Beverage Dynamics is the largest national business magazine devoted exclusively to the needs of off-premise beverage alcohol retailers, from single liquor stores to big box chains, through coverage of the latest trends in wine, beer and spirits.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/854533
www.beveragedynamics.com July/August 2017 • Beverage Dynamics 35 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD'S STRONGEST BEERS Brewing strong beer is a matter of the careful management of yeast. Under normal brewing conditions, the increasing concen- tration of alcohol in a beer creates a hostile environment where fermentation slows, then stops, and the yeast die. To exceed previous alcohol contents, brewers turned to new techniques. The first was essentially backwards distillation, using low temperatures to freeze a portion of the water in the beer, leaving behind more alcohol. German eisbock was created in this way (accidentally, it is said) at the Reichel brewery in 1905, giving rise to a new style. A rival cross-town brewery, Erste Kulmbacher Union (EKU) was determined to go one better, without using the freezing technique. Following conventional fermentation, a second fer- mentation was launched through a manipulation of the yeast that the brewery kept secret. EKU 28, "das stärkste bier der Welt" (the strongest beer in the world) was released in 1953, with 11% alcohol and delicious flavor. This set the terms, as it were, of the unofficial brewing arms race: beer had to be brewed without distillation techniques or the addition of distilled spirits, and it had to taste good. In England, Thomas Hardy's Ale, over 12%, appeared in the late sixties. This was followed by Samichlaus (14%) from Switzerland, a December special named for Santa Claus that required a year to ferment and mature. In the 1990s, Jim Koch of Boston Beer launched a sev- en-year project to explore the boundaries of beer, producing Tripel Bock (17.5%, 1994). Upstart brewery Dogfish Head in Delaware briefly held the title with World Wide Stout (18.1%, 1999), before Boston Beer's Millennium appeared (20%, 1999). Koch, like most brewers of very-strong beer, didn't discuss the specific technical breakthroughs. In general terms, however, the technique amounted to finding a series of increasingly alco- hol-tolerant yeast strains to be used in succession, a process he likened to "climbing Everest." In an article in 2000, he explained "If you were helicoptered to Everest base camp, you'd be dead of pulmonary edema in 12 hours. But if you start at Kathmandu and walk up over the course of two weeks, you gradually get used to the change." Two years later, Boston Beer released Utopias, a barrel-aged, blended beer that in recent vintages weighs in near 30%. It is ex- pensive, rare, and has defeated fine cognacs in blind competition. Recently a new round of strongest-beer battles has broken out, but the competitors seem to have disregarded the unwritten rules that the beer be a) conventionally brewed and b) excep- tional to drink. By the time Brewdog released the harsh-tasting, boozy End of History (55%), limited to 11 wildly expensive bot- tles that were encased in taxadermied squirrels wearing High- land garb, the competition had crossed over into farce. TODAY'S BURLY BREWS Very-strong beer, arbitrarily defined here as commercial beer over 10%, is part of the portfolio for a minority of breweries nationwide. Pioneers Boston Beer and Dogfish Head still pro- duce the brands they mastered nearly two decades ago, but the techniques are no longer theirs alone. The Bruery, Avery, Stone, North Coast, Founders, Weyerbacher and others have regular offerings, although many stick fairly close to the 10% mark. Most breweries that feature these very strong beers choose to do so for reasons of artistic expression, or to set themselves apart from the herd. When Jeremy Kosmicki, brewmaster at Founders Brewing Company in Grand Rapids, MI, joined the company in the late nineties, it was struggling to find a direc- tion, with a portfolio of mid-range ales. "They hired me and my partner, with our homebrewing past, and the kind of beers we liked to mess around with were those bigger-flavored, higher alcohol beers," he recalls. "We made those for our tap room just as an experiment, but they really caught on. Our bosses had the bright idea, putting some of those in a package and sending them out to the world to see what happens." Today, these bigger beers are a part of the portfolio, "part of who we are." They are generally barrel-aged, and the emphasis is on the big flavors that higher alcohol can support. Avery Brewing Company in Boulder, Colorado graduated from pretty strong beers to very strong beers with the release of The Beast (15%), in 2004. Under the supervision of "Barrel Herder" Andy Parker, the company now makes at least five beers a year in the 15-18% range. About why Avery devotes so much effort to these special beers, Parker says, "The main reason is simply that we are a company of adventurous brewers always trying to create some- thing new. It's very satisfying to watch people have a new flavor experience that stops them in their tracks because they've never had anything quite like it. Beer can be 1% ABV and hoppy, it can be 20% ABV and malty, it can have fruits and spices, it can have unicorn hooves and rhinoceros tears. It can be artistic." The very-strong beers can still pose technical challenges, Parker says. "Twelve percent is about where we max out our house yeast, without doing anything too terribly difficult. It re- quires a lot of extra oxygen, definitely more time in the tank and pitching a higher amount of yeast." Many breweries rely, Everest-style, on the acclimatization of the yeast to rising alcohol content, coupled with a succession of yeast-tolerant strains, many borrowed from wine and cham- pagne production. Barrel-aging figures in a striking number of these very-strong beers for practical reasons. "When you make these high alcohol beers, after the fermentation process, which is three weeks to a month, those beers are still generally pretty hot with ethanol, that sharp alcohol flavor," Kosmicki says. "Throwing them in the wood serves to soften that effect." Barrel-aging has other effects on the finished beer, beyond smoothing the rough edges. Residual alcohol in the barrel, left from the original spirit (or wine) can contribute traces of addi- tional alcohol. Primarily, though, the original spirit can combine in interesting ways with the flavor of the base beer as it ages. The favored styles and finishes are very much a matter of brew- ers' individual tastes.