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Most of those ridiculously high ABV beers have been ice-distilled (some multiple times). Supposedly it's technically illegal for homebrewers since it's distilling, but it's basically just cooling the beer to the point where some of the water freezes and removing the ice. You can get pretty decent ABVs (12%+) without resorting to that though. You'll need a ...

Yup, it can be easily measured using a hydrometer. Simply take a specific gravity reading before pitching yeast and after fermentation is complete. Find the difference between the two values, this will be proportional to the amount of sugar the yeast has converted to alcohol. Multiply this number by 131 and you get the ABV. For example: You brew a ginger ...

This is actually a popular argument. Consensus is that fractional freezing still makes it a beer. Bud Ice, Miller Icehouse, and Natural Ice are all examples of ice beers, made the same way, and sold as beers. There's no standard definition of beer that limits the strength, so I see no reason why it's not beer.

Obligatory Disclaimer: Though I do have some formal education, I am by no means a professional chemist, so please take my answer for what it is - semi-educated speculation. As you hinted, back titration is a popular method of determining alcohol content in alcoholic beverages, especially wine. It would make sense that a similar approach could be used for ...

The definition varies, depending on who you ask (and usually upon their tolerance to alcohol and frequency with which they drink). But it means you should be able to have a couple and go back to work functioning perfectly well, or several over the course of a day without getting more than a little buzzed. In my opinion, it should be less than 5%, but my ...

You don't want to up the specialties on the first pass. If the beer has the right flavor profile you want, then changing those will change the flavor. Furthermore, if you increase say the chocolate malt, the color will change too. I'd start by upping the gravity with base malt until you got to about 80-90% of the final target gravity. Then get the rest ...

I don't know if there's an accepted standard or not, like "Must be under 4% ABV" or something. Personally, I define a session beer as something that is not too heavy in flavor or in my belly, that doesn't have too much alcohol. "Too much", for me, is defined as "I can drink this for many hours in the sun and still communicate with my parents."

I feel that it would be whiskey at this point. Regardless of the method, it has been distilled. If they kept going at it with the distillation and got up to 90%, would it still be beer then? As far as ingredients, there have been alternative bittering agents to hops historically, and I've enjoyed a 100% wheat beer as well. Process is what defines beer - ...

I would say it is still beer. Though quite an extreme example. Mirriam-Webster defines beer as "an alcoholic beverage usually made from malted cereal grain (as barley), flavored with hops, and brewed by slow fermentation." End of History fulfills this. It is my understanding that the beer is the highest ABV achieved by natural yeast fermentation. They ...

BJCP guidelines are not the end-all, be-all. Basically, they're good for judging beer at comps and that's about it. I definitely would consider your examples to be beer if they started out as a fermented grain beverage. Whether or not I'd want to drink one is an entirely different matter! AFAIK, Bud Ice and the like are not freeze concentrated...they are ...

I think it's subjective. But basically, it's a beer that you can drink, say, six or eight of over the course of three or four hours and still be able to function normally. For some people, PBR might be all they can handle in a session. For others, maybe it's a wee heavy. I deinitely want the guy who calls Samichlaus a session beer on my side!

I don't believe it should be considered a beer, but this opens the window of 'where do we draw the line?'. At what percentage would we switch from beer to something else? If barley wines have there own title, "beers" like this definitely should have a different name. But under the BJCP guidlines for a barley wine, many Imperial or high gravity beers could ...