Just a waste IMO. Yes, sometimes I want a strong beer, but sometimes I want to spend an afternoon drinking and chatting with a friend. But I still want something that tastes good in that case!

My favourite thing to come out of the craft brew movement recently is the renewed interest in session beers and generally great beers a 4% or lower. I love being able to drink lots of really nice and interesting beers and just not feel drunk.

The industry in Atlanta shifted to these types of beers right around the start of the pandemic. Every brewery here now has a lager, rice lager, or low-abv pale ale. The best is Halfway Crooks [1]!

[1] https://halfwaycrooks.beer/

Yeah the super-strong ones are fun to try every now and then, but having >2x the alcohol of a normal beer is not something to be taken lightly. I've found myself favouring lower ABV recently - I like drinking beer but I don't really like being drunk and at my age I do not handle hangovers well, (currently fighting through one)

Hardly a waste; I never do the “spend all afternoon drinking” thing these days, and if I really want to, well these strong stouts are excellent to sip over a fairly long period of time because they taste great slightly warmed up

17.2%?!? That led me down the rabbit hole to find out beers with very high alcohol content. Apparently Brewmeister Snake Venom, at ABV 67.5%, is the highest.

Yes those super high ones are usually freeze concentrated (partially frozen, then ice is removed which removes water, what is left is stronger) multiple times to reach such high ABVs.

The highest you will see actually fermented is usually around 18-20%, but there are specialty yeasts that can get up to 25%. Then you can get even higher with extended aging in spirit barrels where some ABV is picked up by absorbing residual spirit as well as evaporation increasing the strength. Sam Adams Utopias for example comes in at 28%

Worth mentioning, freezing and skimming ice is a clever distillation process. It’s also illegal under any other circumstances that distillation would be illegal, but nobody much cares.

Yeah these record breaking ones tend to come from Scotland where I assume it is legal. Or Eisbocks in Germany.

In the US I think it is technically illegal to make with a brewers license, though some breweries may make an Eisbock and sort of fly under the radar.

Brewing high ABV beers is actually quite the challenge, especially once it gets above about 10%.

The grain to strike water ratio changes so much that lautering often gets “stuck” due to the thick consistency of the grain bed.

It’s pretty easy to get into the ~15% range with the right yeast (champagne yeast is the best starting point) and attention to sugar conversion (I wish I could remember the details here but I haven’t brewed for about a decade) and importantly for beer, good ventilation. I had a barleywine that should have been in this range ferment for about 12 hours and it clogged the airlock, exploded the carboy, and generally ruined everyone’s day. But not the way it was supposed to ruin anyone’s day.

It's not so much a problem of the yeast and attenuation. Nottingham should be fine up to 14% and for a high gravity beer somewhere above 75% attenuation.

The issue is yield and lautering. The mash is so thick, or rather there's so much of it, that proceses need to be adjusted to account for that, and from experience yields are much lower in a typical entry level craft brewing system (400L).

I miss GreenFlash's Barleywine - they put up a retired baseball card-style poster with stats for it.

67.5% just sounds..bad. I'd be hard pressed to find a liquor that's easily drinkable at that ABV.

Something like Utopias by Sam Adams is 28%, and even at that point, you drink it more like a liquor than a beer.

Since his non-German internet presence isn't great and iirc there's no Wikipedia article abut him I'd like to mention Georg „Schorsch“ Tscheuschner of "Schorschbräu" fame. He's quite the character and famous in German (home-)brewing circles because he's always chasing those high percentages (via the mentioned ice technique called Eisbock in German). His creations include the world's strongest Lager (16%) a pretty stronger Weizen (13%) and his high percentage entry, the Schorschbock (57%).

The Tactical Nuclear Penguin is 32% and frankly that was too strong haha but an interesting experience

Sink the Bismark was an interesting experience too - much like drinking a whisky more so than a beer

Yes! That’s the other one I was thinking of. We literally sipped it like a whisky haha

Those are some heavy hitters, would love to try that collab if I ever find it!

If you can find it, I can’t recommend it enough. I bought a carton of it, twice, that’s how great it is (in my opinion). Don’t ask how much the carton was though haha

Dry Irish stouts, like Guinness, are good and despite their reputation, are not (and should not be) anywhere near that strong. They come in at ~4.2% abv, like most "light" beers.