What is it? Beer or distilled spirit?

image from Central Scotland News Agency

We have seen a lot of strong beers lately, made by a freezing and concentration process. Some have argued that the process used is really cold distillation and the resulting product is not beer. But, it is nothing different than a traditional method of making eisbocks. An eisbock, according to the BJCP guidelines is made by freezing beer and removing the ice to concentrate the alcohol.

Is this still beer? According to the TTB, the freezing method falls under the beer concentrate regulations. It is an acceptable practice to remove a certain amount of water from beer to concentrate it, “as long as there is not more than a 0.5 percent by volume reduction in the beer, and the resultant product retains its character as beer.”

The TTB has found that “removal of up to 0.5 percent of the volume of beer through the removal of ice crystals is customary industry practice and results in a product which may be considered beer.” However, this finding was based on “ice beer [that did not] resemble a concentrate made from beer which typically contains less than 50 percent of the volume of the beer used to produce it, and has a high alcoholic content.”

The question is: are these high alcohol beers similar to the ice beers on which the TTB based its ruling? Is only .5% of the water removed to concentrate the beer to 32% alcohol? It can be a fine line between what is beer, and what is a distilled product.

Whether it’s beer or spirits to the TTB, in most states, such high alcohol beer will be sold and treated like a spirit. Many states have ABV limits on what is or is not beer. If your product is above that limit, it will be treated like a spirit. Which means, usually, that only state liquor stores may sell the product.