What’s a Strong Beer?
Most of the time, the word strong is subjective. A mother is strong compared to her children; a husband is strong compared to his wife. A weightlifter is strong compared to someone sedentary, and the young are typically stronger than the old. And that’s just physical strength. The same rules apply when asking “what’s a strong beer?”
One man’s strong beer can be another’s weak beer.
One person who drinks liquor rather than beer might consider all beer weak and refuse to hear anyone talk about “strong beer.”
“No such thing,” they will say.
Typically, when we talk about weak or strong beer, we are referring to alcohol content, of course.
Early Ale
In the early days, when beer was just coming into people’s awareness, beer was indeed quite “weak.”
You see, beer was discovered accidentally. Someone left a grain meal out for too long, wild yeast got into the meal and got right to fermenting.
Grain meal only takes a few days to ferment, so by the time someone got back to the batch, it would have been a nice, carbonated, alcoholic drink.
Because the starches in grains are more difficult to ferment than sugars, the grain meal would have attracted a wild yeast with a lower alcohol tolerance and the ale would have had an ABV of 1%, maybe 2% at most.
The result, which was refined and perfected, was then called ale.
A grain would be ground and boiled, herbs would be added for a bit of bitterness and preservation, and the wort would be left out for wild yeasts and bacteria to ferment.
Then, the whole family would drink ale with every meal. The alcohol cleans out all the toxins from local running water, and the nutrients from the grains would help keep family members of all ages in good health during even the coldest and sparest of winter months.
The Purpose of Ale
Thus, the earliest purpose of ale, like mead, was to provide a clean beverage that would hydrate and provide nutrition to the drinker.
The intention was never to get inebriated, and indeed many brewers intentionally drove the ABV of their ales down, calling these draughts “session beers” so that their patrons could drink several brews in one sitting.
Further, ale has been shown to save the lives of many children who had nothing else to eat in the home and running water could simply not be trusted. Kids could be nourished with this beverage rich in grain.
Evolution of Beer
Over time, brewers learned to naturally increase the ABV of their beers for drinkers who did indeed prefer a “strong” beer.
One of the ways they did this was to toast their grain. When you toast a grain, the starches inside are converted to sugars, which are more easily fermentable carbohydrates, which attract yeast with higher alcohol tolerance, which will then ferment a higher alcohol content.
Even those beers, however, were relatively weak in comparison to other beverages like wine and liquor.
Stronger beers at the time would reach heights of 4% or even 6% ABV, giving the beer drinker a light buzz after two or three beers in a single sitting.
Then, of course, commercialization hit the scene in the 1800s and beer companies began setting standards.
Regular beer hit heights of 7 or 8 percent for purposes of storage and shipping, and beer drinkers came to expect a higher ABV.
Eventually, the average levelled out, and the industry standard settled right around 5%.
What’s a Strong Beer
Today, a strong beer is considered to be so if it is 6% or higher, though Sweden still considers any beer above 4.8% to be strong.
And there are contending breweries around the world that are fighting to create much stronger beers these days.
The strongest beers are those that are fortified with liquor, much like is done with wine, wherein alcohol is added to the brew right toward the end of fermentation, both to stop fermentation and to increase alcohol content.
The current strongest beer is Brewmeister Snake Venom, at 67.5%, made by a distillery in Scotland, and there are many others in close attendance and competition for similar ABVs.
List of Strong Beers
It is worth noting that all beers, whether strong or not so strong, have a few things in common. Today, all beers are made with cereal grains, hops are added, and all are boiled in water that is then fermented with yeast.
It is at this point that many beers take different turns, adding in flavors, increasing alcohol, aging, and so on.
The strongest beers are indeed fortified with alcohol, and of course there are those who dispute whether this can even be considered beer.
It really is a matter of taste and preference, like with most things, and is in the eye of the beholder, or the mouth of the drinker, as it were.
Brewmeister has already taken its seat as the strongest beer in the world, so it makes sense that the second strongest would also come from Brewmeister. Their Armageddon beer has a 65% ABV, just slightly behind Snake Venom.
Koelschip Start the Future comes in just behind Brewmeister at 60%, out of the European micro-brewery scene.
Schorschbrau Schorschbok 43 out of Germany falls a bit behind the other two at 43% ABV with an overwhelming spicy flavor that has not been a huge hit with beer fans.
Struise Black Damnation VI – Messy out of Belgium has had the opposite effect on fans. Despite its 39% ABV and alcohol fortification, the alcohol has improved upon the beer flavor in this imperial stout.
Sam Adams Utopias 2017 out of the US is the last on the list, but not the least. It’s fruity, malty, and rich in smoothness, giving fans a beer with a still high ABV, coming in at 28%, they can be proud of.
Experiment, try them out, and see which ones you like best and which inspires you to create your own (very) strong beer.
Cheers!
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