exactly 27.2% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
27.3% ABV
No beers at exactly 27.3% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
27.4% ABV
No beers at exactly 27.4% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
27.5% ABV
No beers at exactly 27.5% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
27.6% ABV
No beers at exactly 27.6% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
27.7% ABV
No beers at exactly 27.7% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
27.8% ABV
No beers at exactly 27.8% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.
27.9% ABV
No beers at exactly 27.9% ABV have yet been added to Hop Horizons.