Ken (K. M.) Weaver

The Most Wanted Beers in the World – Part 1

For a while I’ve toyed around with the idea of making a “Top XX Rarest Beers in the World” list – but in a rigorous way. I don’t believe anyone’s done so, in part because it would be a numerical nightmare, and in part because it would imply that the person making it had a concerning amount of free time. My last article included bottles with cutout boxing gloves, so that second point’s kinda moot.

You would need two things: a honest valuation or market value for a particular beer, and a way to evaluate that beer’s current availability. The former could take into account trade forum history (what it was traded for; what wasn’t enough), its Ratebeer rankings, number of people listing the beer on their want lists, etc. The latter would have to account for initial bottling numbers (or volume produced, or something!) and include a time-dependent degradation model, i.e. some method of predicting how much of a beer made years ago still exists. Boggles the mind.

And any such list, of course, would be constantly changing.

Having spent the last few years trying to track down many of these elusive beers, I seem to be in a reasonably appropriate position to offer, at the very minimum, an overview of them – of highlighting some of the greatest beers ever produced that you’ll never find at your local bottle shop. Beers that you’ve possibly never heard of. Beers that, should you ever happen to find them, you’ll probably never forget.

(© Anneliese Schmidt)

Part 1 – The Classics

Let’s take a step back for a moment. There are about 100,000 unique beers listed on Ratebeer right now. There are countless people actively collecting and trading beers. There are rare bottles that sell at auction for hundreds of dollars or more.

And while many of these development have occurred over the last ten years, it’s important (and this is so frequently lost from sight by recently turned beer geeks) to keep in mind that there’s a long and complicated history preceding everything. For me, the following beers remind me of that. All of them were last released on or before 2000, all of them (to varying degrees) are difficult or impossible to track down today, and all of them represent a high-water mark within brewing history.

If someone were to somehow assemble a “Top XX Rarest Beers in the World” list, at or near the top of it would be 3 Fonteinen’s Framboos (Framboise). Currently in the top spot on Ratebeer’s Top 50 Retired Beers list, this raspberry lambic appeared as an occasional release from one of the finest lambic producers in the world (known vintages include 1999 and 1985-87). Trade forum requests for Framboos have gone unanswered for as long as I can remember… Following in the formidable shadow of Framboos are the decade-past releases of 3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze 1998 (50th Anniversary) and 3 Fonteinen Millennium Geuze, both of which are pre-2000 geuzes that are similarly all-but-impossible to find now.

(© Anneliese Schmidt)

Slightly less rare but equally iconic is Rodenbach Alexander. Many beer lovers are familiar with the current offerings from Rodenbach, but this particular beer hasn’t been released since shortly after Palm took control of the brewery in 1998. Alexander had seen distribution in the States up until then, and the decision by Palm to pull the plug in early 2000 was met with harsh criticism. This time- and cost-intensive Flemish Red, first made in 1986 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the brewery’s co-founder, can still occasionally be found or traded for, and certain well-cellared examples continue to hold up beautifully.

One of the most historic rare beer releases in the U.S. came from P. Ballantine & Sons of Newark, and it was never actually offered for sale. Ballantine Burton Ale was made by the brewery (since purchased by Narragansett Brewing in 1967) as gifts for employees and friends. A far more comprehensive history can be found in The Beer Lover’s article here. At 10%+ ABV, heavily hopped, and aged from 7 to 20 years (!) before bottling, this remains a beer worth seeking out even today. My only opportunity to sample this oxidized monolith of a barley wine (brewed 1946, bottled 1964) was generously provided by the very same Beer Lover.

(© Anneliese Schmidt)

Perhaps just alongside Framboos in terms of rarity and critical regard is De Dolle Stille Nacht Reserva 2000. I’ve mentioned elsewhere the difficulty of acquiring remaining bottles of this beer, which saw limited U.S. distribution back in 2000 or so. While the acquisition of Rodenbach by Palm in 1998 ultimately led to the demise of Alexander, it also seems to have played a small part in the creation of this amazing beer (long story short: Palm stops letting De Dolle borrow Rodenbach’s proprietary yeast, De Dolle tries reusing said yeast, bottles of Stille Nacht explode, Reserva 2000 is born… This may only relate to a portion of the bottling). Just behind SNR 2000 is their Speciaal Brouwsel 20, a sour ale released back in 2000 to commemorate the brewery’s 20th anniversary. (Note: there have also been occasional bottles of the rarer original 1980 Speciaal Brouwsel made available at the Kulminator).

The last beer I think is worth including on this particular list of the “Classic” most wanted beers is Samuel Adams Millennium. Released at the turn of the century in very limited quanties (3,000 bottles at $200 apiece), this was really one of the first purposefully limited releases with an enormous price tag. Utopias gets all the press when it’s released each year, but this retired 20% American Strong Ale is significantly more difficult to track down at this point, occasionally popping up on eBay. This was one of the first major U.S. rare beer releases and (both historically and for the purposes of this article) serves as an indication of things to come.

———————————————————————————————–

Coming up: I haven’t forgotten about Stone’s Vertical Epic releases, the newer 3 Fonteinens, or those plastic bottles from Hair of the Dog that auction for $800+…

Part 2 of this article can be found here.

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Username (required) :
Email (required) :
Web Site :
Comment :

CAPTCHA Code