Just for a second, imagine your personal end of beer. Would it be a Holy Grail of a Pilsner, or an IPA brewed with a historically accurate recipe? Would it have the freshest of ingredients, or the most sophisticated technology behind it? Would you have brewed it yourself? Would you find yourself unable to open the bottle, simply cherishing the fact that you found it without needing to know of the taste? For the Scottish company BrewDog, the Holy Grail of beer is served in a free-standing stoal or squirrel.
Known for their Tactical Nuclear Penguin, an American imperial stout of 32% alcohol by volume fame, Brewdog also produced the lesser known Sink the Bismark IPA with a 41% APV that snatched the extreme-beer crown from Sam Adams’ Utopia. Now, the microbrewery has reached what they are dubbing the ‘end of beers’. To make the occasion even more astounding, the Aberdeen brewery decided to name said brew ‘The End of History’.
In the blog note released today, BrewDog promises that the End of History is “the last high abv beer we are going to brew, the end point of our research into how far the can push the boundaries of extreme brewing, [and] the end of beer.”
The devil, however, is in the details. EoH is a 55% APV Belgian blonde featuring nettles and juniper berries, was made through an intense freezing process outlined in this absurd video:
The End of History from BrewDog on Vimeo.
The cost is also pretty surreal at $765 per 12 oz bottle, thanks to the limited 11-bottle run. Each bottle comes with a perfectly frame-able certificate of authenticity and a roadkill kozie. Yes, you read that right: the world’s most alcoholic beer to date comes with either a dead stoat or squirrel, lovingly restored to its original form and sometimes appropriately dressed for the occasion. If you ever manage to finish a bottle, you won’t have to worry, either. The kozie is removable, and will feel right at home over a bottle of your favorite 12 ounce sud, even if its APV is likely to be a little less extreme.
It’s hard to believe that anyone will buy this with the intent to open it. It’s even harder to believe that BrewDog will actually cease research into extreme brewing methodology. However, I genuinely believe this is a bit of a legend in the making.
These bottles will most likely exist for years in beer cellars and on mantlepieces, floating around for thousands of dollars on Ebay and existing as a hysterical punch-line for anyone who has heard of extreme beer. Even better than its instantaneous liability to become one of craft beer’s more impressive inside jokes is the fact that the End of History has exquisite marketing.
In EoH, BrewDog has mixed together so many things that would make anyone proud to drink beer: great food chemistry, bleeding edge technology, a knack for collaboration, quite a bit of danger and a sense of good natured (if absurdist) humor. BrewDog will likely also enjoy quite a bit of kickback on all of their suds, thanks to the new droves of aficionados that are rolling the name around at their local beer stores.
It kind of makes you wonder if anyone would be theatrical enough to pop a bottle of such caliber. As for the fact that person would be drinking it out of a squirrel? Well, that just makes it better.
Has extreme gotten too extreme?
If you had the $765 laying around, would you buy a bottle?
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
love the packaging, but i question whether with the methods they use to reach this high of an abv means it still qualifies as beer…
I’ve been wondering my that myself, actually. But that’s brewdog for you, I suppose.
I’m very much of two minds about this. To me, beer is something to be enjoyed and shared. It’s a social beverage. But I also think it’s fun and exciting (in limited amounts) to see brewers pushing the boundaries of beer and how we perceive it. But many of these boundary pushing brews are things I am interested to try, but often not more than once(especially at $765). “The end of History” is a cool experiment if it’s kept in context as a marketing ploy, and we remember that Brewdog doesn’t just make these monstrous ABV beers, but more modestly delicious ones as well.
HG, I also agree that these are barely beers anymore. The freeze-distilling process makes me think of them as bierschnapps or something.
“’The end of History’ is a cool experiment if it’s kept in context as a marketing ploy…”
I completely agree. Sometimes companies can get so caught up in the PR, that they sacrifice credibility and this can end up hurting their business in the long run.
“HG, I also agree that these are barely beers anymore. The freeze-distilling process makes me think of them as bierschnapps or something.”
Again, I agree. Perhaps these high ABV beers should have their own classification.
It’s funny you mention that, Andrew: BrewDog’s gotten quite the impressive backlash from community sites like BeerAdvocate and RateBeer, as did Mikkeller’s 1000 IBU IPA. I can only chalk this up from drinkers becoming very tired of brands that focus specifically on solving the extreme-beer puzzle at the sake of really not promoting their great stable of modest Abv beers. BrewDog certainly falls into that category, as does Mikkeller, unfortunately.
Furthermore, I think the mainstream response to the end of history didn’t actually come from a place of genuine promotion, but from a place of amusement. Most sites focused on the squirrel, not the beer. I can understand how some could resent a brewery that garners such mainstream attention without actually putting the beer itself on display.
I’d like to point out that I think the word ‘biershnapps’ is amazing, and a far better term than ‘extreme beer’ which makes me think of x-games stuntmen trying to plug craft sud while pulling some death defying stunt.
The end of history is awesome as a marketing ploy, but it would behoove BrewDog to actually talk up their excellent twos, threes and tens as much as they talk up a 55% abv beer. Sure, the squirrel’s not included but…