Maltose Falcons

 There is usually plenty of enthusiasm among homebrewers for “big” beers. Many of the recent trends in homebrewing have pursued versions of existing styles with more alcoholic strength and requisite flavor presence to them (example: Double IPA), and there’s been an ongoing dialogue on such subjects within the Maltose Falcons’ membership. This is certainly appropriate. From one perspective, we might expect this in our market-driven culture with its ever-present hype, where “more is preferred to less” as the economists would say.

Recently I was speaking with a non-brewer friend of mine about high gravity/alcohol beer. He asked me why wine seems to always fall into the 10-15% range while beer is typically 4-7% by volume. His jaw dropped when I told him about beers such as George Mahoney's Frankenale measuring an insane 27% and that Hair of the Dog makes Dave, a beer that holds the dubious high-gravity record at 29% (this is an eis fortified beer). The conversation got me thinking; why is it typically that a solid proletariat beverage like beer has 2-3 times less alcohol than a hoity-toity drink like wine?