Most of the beers we pour on our tours sit somewhere between 4% and 7% ABV, which is where the vast majority of good beer lives. But there's a strange, very online corner of the brewing world that's spent the last fifteen-odd years chasing the opposite extreme — beers pushed to 40%, 50%, even into the high 60s. Some of that story is genuinely interesting brewing science; a fair bit of it is marketing stunts. Here's an honest look at how strong beer actually gets, who's made the most extreme examples, and why we'd still rather hand you a proper tasting measure of something well-made than a shot glass of novelty 65% "beer".
How beer gets stronger than a spirit
Ordinary fermentation has a hard ceiling. Standard brewer's yeast starts struggling and eventually dies once the alcohol around it gets into the mid-teens percent, which is roughly why traditional strong ales — barley wines, doppelbocks — tend to cap out around 10-14% ABV even with a huge amount of sugar to work with. To go further, brewers either need much more alcohol-tolerant yeast strains, bred or selected specifically to survive further into the process, or they need to concentrate the alcohol after fermentation rather than create more of it during. The second method, freeze-distillation, is where most of the truly extreme beers on this list come from.
Freeze-distilling works because water and ethanol freeze at different temperatures — water first. Chill a strong beer down hard enough, skim off the ice that forms, and what's left behind is more concentrated in alcohol than what you started with. Do that once and you've essentially made a stronger, smaller batch of the same beer; that's the basic idea behind traditional German eisbock. Do it repeatedly, cycle after cycle, and you can push a beer that started at a sensible 10% up into spirit territory. It's a legitimate brewing technique with centuries of history behind it — it's just being used here for a very different purpose than a cosy winter eisbock.
The freeze-distilling arms race
The record for "world's strongest beer" has changed hands more than once, mostly among a small handful of breweries who seemed to enjoy the publicity as much as the brewing challenge. Germany's Schorschbräu, a small Franconian brewery, ran a Schorschbock series through the late 2000s and early 2010s that climbed from around 31% up past 40%, then 43%, then into the high 50s. Scotland's BrewDog jumped into the same race around 2010 with Tactical Nuclear Penguin (roughly 32%), then Sink the Bismarck (around 41%), then The End of History — a 55%-ish beer sold in taxidermy squirrel and stoat bottles, a stunt that generated exactly the headlines it was designed to. The Dutch brewery 't Koelschip briefly claimed the title too with Start the Future. Each of these figures gets quoted slightly differently depending on the source and the batch, and several were tiny, one-off runs rather than beers you could actually buy in any quantity — so treat any specific percentage you read, including the ones here, as an approximate, "as brewed at the time" figure rather than a fixed spec, and check a brewery's own site if you want their current claim.
The strongest beers around today
The current extreme end of the scale is largely owned by Brewmeister, a small brewery based in Keith, in the Scottish Highlands, whose Armageddon and Snake Venom have both been reported at somewhere in the mid-to-high 60s percent ABV, made with a combination of repeated freeze-distillation and a resilient yeast strain. These aren't beers with any real distribution — they're sold in small quantities, mostly as a novelty or a dare, and they arrive with serious warnings about how to drink them (think spirit measures, not pints). If you go looking, you'll also find American entries like Utopias from Samuel Adams' barrel-aged, uncarbonated "beer" sitting around 28-29% without any freeze-distillation at all, made purely by pushing fermentation and barrel-ageing as far as they'll go — a genuinely different, more traditional approach to high strength than the freeze-distilled novelties.
Britain's own entries
For a relatively small brewing scene, Britain has punched well above its weight in this particular niche — mostly Scottish, and mostly for the same reason: a small brewery can get an outsized amount of press by briefly holding "world's strongest beer." Brewmeister's Armageddon and Snake Venom are the current UK extremes; BrewDog's early-2010s run through Tactical Nuclear Penguin, Sink the Bismarck and The End of History is the more famous story, precisely because BrewDog were candid that publicity was as much the point as the beer itself. None of this really overlaps with what most British breweries make day to day — outside this novelty category, Britain's own "strong" beer tradition is barley wine (Fuller's Golden Pride and Thomas Hardy's Ale are the classic reference points, both around 8-12% depending on the vintage) — a world away from a freeze-distilled shot glass, and one that's actually meant to be enjoyed rather than survived.
Is any of it still "beer"?
This is the honest debate underneath all the headlines. Once you've freeze-distilled a beer down through a dozen cycles, what's left is thick, syrupy, usually uncarbonated, and drunk in 25-30ml measures rather than pints — it behaves and tastes far closer to a strong liqueur than anything you'd recognise from a taproom. It's legally still classed as beer in most places because it's made by fermenting malted grain and concentrating the result, rather than true distillation in a still, but plenty of brewers and drinks writers would argue these sit in a novelty category of their own, closer to a dare than a drink. We'd broadly agree — it's an interesting bit of brewing science and a good pub-quiz answer, but it's not really what we mean when we talk about craft beer on the rest of this blog.
Units, and why the maths matters here
The numbers get serious fast once you're talking about 60%+ ABV. A single small 330ml bottle at 65% works out to roughly 21 UK units — more than the entire 14-unit weekly guideline in one bottle, which is exactly why these are sold with strict per-person serving limits and heavy warnings rather than as a round at the bar. Even the more "everyday" strong end of the scale adds up quicker than people expect: an 8% imperial stout in a standard third-pint tasting measure is still over 2.5 units. If you want the actual maths for working out units from ABV and serving size, our guide to units in a pint of beer walks through it properly, and it's worth a read before you assume a "small" strong beer is a light option. It's also worth remembering that ABV, not just volume, drives the calorie count — our guide to calories in a pint of beer covers why a strong beer adds up faster than people expect there too.
Strong, but actually worth drinking
Our honest view, having run tasting tours since 2014, is that the interesting story in strong beer isn't the freeze-distilled novelties — it's the well-made styles that get to 8-12% through skill rather than a lab process: barley wines, imperial stouts, Belgian quads, barrel-aged specials. These are beers built to be sipped slowly in small measures, with real flavour development from the malt, the yeast and often a spell in oak, and they reward exactly the kind of tutored, unhurried tasting you get on a proper guided tour rather than a rushed pint — our guide to hosting a beer tasting at home has the same small-measures principle if you want to try it yourself before booking anything. If a brewery you visit has something like this on, ask for a smaller pour and take your time with it — it's a genuinely different experience to drinking a session IPA.
Where to try strong beer properly in London
If reading about 65% novelty beers has made you want to try something genuinely strong but actually good, skip the internet-order shot bottles and go somewhere that pours proper tasting measures with someone who knows what they're talking about. That's the format on our Bermondsey Beer Tasting Tour — 2-3.5 hours, £49 per person, beer included, across four independent taprooms in the Bermondsey railway arches, starting at Southwark Brewing Co, 46 Druid St, where you'll usually find at least one higher-strength stout or barley wine on the tasting list alongside the lighter styles. We also run private tastings for groups of 6 up to 60+ if you fancy putting a "strongest beer" theme night together for a work do or a birthday, and gift vouchers for any of our tours are bought directly on our gift vouchers page, delivered instantly by email and never expiring.