Big beers small beers: Pushing the boundaries of brewing - Beer Notes

Modern Brewery Age, March 25, 2002 by Gregg Glaser

There may come a day when a brewer will say, "Enough, already! It's time to stop. I've gone as far as I can. I've reached the top of the mountain and I stand alone, untouched and unconquered." But, I wonder if this day will come. The brewers I've met are a curious lot creative, inquisitive, experimental, restless. I doubt they'll ever stop.

The thing that started me thinking along these lines was the February release of Samuel Adams Utopias MM II. This is a big beer. A remarkably big beer. The biggest ever, if one counts by alcohol. And we all count by alcohol, at least some of the time, don't we?

BIG ALCOHOLIC BEERS

Utopias MM II weighs in at 24 percent alcohol by volume. Good lord. This new beer from Jim Koch and his brewing team at the Boston Beer Co. is the latest result in their eight-plus-year program of experimentation to see how much alcohol a beer can hold. They keep finding a new answer. Each new answer is, "Beer can be even more alcoholic."

The team's first effort was Triple Bock, released in 1994, with a strength of 17.5 percent alcohol by volume. I first encountered this beer at a Boston Beer Co. party hosted upstairs at the Cheers bar in downtown Boston during the 1995 NBWA convention. Koch was serving Triple Bock, at that time the strongest beer I had ever tasted, from small wooden casks that sat atop the bars scattered throughout the restaurant. Triple Bock, now a year-round release, was rich, sweet, syrupy, sherry- and cognac-like and...alcoholic.

Not content to rest at 17.5, Koch and his brewers decided to see if they could go Triple Bock one better. In 2000 they released a one-time special beer, Millennium, that ranges between 19.5-20 percent alcohol by volume. Millennium differed from Triple Bock not only in alcohol. This beer was less syrupy and sweet, allowing the sherry and cognac flavors to stand out on their own. Both Millennium and Triple Bock were aged for many months in wood, adding to their flavor profiles, and used multiple strains of yeast.

Now at the same time Koch & Co. were brewing and aging Millennium, another American craft brewer was also trying to brew the world's strongest beer, one that would surpass Triple Bock. Sam Caligione, the owner and head brewer of Delaware's small Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, spent months experimenting and aging a special beer, just like Koch and his brewers, and he released World Wide Stout, an 18 percent alcohol by volume ale, in December 1999. World Wide Stout, still in production, is dark, incredibly rich and roasty and--surprise, surprise--port-like in flavor. Huge amounts of alcohol seem to do that to malt-based beverages. Caligione only had a few months to bask in glory as the brewer of the world's strongest beer, because Millennium debuted early in 2000. He now bills World Wide Stout as the world's strongest dark beer.

Before Koch and Caligione's heavyweights, two of the strongest beers available were European in origin. They both remain in production and are exported to the U.S.

Belzebuth, from the Brasserie Jeanne d'Arc in northern France, debuted in 1997 at 15 percent alcohol by volume, and is brewed in the style of a Belgian strong golden ale. This beer now gets to claim that it's the strongest golden ale in the world.

Before Belzebuth, the world record holder for alcohol in a beer came from Switzerland, of all places. Samichlaus, originally from Brauerei Hurlimann, appeared in 1980 at 14 percent alcohol by volume. This dark, rich lager was a seasonal release accompanied by a fairy tale story. Samichlaus, which translates as Santa Claus, was brewed every December 6 (Santa Claus Day) and released twelve months later on-- you guessed it--Santa Claus Day. Hurlimann ceased brewing Samichlaus in 1997 after merging with Brauerei Feldschlosschen, but the beer has been revived by Austria's Eggenberg Castle Brewery and is again available in the U.S.

BIG HOPPY BEERS

Alcohol doesn't rule alone, however, in making a beer big. There are also hops. And more hops. And more hops.

I believe that hops are a large reason for the existence of the American craft brewing business. American craft brewers, long starved for hops that were, and are, practically impossible to sniff or taste in mainstream American lagers, have used an abundance of hops to do for many American craft beers what silicone has done for many Hollywood starlets. Both are a raison d'etre. And my, oh my, just as some actresses don't believe there can ever be too much silicone used in certain places, there are a growing number of brewers that believe one can never toss too many hops in the kettle.

To drive this point home, and to wildly celebrate it in true over-the-top craft brewer fashion, there is now an annual competition for the hoppiest beer. Dreamed up by Bill Owens, past publisher of American Brewer Magazine and past owner of Buffalo Bill's Brewery (where he used to brew Alimony Ale-- "the bitterest beer in America"), the Alpha King Challenge has taken place each October since 1999 during the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, CO. The challenge is for a brewery to brew, bottle and sell a beer bigger than Three Floyd's Brewing's (Munster, IN) 60.2 IBU (International Bittering Units) Alpha King Pale Ale. Entries have included Pyramid Ales' IPA (65 IBUs), Lost Coast Brewing's Indica IPA 9 (67.9 IBUs) and Rogue Ales I-squared-PA (74.4 IBUs). Hoppy beers, to be sure, but a brewpub-owner friend of mine, David Wollner of Main Street Cafe/Willimantic Brewing in Willimantic, CT, tells me he routinely brews a 100-IBU IPA for his hop-head customers. Now that's a hoppy beer.