"EXTREME BEERS"

I understand that there are now beers with as high an alcohol content as 27% by volume! They are called,"Extreme Beers." The Associated Press says so, so it must be true!

In Augsburg, Germany, in the U.S. Army, as a veterinary officer,I once had the job of doing a “sanitary inspection” of a German brewery. Well, I love to drink beer, but what I know about its production you could stick under the proverbial eyelid.

But, it was my job to inspect the brewery! Of course, I was treated with “great respect”; after all, the brewery officials wanted to sell beer to the U.S. Army.

Know what? At that time, over fifty years ago, the highest alcohol % in beer around the world was about 5%! Most beers were less than that; in Germany only “Christmas Beer” and “Easter Beer” had about 5%.

I asked the brew master at the brewery I was inspecting about that. He told me the yeast used to make beer would die at a higher alcohol percentage!

Well, many of my American military friends touted German beer, and flaunted the idea that they would really, really get tipsy on a couple of German beers! Ha ha! Only problem was that what they thought was the alcohol percentage was what the Germans called “Grad,” namely about 12%! Actually the designation “Grad” referred to the percentage of solids in the beer, not at all the alcohol percentage!

Most, if not all, of them did not know that “Grad” had nothing to do with the alcohol percentage in the beer they were drinking; in most cases the beer had the usual 3 to 4% alcohol.

So much for the so-called “placebo effect”: If you think that something is true, it is. For many people that is.

As any good physician does, I came to use this concept on occasion in the delivery of health care. That is, after I became a human doctor. "Whatever works," if it does not cause harm! (And, so long as it is not a haven for quacks and snake oil salesmen.)

So, what do I think now about “extreme beers”? (Made with “engineered” yeast.)
I think it is fine – so long as you do not call it beer!

Dallas B. Tuthill, D.V.M, M.D.