For the past couple of years, the battle for the world’s strongest beers has been between the Scottish BrewDog and the German brewery Schorschbräu, with the last volley mere days ago with BrewDog’s controversial 55% The End of History. Seemingly out of nowhere a new contender for the title emerged. The Dutch brewer Brouwerij Het ‘t Koelship announced today they’re releasing a new beer, Start the Future, no doubt a response to BrewDog’s name for their 55% beer. Start the Future is 60% a.b.v.
Here’s ‘t Koelship’s description, as auto-translated by Google:
It presents Reefer Biggest beer in the world now the Scots a 55% beer on the market was the question: what do we do now? He is START THE FUTURE 60% alc. In response to the Scottish reaction; Obilix 45% was a success, but this is even better!
START THE FUTURE is like a beer OBILX product, a heavy alcoholic drink with the ingredients Water, malt, hops and yeast. The beer is then processed into a product, a beer-based beer product. START THE FUTURE is like OBILIX is a product made of 100% beer beer. How? Ask the brewer. You drink our START THE FUTURE and Obilix from a small glass and not from a beer glass.
According to Reuters:
Nijboer’s Almere-based brewery, ‘t Koelschip (The Refrigerated Ship), sells the new beer, which is 120 proof and dubbed “Start the Future,” in a one-third litre bottle for 35 euros ($45) each.
Nijboer told ANP he developed the new brew to keep up with Scottish outfits that were also pushing the boundaries of beer’s alcohol content. His previous record-holder, a beer called Oblix that was 90 proof (45 per cent alcohol by volume), was eclipsed by a Scottish beer that reached 55 per cent.
“It has become a little competition,” Nijboer said. “You should see it as a joke.”
It’s probably not a coincidence that the brewery also operates a distillery, too.
Below is a bad photo of the bottle, from ‘t Koelship’s website.
UPDATE: It looks like the Start the Future may have whisky added to it, making it doubtful most people will consider it a beer. (Thanks to Ken W. for the info.) The controversy is unfolding on Rate Beer — and probably elsewhere — where many people are questioning that this is truly a beer.
Even Schorsch from Schorschbräu weighed in:
What Mr. Nijboer is doing is not only trying to fool all others who do a fair contest (at the moment I got 43% Vol) and I will try more, but not for the price of leaving the way of Reinheitsgebot (German purity law). It’s a regional special German law and I do not expect that beer must be produced in that way worldwide…but what Koelschip does is pure customer deception. This is also illegal by national Dutch law.