“Extreme” Brewing and Attention-Grabbing Stunts
There are two distinct paths that drinkers may take to becoming a beer aficionado. One path may involve a mass-market lager drinker who never much liked the taste of beer but drank it because it was cheap and familiar. Then one day, at a friend’s urging, that consumer tried a more flavorful brew, perhaps an amber lager or a pale ale, and the rest is history. The other path may involve a drinker who learns of a brand that has a 10 or 12 percent ABV and tastebud-obliterating hop content and is compelled to try it. “I want my beers to hurt” would not be an uncharacteristic statement for such an individual to utter. It’s not unlike what motivates an elite athlete to complete an Ironman or a thrill-seeker to BASE jump off of a one-hundred-story skyscraper: a combination of masochism and an attraction to the extreme.
Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that one of the key craft beer trends to emerge in the early 2000s was the concept of the “extreme beer.” Usually an “extreme” offering is one whose alcohol content pushes the boundaries of convention, sometimes surpassing that of wine and even some spirits.
Of course, as more mainstream consumers experience craft beer, the goal post moves on what actually constitutes the extreme. At one time an IPA, with its outsized hop content and somewhat higher ABV—around 7 percent—would have been considered extreme, especially to a population reared on conventional flavor-restrained industrial lagers.
Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams) likes to point out that his brewery was, perhaps, the first to create an extreme beer. In 1994 the brewery unveiled Triple Bock, which, at 17.5 percent ABV, was the strongest beer on the market at the time.
While the term “extreme beer” is of American origin, the concept is most definitely European. Technically, many of the traditional Belgian styles could be deemed “extreme” in comparison with most other worldwide varieties, since a good number of them boast ABVs upwards of 9 percent.
However, the credit for the first extreme beer should go to a country not far from the Benelux region: Switzerland. A good decade and a half before Boston Beer made its first batch of Triple Bock, Swiss brewery Hürlimann released Samichlaus—“Santa Claus” in the local dialect—a 14 percent ABV lager rolled out only once a year. The release date is always December 6, Saint Nicholas Day, which is celebrated in many European countries. Hürlimann Brewery closed in 1997, but Samichlaus production resumed three years later through a collaboration with the brand’s original brewers and Austria’s Schloss Eggenberg. Those who know a few German words might know that “schloss” means “castle.” Eggenberg is a medieval castle that’s been brewing beer for nearly seven hundred years—commercially for the latter half of that time.
For a good part of the ‘80s and ‘90s, Samichclaus got to call itself the strongest beer in the world; at the very least it was the strongest lager, as there was a fair amount of envelope-pushing going on in the ale breweries of Benelux. It wasn’t uncommon for a few bars to still be referring to it as such deep into the 2000s as well. A quick Google search would have been all that was needed to debunk the claim, but few who had tasted anything stronger were bothering to do so.
When Sam Adams unofficially ushered in the extreme era with Triple Bock, it initiated an arms race of sorts to see which breweries could push the limits the furthest.
Triple Bock was just the beginning for Boston Beer. In the early 2000s, the brewery launched the Samuel Adams Utopias series, a (mostly) annual release of a stave-enhanced concoction whose ABV typically hovered around 26 percent and whose flavor was a lot closer to that of a sherry or Madeira than a beer (it also lacked carbonation, which further prompted that comparison).
The very existence of Dogfish Head has been defined by high-ABV beers. For a while very few of its offerings dipped below 7 percent alcohol. (Later releases, like its Festina Peche fruit-infused Berliner Weisse-style beer, went in the opposite direction; the spring seasonal Festina is a modest 4.5 percent.) Founder Sam Calagione literally wrote the book on the subject; in 2006, his tome Extreme Brewing was first published.
Hopheads eagerly await the regular but limited release of Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA, which cranks up just about every component that makes its 60 Minute and 90 Minute IPAs so appealing. Where the former brews boil and continuously add hops for a full hour and an hour and a half respectively, 120 Minute IPA does so for two whole hours. The brewers then dry hop it daily in the fermenter for a month before aging it for an additional month on whole-leaf hops.
But 120 Minute is not just a hophead’s paradise; it’s also quite strong from an alcohol-content standpoint. Depending on the particular release, it ranges from 15 to 20 percent ABV.
Another of Dogfish Head’s special releases available on an infrequent basis is Raison d’Extra, a potent riff on its Raison d’Etre. Dogfish takes the the latter brew—a Belgian-style brown ale made with beet sugar, raisons and Belgian-style yeast—and amps it up to the nth degree, resulting in an incredibly malty beer that, at its most moderate, is 15 percent ABV and, at its strongest, is 18 percent ABV.
Meanwhile, with World Wide Stout, Dogfish Head does the same for the stout style, creating a dark, boozy concoction between 15 and 20 percent ABV—or about three times that of an average stout.
Imperialistic Tendencies
Stout is the style responsible for introducing a word that has become a prefix of sorts for just about every other beer classification: imperial. It was first applied to the dark, roasty English variety in the late eighteenth century when the Brits would export a stronger version that could survive the journey to Russia. As the story goes, Russian Empress Catherine the Great had grown quite fond of stout on her visits to England and requested that it be exported to her court. That’s why the style that emerged is frequently referred to as Russian imperial stout. The stuff was not of Russian origin, as its name might imply, but merely of Russian consumption.
Today, “imperial” is affixed to any beer that’s a cranked-up version of the traditional recipe for its respective style. However, when applied to anything other than stout, the moniker lacks historical significance.
Imperial IPAs are, perhaps, the most common. Dogfish Head’s 90 Minute IPA certainly would fall into that category, as would 120 Minute IPA, for that matter (though most of the time they’re a bit more modest in their alcohol content). The term double IPA (or sometimes triple IPA) can be used interchangeably with imperial IPA.
Three Floyds Dreadnaught Imperial IPA, is a solid example of the style, boasting all of the citrusy hop bite (100 IBUs!) one has come to expect from such a beer, as well as a significant malt expression. Though hop bitterness is the defining characteristic for IPAs, there’s often the generous presence of malt sweetness to balance the even hoppier iterations. That’s primarily due to the fact that it takes more malt to boost the ABV. The yeast need more sugar to convert to the additional alcohol.
Russian River’s Pliny the Elder Double IPA has become nothing short of an icon among beer geeks. The 8 percent ABV, 100 IBU bottle of bitterness has won a treasure trove of awards and has, for seven consecutive years, topped the American Homebrewers Association’s list of “Best Commercial Beers in America.” It’s also spawned the even bigger white whale, Pliny the Younger—an 11 percent ABV triple IPA.
But the Pliny family of Sonoma, California has been getting a run for its money from a certain brewery in Waterbury, Vermont. Heady Topper, brewed by The Alchemist, has become legendary. It ups the bitterness quotient considerably, registering a full 120 IBUs.
Imperial IPAs are just the tip of the iceberg. There have been imperial porters, imperial pilsners, imperial wheat beers, imperial saisons—you get the picture. The term is kicked around so frequently, you’d think brewers had licensing deals with Lucasfilm.
The pendulum does seem to be swinging in the opposite direction at the moment. There’s a movement toward session ales; brewers are delighting in the low ABVs—usually 4 and 4.5 percent—of some of their newest offerings. There’s a whole new category of “Session IPA” emerging, a style that’s (relatively) light on alcohol but high on hop flavor.
It could very well be that moderation is the new extreme.
Jumping the Shark
The notion of taking things to the extreme is not limited to producing a beer with “a lot of something” in it, be it hops or alcohol. It frequently applies to those with ingredients that are . . . well . . . weird. This subset of extreme beers shall be deemed potential shark jumpers, a nod to that notorious 1977 episode of Happy Days when the Fonz did just that. “Jumping the shark” initially had been a term that was exclusive to the television realm, but, as the craft beer industry matures, it’s become increasingly relevant in that space as well.
Oregon’s Rogue Brewing Company has been known for some truly world-class beers that are icons in their own right—Dead Guy Ale comes to mind, as does its intensified version, Double Dead Guy. It’s also been known for a few releases that many have called stunts. Among those was Beard Beer, which, tasted blindly, doesn’t seem particularly intense. It has a relatively tame ABV of 4.8 percent, a modest 25 IBU, and some fairly standard Sterling hops and Munich and pilsner malts, all of which converge to form a flavorful session beer. Now, about what’s converting those malts’ starch into alcohol: It’s not ordinary yeast; it was harvested from brewmaster John Maier’s beard. I’m just going to leave that right there.
Another pair of Oregon brewers, Portland’s Upright Brewing and Burnside Brewing, collaborated on a creation they called Captain Beefheart Beer. Their intent was to develop a brew that incorporated many savory elements from the kitchen, like Turkish bay leaf and long pepper. But those elements were fairly standard, compared with the main attraction: sixty pounds of charred beef hearts added to the kettle boil. It resulted in a salty little brew that’s actually quite easy to drink at 5.85 percent ABV.
Some folks are more thinkers than feelers. Those who choose the mind over the heart will be happy to know that they can have their brains and drink them, too. Back in the spring of 2014, the Walking Dead-obsessed team at Philadelphia’s Dock Street Brewery decided to produce a zombie-friendly beer to coincide with the season finale of the apocalyptic AMC series. The result: Dock Street Walker, brewed with cranberries and roasted goat brains. There’s not much more to say about that one.
If livestock hearts and gray matter don’t sound like your cup of tea, how about bones and heads? Smoked mangalitsa pig bones and heads are what give Right Brain Brewery’s Mangalitsa Pig Porter its distinctive smoky pork flavor, which is complemented by a slightly chocolaty finish. The Traverse City, Michigan-based brewery releases Mangalitsa but once a year, and it’s always a hit.
For a decidedly masculine beer, there’s a little curiosity that came out of the brewhouse of Denver’s Wynkoop Brewing Company: Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout. Oyster stouts have long been a popular style; the oyster shells bring a faint briny element to the roasty style, which makes a nice accompaniment when eating the little mollusks on the half shell. But the term “Rocky Mountain Oyster” might give most folks pause. Yes, they’re bull testicles, and yes, their essence does find its way into the beer—each batch is brewed with twenty-five pounds of them!
The folks at Wynkoop knew how ridiculous a concept it was. In fact, it started out as an April Fools’ joke. They posted a video on April 1, 2012, detailing the process of making the fictitious beer. Those who didn’t get the joke were eager to try it. So, the Wynkoop team figured, why not? They made some very small eight-barrel batches of the beer and canned about 100 cases of it, as part of their Even Smaller Batch Series.
Wynkoop had a great deal of fun promoting the very limited release. The press release called it a “seminal moment” (pun intended), describing the beer as “an assertive, viscous stout with a rich brown/black color, a luscious mouthfeel, and deep flavors of chocolate, espresso, and nuts.” (Pun intended again.) Wynkoop also notes that in addition to its 7.5 percent ABV, Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout contains 3 BPB—“balls per barrel.”
Danish gypsy brewery Mikkeller, which pops up several times throughout this book, is no stranger to bizarre ingredients. One particularly noteworthy project was its Beer Geek Brunch Weasel, a variation on its coffee-infused oatmeal stout with an odd twist from the animal kingdom. No, it doesn’t have actual weasels in it (though stranger rodent-related things have happened, such as BrewDog’s End of History, which features a bottle packaged in a stuffed squirrel). What it does have is coffee beans harvested from the fecal matter of the nocturnal, weasel-like civet. See, these pesky little creatures have a taste for fine coffee beans. Their digestive tracts contain special enzymes that break down much of the bean, leaving them with richer, more concentrated coffee flavors. And then they end up in a brew kettle.
You’ve got to have a fairly strong constitution to consider that beer, much less drink it; but once you’re able to get past the . . . ummm . . . unconventional concept, it’s quite a flavorful creation.
The thought of this next innovation—Pastrami on Rye from Chicago’s Pipeworks Brewing Company—might have certain gastrointestinal ramifications as well, but it’s not as radical as it may sound. Unlike Captain Beefheart Beer, there aren’t any actual cow bits in Pastrami on Rye. However, it contains just about everything else deli fans would come to expect from its namesake sandwich, from the condiments to the spices that give the classic cold cut its unmistakable flavor: black peppercorn, mustard seed, coriander, allspice, red pepper flakes, cinnamon stick, bay leaf, clove, caraway, and honey. Oh, and its grain bill, of course, includes rye.
There are those who love stunt beers and others (probably a greater number) who vehemently reject everything they’re about, but there are very few who can ignore them. They create headlines and social media buzz for brewers that don’t have the marketing resources of multibillion-dollar megas. They get people’s attention when most wouldn’t give them the time of day otherwise.