Innovation is a great thing, and it lies at the heard of craft brewing. But not every innovation works out. Some turn out to be New Coke. In our periodic segment Pass or Fail? we toss out some craft beer innovations that toe a new line. As noted by David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel, there’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.
This “Pass or Fail?” might be more a question of when is a beer not a beer? We travel across the pond to Scotland where Brewmeister has topped its own world record and released the world’s strongest beer, Snake Venom, which registers a 67.5 ABV and a 4 on the Richter Scale.
To get there, Brewmeister used smoked peat malt, beer yeast and champagne yeast. The fermented Snake Venom is then frozen and ice is removed to increase the beer’s concentration.
Brewers Lewis Shand and John McKenzie told Scotland’s Daily Record that Snake Venom was inspired when customers actually said Armageddon, the previous record holder at 65 percent, was “too weak.”
“Some even said they didn’t believe it was 65 percent, so this time we thought we’d go full out. We were too nice last time,” Lewis told the Daily Record.
Snake Venom will cost you $80 American dollars to purchase and it comes with a warning label.
What do we think? Great, boundary-pushing innovation? An intriguing gimmick? Shameless publicity stunt? A totally different answer where we don’t put words in your mouth? Vote for yourself in the comments section.
Fail! We at the BBA blindly sampled their previous effort that was supposed to clock in at 65% and were left sober.