Some geeky statistics...

It is always fun with the unnecessary statistics about beers. I guess this is not so new but it is actually the first time for me where I found a list of the top IBU rated beers. You quite often discuss about what the beers with the highest IBU actually is or how the IBU is when it does not say on the bottle (often the case).

You guess it must be the Dogfish Head 120 Minutes IPA, but I have heard and tasted even more high level IBU beers.

So here is some interesting urls (at least for my geeky interests);

100 Most Alcoholic Beers (ABV)
100 Most Bitter Beers (IBUs)

And if you are wondering about the "winner" (if this is something to achieve) with the massive number of 2007 IBUs. I have to inform you that this is a Danish beer experiments from Mikkeller (beating all the US-hop monsters, and that I actually tested in Denmark during the beer festival in Copenhagen.

Here is some information about the beer from the brewer himself (they are actually 2)

Mikkeller X Hop Juice 2007 IBU



This beer is unrated by me because it was just a fun experiment and you can not actually say what it tasted because with that amount of hop it simply does not taste anything that has to do with beer, you just feel the bitterness.

High level IBU beers are something that I often enjoy, but you have to feel the difference between the bitterness and the rest of the beer to be able to be enjoyable. If it is just bitter there is no beer experience at all. And the secret is to combine that in a balanced way, sounds easy but you often see extreme example that proves that you can not create a great beer just with spicing it with loads of hops. It’s like saying that a crappy meat dish with bad quality meat could be a masterpiece just because you spice it until it is just "spicy".

Anyway it was interesting to taste and was surely a big it if you check the number of people that actually queued to get an "undrinkable" beer! picture below from the festival;



More statistics, has anyone heard about or actually tasted the number 1 beer regarding ABV? (If you skip Dave from Hair of the dog that is a retired beer).

Hakusekikan Eisbock 28%

A just remember one thing... beware the Hop Monster!