By SPIKE CARTER

Craft breweries have been producing high-alcohol, fizzless beers for years now. And when faced with the smooth, complex results, drinkers are beginning to convert.

It’s been a while since beer has been simply a yellow, fizzy beverage—craft breweries have worked long and hard to add a whole artist’s palette of colors to what we now think of as “beer.”

But what about the “fizzy” part?

Some niche producers have been releasing beers absent of carbonation altogether, blurring stylistic boundaries in the process.

The recipes chosen for this style of flat beer are predominantly big and bold (often with alcohol contents rivaling wine or even spirits), and have generally been released in re-sealable containers. Since there are no bubbles to let out, there’s no rush to imbibe an entire bottle in one sitting. It’s beer you can drink and store pretty much like whiskey.

Here, some noteworthy examples of this palate-expanding approach to “beer.” While some are currently unavailable, to understand the present it’s helpful to learn about the past…

De Struise Brouwers – Cuvée Delphine on Steroids (C-DOS) a.k.a. Pablo Eiscobar

Belgium’s De Struise Brouwers are experts in the art of eisbocking (a process of freeze-distilling beer, shedding water and thusly yielding higher alcohol and more concentrated flavor). De Struise’s take on this 19th century German technique is decidedly postmodern—their 2010 cult classic Double Black had a whopping 26% alcohol by volume. For the newer, fizzless brew, C-DOS, the brewers started with Double Black’s base beer Cuvée Delphine, which is a stout aged in Four Roses bourbon barrels. They double-eisbock the concoction to 41% ABV, and then mature it a second time in an Arran Lochranza Scotch barrel. The whisky-like final product pours black as midnight on a moonless night, with a smokey bouquet and chocolatey palate.

Hair of the Dog Brewing Company – Dave

America’s godfather of producing big beers in small batches, Alan Sprints of Portland, Oregon’s Hair of the Dog Brewing Company, still works on a four barrel (120 gallon) system, yielding just 600 barrels annually. His 1994 masterpiece of eisbocking, Dave, has retained a long-held “white whale” status amongst craft beer traders. The beer began life as an early batch of the brewery’s flagship barleywine Adam, which underwent freezing until only ⅓ of the batch remained, clocking in at 29% ABV. Every once in awhile, Mr. Sprints pulls bottles of Dave from the brewery’s bunker to sell for charity (last time at $2,000 a bottle), with profligate Captain Ahabs snatching them up in short order. Underneath a tobacco-heavy aroma lie gracefully-aged sweet flavors of burnt caramel and vanilla bean.

BrewDog – The End of History

In 2009 the provocative Scottish duo BrewDog launched began freeze-distilling utterly monstrous, mind-roasting high alcohol beers, starting with one called Tactical Nuclear Penguin (32% ABV). They ended up in a testosterone-fueled competition with German brewers Schorschbräu to try and make the most alcoholic brew ever, and BrewDog’s final effort was the aptly named The End of History at 55% ABV. (Schorschbräu fired back, stealing the dubious throne with a 57.5% ABV eisbock.) Yielding just 12 nearly $800 bottles outrageously packaged in taxidermy stoats and grey squirrels—reportedly roadkill, before you ask—the contents of The End of History have more in common with eau de vie than beer, with big notes of juniper, berries and caramel-apple. 

Read the rest at Bloomberg Pursuits

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