$1000 beer goes on sale in Vancouver

It’s billed as the most expensive beer on the market in B.C. and this weekend, the new brew went on sale at an East Vancouver brewery.

Storm Brewing is selling 10 artisan bottles of Glacial Mammoth Extinction, a first-of-its-kind beer in Canada.

A single bottle of the rare sour beer costs more than most people’s rent, ringing in at $1,000.

Brewer James Walton told Global News he froze the beer into one big, solid ice cube at -30 degrees Celsius, a process that took him about a month to complete.  He says the ice that formed let him pull out all the water from the brew, leaving behind nothing but concentrated beer. It was then aged in French oak barrels for two years until it was ready.

He says the final product came out tasting quite sweet, almost like a port, with alcohol content of nearly 25 per cent, up from the usual 11 per cent.

“It tastes delicious to me, but I am somewhat biased,” Walton added.

But is not what is inside the bottle, but the bottle itself that makes the beer so expensive.

Walton says the bottles that the beer comes in were made by a local glassblower and adorned with mammoth ivory, also made by a local artist. The brewery says the ivory used for these pendants is from a tusk estimated to be 35,000-years-old,  complimented with a 14K gold clasp.

The beer is a limited edition, with only 10 bottles on the market.

“But it is not for swilling back,” Walton said. “Take a little shot glass and sip it like you would port or ice wine.”

And, if you don’t have $1000 to spend on a bottle of beer, growler fills are available at Storm Brewing at a significantly lower price.