Sierra Nevada Brewing released Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in 1981, roughly a year after opening in Chico, California.
The beer recipe consisted of two malts, yeast, and an American-grown hop variety called cascade. Nothing about it would be considered unorthodox by today's standards. However, in 1981, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was undoubtedly an outlier, a notice to the status quo, and in our estimation, American craft beer's first extremely weird beer.
The beer was considered too bitter.
Too hoppy.
Too aggressive.
To beer drinkers, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was weird.
In 1980, the American beer-scape was quite different from today. Breweries were dwindling. National Prohibition had shuttered many of the country's regional beer makers. Those who survived fell victim to a consolidating industry where breweries produced an increasingly homogenized product.
It wasn't just beer that had become increasingly uniform. In the 1970s and '80s, Americans had become accustomed to microwavable TV dinners, shelf-stable white bread, and instant coffee. A nation on the go had no time for scratch meals, bread made from whole grains, or a pour-over. Americans were opting for convenience at the cost of flavor and variety.
During this time the beer industry predicted that by the turn of the century, America would be dominated by just three breweries.
Boy, were they wrong!
Sierra Pale Ale, and the countless weird beers that came after it, galvanized a nascent community of specialty breweries popping up nationwide. These beer makers were dissatisfied with America's beer offerings, having experienced different beers around the world. They knew that beer could be more than bland and fizzy. These pioneers reshaped the beer industry in America and, by doing so, introduced Americans and, eventually, the rest of the world to these arguably weird beers.
By today's standards, Sierra Pale is anything but weird. However, it pushed the boundaries of the beers of the day. Boundary pushing is an excellent way to define weird beer. Extreme brewing takes beer to another level with strength, flavor, and ingredients used. Weird brewing is brewing beers that make beer drinkers take notice.
Craft brewers and craft beer may seem weird to the unaccustomed, but in an era with more than 9,500 breweries, what was once extremely weird may seem tame today. So, you tell us, below, are 13 weird beers that turned beer drinkers' heads when they were released.
The average beer is 5.5 percent alcohol. Standard beer yeast can't survive much higher than 9%, and alcohol-tolerant yeast may check out around 18%, so pushing your beer past that takes much skill – and maybe some weird beer methods.
Like Sierra Nevada, Boston Beer, makers of Sam Adams, were early innovators of extreme beers in America. Their Sam Adams Triple Bock deserves a nod for an early weird beer and was one of the first barrel-aged beers of the craft era. At 28 percent alcohol, Sam Adams Utopias drinks like a top-shelf brandy, rich, complex, and packing a punch.
Pretty much anything one would consider weird in beer, Scottish brewer BrewDog has said, hold my, well, you know. The End of History is just one of their eye-popping alcoholic beers. BrewDog's The End of History clocks in at a whopping 55 percent alcohol but gets extra credit for the outer packaging of taxidermized squirrels acting as a very extreme beer koozie.
There is nothing weird about strong beer in Germany. Monastic monks brewed Doppelbock for centuries, even those topped at around 7 percent ABV. We're curious if any monks are on staff at Schorschbrau, makers of the ice bock, Schorschbock 43, but can't imagine them finishing their vocational duties if all they drank was this 43 percent monster for 40 days.
Like Schorschbock 43, Italian brewer Baladin's Espirit de Noel gets its high alcohol content from a process known as ice distillation. Ice distillation concentrates the beer by freezing and removing the water as ice from the beer. The result is a complex, and highly alcoholic drink. Is it a beer if it is distilled, however? At 40 percent, who cares?
Beer is made from water, malt, hops, and yeast. Well, yeah, but if your goal is to brew an extremely weird beer, the German Purity Law does not apply. Brewers have long used alternative ingredients to brew beer out of necessity, novelty, or to brew a beer with nuance.
High-alcohol beers are plenty extreme and not for the faint-hearted, but what about a beer with balls? What's that, you say? That's right, this stout from Denver's Wynkoop Brewing is brewed with a local delicacy, bison testicles. Literal balls! Which, in the Mountain West, are known as Rocky Mountain Oysters. The beer was originally an April Fools prank devised by legendary beer marketer Marty Jones. However, it struck a nerve(?) with beer fans, so much so that the brewery brewed several beer iterations and even canned it. Now that's ballsy.
One such brewery is Singapore's Brewerkz, whose NEWBrew is made from recycled toilet water. Obviously, the water has been treated and deemed safe to brew with a drink. Score one for extreme beers that are making a difference!
Sunken ship beer? Extremely interesting! SeaKing is a beer made by New York state's Saint James Brewery. St. James brewed a beer with yeast found in bottles salvaged from the wreck of the SS Oregon. The ship sank in 1886! That's some ancient yeast!
In 1981, Sierra Pale Ale was priced at 85 cents per bottle; Sierra Pale Ale was nearly double the average domestic beer price. A lot has changed since then. Today we're buying $18 four packs. But nothing compares to some of these pricey beers. Despite rising prices, beer is for the people, so it will always be weird to buy a beer for the price of a bottle of top-shelf bourbon.
What would you pay to get your hands on a beer that was so exclusive that only 30 bottles were made? That's the case for Nail brewing's Antarctic Nail Ale. The beer was brewed with ice retrieved in Antarctica by the famous animal rights boat, the Sea Sheppard. Proceeds from the sale of the beer went back to the vessel to help continue their anti-whaling efforts. The beer is currently available for around $800 on secondary markets.
What's weird for one beer drinker may be normal for another. It may seem like weird beers have gone too far in today's beer world, but we wouldn't have it any other way. Pushing the boundaries in brewing is what craft beer is all about. The danger is that if every brewery is brewing the same type of weird, aren't they all creating the same product? What's the point of pushing boundaries if we aren't making beers that people will want to drink?
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale became a symbol in protest of the status quo. Perhaps as beers become stronger, stranger, and more expensive, some will protest modern weird beers by reinventing traditional beers. What goes around comes around, and it may be that pushing the boundaries of beer will end up moving us in a circle. A simple pale ale with cascade hops? Wouldn’t that be weird?
The fun doesn't have to stop here - you can always explore BreweryDB for more "weird" beers. Browse more than one hundred thousand brews and craft your next brewery experience today!