Believe it or not, a brewery in Fraserberg, Scotland, is selling a new Belgian blonde ale, and one of the selling points is that each bottle is packaged inside the dead, taxidermied carcass of a squirrel, hare or stoat. Some are even wearing offbeat costumes, including a hat and a tuxedo reminiscent of the Monopoly man.
The bizarre brewery behind the offbeat packaging is BrewDog, and it specializes in unusual, extra-strong brews with suitably edgy names like Punk IPA, Trashy Blonde and Tactical Nuclear Penguin.
Wait, What?
At $765 a bottle, Brewdog's "End of the World" is the most expensive beer ever made. It's 55 percent alcohol, and if that's not enough of a kick, each bottle is sold in a preserved animal's hide.However, the newest and most controversial brew is called something more portentous: The End of History.
You might think that the name refers to the use of road-killed rodents, but it is actually a paraphrasing of a famous quote by philosopher Francis Fukuyama from his 1992 book where he suggested the advent of Western liberal democracy may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government.
BrewDog owners are cheekily adopting the quote to imply that their new ale is to beer what democracy is to history.
How is that? Well, The End of History is more than just a beer bottled in dead animal bodies; it is being sold as the most alcoholic beer ever made -- a whopping 55 percent alcohol by volume. And this stiff drink comes with a stiff price: About $770 per bottle.
BrewDog co-founder James Watt, who has been pushing the alcoholic vanguard with his company's other brews, now feels there's a pint of no return, and he sees no reason to go further.
"For us, we are happy with getting the ABV to 55 percent!" Watt, 29, told AOL News. "This is the beer to end all beers. It's an audacious blend of eccentricity, artistry and rebellion; changing the general perception of beer one stuffed animal at a time."
To make the booze extra, uh, boozy, the brewers used an extreme freezing technique whereby the beer is kept at temperatures well below freezing to separate the water from the solution. The process was repeated dozens of times, requiring hundreds of liters of beer to be reduced to produce just enough for a 330 ml bottle.
That's the reason for the record-breaking cost.
Still, there's a lot of bang for those bucks, but Watt says the impact is lessened slightly by the infusion of juniper berries and nettles from the Scottish highlands.
Presumably, drinkers will not experience the formaldehyde-laced stench from the squirrel, hare or stoat they are drinking it from.
The whole brouhaha is obviously getting attention, and Watt and partner Martin Dickie see the cause celebre as a chance to protest what they believe is a campaign in the United Kingdom to keep beer from being truly respected and appreciated.
"We want to show people there is an alternative to monolithic corporate beers, introduce them to a completely new approach to beer and elevate the status of beer in our culture," Watt said, adding that he believes drinkers in the U.K. "are constrained by lack of choice; seduced by the monolithic corporate brewers' huge advertising budgets and brainwashed by vindictive lies perpetrated with the veracity of propaganda."
He says these drinkers "can't help but be sucked down the rabbit hole. We are on a mission to open as many people's eyes as possible."
And they did this by actually bottling their beer in dead rabbits.
For the record, all 12 animals used for the bottles were already dead before being immortalized.
"They were road kill and supplied by the taxidermist we commissioned to help us with the packaging," Watt said. "The very talented taxidermist who we commissioned took care of this for us. It was a complicated process and one that I don't think has been attempted before."
Although most of the attention on The End of History has been focused on the bottles (By the way, did you know the beer is bottled inside dead animals?), Watt doesn't feel the packaging is overshadowing the higher purpose.
"For us, this is an epic fusion of art, craft beer and taxidermy," he said. "It is about all elements of the project coming together to produce something which has never been done before."
It may never be done again. At least not by BrewDog. Watt says he and Dickie are focusing on other projects, including a Porter-style beer that they hope to brew on a fishing boat and making beers aged in Scotch whisky barrels with loads of raspberries in them.
Source:AOLnews.com
