World's most expensive beer - Samuel Adam's Utopias

Buying a case of craft beer for $28 is not bad these days. Most craft beers go for $8 per six-pack, with comparable specialty imports priced a bit higher. But four years ago I paid $28 for a single bottle of De Dolle Brouwers 20th-anniversary ale at a Belgian beer joint named Monk’s Café in Philadelphia. It was a remarkable 750-milliliter bottle that I split with three friends—but it still cost $28.

Think that’s crazy? Then so was the $45 I spent last month on a bottle of a fairly average cabernet-shiraz blend at a local restaurant. We’ve grown as accustomed to paying those prices for wine as we have to paying bottom-dollar prices for beer. But all that is changing as a handful of brewers challenge boundaries of formulation, vision, and marketing—and in the process open up craft beer to new price levels.

Consider the most expensive regularly released beer in the world, Samuel Adams Utopias, with a retail price between $120 and $160. The 2007 release of Utopias is also the world’s strongest beer, at 27 percent alcohol by volume. (Despite cries of “That’s not really beer!” Utopias certainly is beer. It was made from almost all malt, though small amounts of maple syrup were used; it was fermented to its full strength; and there was no distillation, fortification, or concentration used, which would be illegal under the terms of Boston Beer’s brewing license.) But that’s not why it’s so pricey. It’s a blend of rare and expensive aged beers, some dating back 13 years and most aged in a variety of barrels: bourbon, sherry, port, and scotch. There are, as company founder and president Jim Koch puts it, “a ton of ingredients in there, and it takes time measured in months and years.” The process also includes years of research and ideas that didn’t pan out, yeast breeding and training, the patience to hold onto the older beers, and careful blending. The bottle’s pretty nifty too: It’s an individually numbered, copper-toned decanter in the shape of a brew kettle, complete with working doors.

Beer is one of the oldest alcoholic beverage ever known, even the ancient Egyptians brewed beer. Beer is the most popular drink overall after water and tea. Samuel Adam's Utopias – world's most expensive beer which costs around $100 per bottle (24 oz) or about $65 per pint, sold in copper bottles resembling the copper brewing kettles, named after one of the founding fathers of the USA. Samuel Adam's Utopias it is strongest beer in the world, the alcohol content is 25%. The process of making this beverage can take up to 12 years, giving it the unique and rich flavors.
The production of world's most expensive beer was limited to 8,000 bottles per year.