Ice Beer

I had an "eisbier"--not an Eisbock--from Herrenhausen, a pretty large German brewery in Hannover. They talked it up during our tour and everyone wanted to sample it first. I think it's safe to say that no one went back for seconds on that one. Perhaps the worst beer I had while in Germany.

 

Eisbock is the only real style of commerical ice beer. Its tough to do on the microbrewery level. I know a brewery that was making 20 gallons (4 cornies) so they could put it in a chest freezer to make there Eisbock. On a large scale its hard.

I did once freeze a keg of Brooklyn Pilsner...made an excellent Maibock, and was able to trick many BJCP judges that it was in fact a Maibock..

Other than that there are the ice ciders in Canada. But I think the apples are frozen and pressed not the fermented beverage.

 

Brewdog uses that method to make Tactical Nuclear Penguin and maybe others, I'm not too familiar with their offerings.

 

There is one from Capital in Wisconsin that is good if I remember

 

Jubel 2010

 

De Struise Black Damnation V
End of History
Sink the Bismarck!

A lot of these are:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/ratebeer/?path=/Ratings/TopAlcohol.asp

 

It's their Eisbock called EisPhyre

 

Brasseurs du Monde in Quebec sells a brewery-only Ice Porter. Very good stuff.

 

Didn't Hair of the Dog do this to make Dave?

 

Oxbow did some sort of eisbier experiment with Saison Noel and made a lighter, lower ABV version called Leon (Noel backwards). It was excellent once Christmas/New Years passed, from 8-9% to 5% made it much more sessionable.

 

As far as I know, your first sentence is true, but your second sentence is not because when an "ice" beer is made by a Macro company, there is no water removed from the beer because the beer is stored in an "iced" atmosphere thus it is lighter in body and the contents it is made from such as corn and rice adjuncts need a temperature that relies on a "cold" atmosphere to produce a "faux" ice beer.

To answer your question, I do not know of any craft brewery that makes an "ice beer", but I'm unsure if that style is recognized by Beer Advocate.

 

Do you have any "sources" to back up your claim?

Ice beer, whether done by the big boys or microbrewers, is made via freeze distilllation.

 

I believe it was something similar. They definitely froze Adam many times to amp up the abv%.

 

New Glarus did this in 2006 or 2007. I was fortunate enough to get a bottle from a brewer friend. Apparently they partnered with a company near by that makes ice cream and used their freezers to store this beer there. I never had it fresh but it's one of, if not, the best barleywine I've had the pleasure to try.

 

Dave HOTD

 

50/50 iced Eclipse and Iced BART

 

You are incorrect in your idea of how a macro ice beer is made. The base beer (Bud, Busch, etc..) is ran through an ammonia cooler on its way to the finishing tanks. Ammonia boils @ 19 degrees in this particular cooler, thus crystallizing some of the water in the beer which is strained out as the beer leaves the cooler. So some water is removed, thus the slightly higher ABV in macro ice beers. The beers are stored in the exact same environment as every other beer produced by the brewery.

 

Surly four was an iced milk/coffee stout

 

I actually tried to make some myself with success...

I purposely froze 6 bottles of Wookey Jack that I got 2 for $5...


Just enough to fill up a growler from 6 bottles...


As you can see, still plenty of carbonation...


Definitely alot smoother...we killed the whole growler and I definitely had a good buzz going on...

Cheers!