THE JOURNAL
Marshmallow Handjee Dark Lord. Photograph courtesy of 3 Floyds Brewing Co
And four other rare craft brews that live up to their hype.
They are known among hopheads as “white whales”: beers so rare and so exalted that their pursuit takes on the status of Captain Ahab’s monomaniacal hunt for Moby Dick in Mr Herman Melville’s famous novel. Some of these beers have special days devoted to them; others require pilgrimages to obscure sections of the Belgian countryside. A few appear for a limited time only and are never to be seen again. But many of them have inspired cults and disciples who go into raptures about the particular tarry mouthfeel of a Russian imperial stout, or the precise hoppiness of a triple IPA.
For while pouring yourself an obscure craft beer isn’t really the same as harpooning an albino sperm whale, it can be almost as much of an adventure.
The rarest beers in the world can be expensive, to be sure, but the most expensive beers are nothing like as expensive as the most expensive wines. Persistence, contacts, insider knowledge: all are going to be as useful as raw cash. It’s enough to make you kind of thirsty. Wet your whistle on these five.
Marshmallow Handjee Dark Lord by 3 Floyds Brewing Co (US)
Each spring on Dark Lord Day, 3 Floyds Brewing Co of Munster, Indiana, makes available about 900 or so bottles of its 15 per cent ABV Russian imperial stout for those assiduous enough to book their tickets on time. It’s become something of a rite in craft-beer circles – a full festival has burgeoned around the brew – so much so that true hopheads roll their eyes and say: “Meh… it’s a bit too sweet anyway.” But the thing they get super-excited about is the Dark Lord variants: the limited-edition limited editions, if you will. If you’re really persistent, you might get your hands on a bottle of Marshmallow Handjee, your regular old Dark Lord aged in bourbon barrels with vanilla pods. “Here is a beer that is truly a liquid marshmallow flavour experience. Not only is that the flavour, but it coats the mouth and stays for days,” drools one disciple.
Snake Venom by Brewmeister (UK)
Although (we hope) it is probably not your go-to beer, we assume you are familiar with Tennent’s Super, the double-hard Scottish lager much prized for its nine per cent ABV rating. Perhaps you’ve been known to order some Belgian Trappist brews, which come with the alcohol content of a punchy New World wine. Well, not that it’s a competition or anything, but Keith Brewery in Moray, Scotland, has come up with a beer that at 67.5 per cent ABV is about on a par with absinthe. It’s too alcoholic to be fizzy or to hold a head, and so it looks a lot like whisky. In fact, it pretty much is whisky, albeit with a few more hops. The brewers recommend no more than 35ml per person per sitting. You have been warned.
Pliny The Younger by Russian River Brewing Company (US)
Pliny The Elder is one of the most admired of the Californian IPAs, among the purest examples of the high-strength double-IPA style, with notes of grass and pine. Each February, the same brewers release a small amount of its younger nephew, Pliny The Younger, which they assure us is “extremely difficult, time-and-space consuming, and very expensive to make”. It’s a triple IPA, which means it has three times the hops of a regular IPA, so you can expect whopping amounts of pine, grass, citrus and pineapple flavours (some also report “sticky cannabis and allium”, though that may be the hops talking). It’s only available on draft at the brewery in Santa Rosa, and a few selected distributors around central California.
Blåbær Lambik by Cantillon (Belgium)
A European beer-o-phile could be forgiven for getting a little green-eyed at the American cult beers they will never get to try: Hill Farmstead’s honey saison Ann from Vermont, which has only ever been sold twice, by lottery; Kentucky Brunch Brand Stout, of which 300-400 bottles are released each year and which has actually prompted forgeries. But the shoe is on the other foot when it comes to Cantillon, the Brussels-based family brewery that is the pre-eminent producer of lambic beers, made with wild local yeasts that impart a dry, sour flavour. They’re incredibly hard to find in the US, but relatively easy to come by in Europe. Except, that is, for its limited-edition bilberry beer, sold exclusively at the Ølbutikken bottle shop in Copenhagen... which closed in 2015. Good luck with that! Or simply go for the *slightly* easier to find apricot Fou’Foune.
Westvleteren XII by Brouwerij Westvleteren (Belgium)
For reasons best known to themselves, the Trappist monks at Sint-Sixtusabdij in Vleteren, Belgium, spend their lives praying to God, contemplating His (or Her) creation and making one of the finest beers known to humanity. “Westy 12” is perhaps the most sought-after rare beer in the world, a Belgian Quadrupel, sold in unlabelled bottles in highly limited quantities since they only make as much as they need to fund their meagre lifestyles. You have to drive to the abbey to get some and only after pre-arranging a time slot in accordance with the monks’ schedule – if you can get them to answer the phone. One aficionado reports paying $45 for 24 bottles, but cases often resell for 10 or 20 times that. Expect cherry, plum, prunes, caramel, toffee, hazelnuts and a story to tell.
Have a rare old time
