Britain’s most expensive beer is on sale at a whopping £80 a pint

Britain’s most expensive beer will cost drinkers a staggering £80 a pint.

The Craft Beer Co chain has imported the American craft ale to sell at its pub in Brixton, south London, at £105 for a 750ml (1.3 pint) bottle.

At 11% ABV, it is a dark, sour brown beer made by AleSmith Brewing Company, a “craft” microbrewery in San Diego, California.

Barrel aged for 18 months, Reforged 20th Anniversary Ale has a thick, syrupy consistency and features roasted malts and hops, coffee, chocolate, vanilla, caramel and barley wine.

It’s a fusion of three other beers brewed by the same company – Speedway Stout, sold in the same pub chain in 2018 for £22.50 on tap, Wee Heavy and Old Numbskull.

But if drunkards think they can’t handle the drink all at once, they can take a bottle home, where they’ll get a one-third discount.

However, the beer receives mixed reviews, with some customers pleasantly surprised by the taste and others believing it’s not worth the price.

Only one bottle of the ultra-expensive ale has been sold so far – to a group of six lads who, according to pub staff, “absolutely loved it”.

Beer lover Ben O’Neill, 22, who runs The Needle and Pin pub in Loughborough, said even he wouldn’t pay that much for just a bottle of beer.

Ben wasn’t overly impressed with the £105 per bottle.

He said: “It’s a little thin compared to most other Imperial stouts.

“I wouldn’t pay £70 for a pint of this.

“It has a little bit of smoke and oak on the back of the palette.

“I drink pretty much everything, but my favorite is Speedway Stout.

“Without the price I would rate this an 8.2 out of 10. With the price factored in, it’s more like a 4 out of 10.

“I would definitely expect more from something this expensive.

“At most I would pay £45 for a pint.”

His pal Chris Anagnostopoulos, 27, a software engineer from Bath, said the 105-pound bottle of liquor tasted like leather: “It’s surprisingly light, it tastes like leather with a hint of chocolate.

“It’s a good beer, but I wouldn’t pay that much for it.

“It grows on you, but I wouldn’t pay that much for it, even to have it.”

Banker Elliott Clark, 26, from Brixton, argued the beer wasn’t for him: “It’s not what I expect from a beer.

“It’s very syrupy and the flavor is quite overwhelming.

“It’s not something I’d want to drink a pint of. If it was a shot or a cocktail, yes. I like a taste of it.

“It’s more of a winter beer, maybe it would be nice in a warm cozy pub in winter.

“I wouldn’t pay to buy this. I’ve spent a few hundred pounds on a bottle of wine before but I wouldn’t buy this.”

His pal Dan Jones, 25, an assistant radio producer in Clapham, south London, said the beer had a slight coffee taste: “It has a coffee taste and you can really taste the alcohol in it.

“It tastes like a mixture of liquorice, coffee and alcohol. You can taste every bit of that 11 percent alcohol. A pint of that would stay in your stomach for a really long time.

“I didn’t think it was a beer when I first saw it.

“I don’t like the taste, it’s really intense and rich, but there’s no way I would pay that much for it.

“I’d pay maybe £8 for it and that’s the alcohol percentage.”

Hospitality worker Agata Chudziak, 27, from Bristol, wouldn’t pay more than £8 for the drink and claimed he would pay the £70: ‘It’s delicious but I wouldn’t pay more than £8 for it – not £70, That simply does not work.

“I like wheat beer and light beer. I’d pay up to £12 for half an 8% pint. They would never pay as much as they ask.”

Jacob Evans, 29, a carpenter, also from Bristol, argued the price of a beer was not justified, especially when it tasted like a strong stout.

He added: “What I would pay depends on what it is.

“A lot of these beers are like wine, they’re aged in silly, expensive casks and people pay silly sums for them.

“People pay a lot of money for these beers, but I would never pay that much for them.

“It tastes like a strong stout. When the weather is this warm, you just want a lager.”

However, the pub’s general manager Andrew Barton said they only sold one bottle to a group of lads but they loved it: “We’ve only sold one so far to a group of six guys who absolutely loved it.

“They really loved the acidity they got from it combined with the sweetness of the bourbon.”

The Brixton Pub’s second most expensive drink is another American ale called Brewery Out of the Lunch Box, which is comparatively cheap at £45 for a 750ml bottle.

Andrew added: “We want to highlight the different breweries around the world and selling these beers has given people the opportunity to try things they would never have tried before.

“People have heard about a beer on the internet or social media and come to us to try it.

“We advocate for small craft breweries and try to help them by buying them.

“We understand that the cost of living is very high at the moment.

“With the beers we have on tap we try to make craft beer very accessible and we try to be cheaper than other pubs nearby – we sell an IPA for £6.50 when they sell it for more sell as £7.

“It’s not just about charging people these crazy prices.

“We charge what we charge because the cost of a keg is very high.

“We could keep increasing our prices, but we want to make that accessible to people.”

The most expensive draft beer in Brixton Bar is £11.