Ice beer is what's created when the water in an already fermented beer is frozen and removed, leaving a higher concentration of alcohol in the product. Eisbocks are a great example of this style from Germany.
The last two weeks I've had a keg of 5.8% beer on tap. This last four or five days, however, I've been feeling the alcohol of the beer much more quickly and strongly. I have also noticed a change in taste which I attributed to drinking the same brew constantly. It wasn't my tolerance or my changing palate. The refrigerator housing the beer was just a few degrees too cold and was slowly freezing the water. At this very moment I have a sample of the beer sitting with a hydrometer in it waiting for it to warm up and the head to recede. I'm going to compare this reading of the remaining sugars in the brew with what it was when kegged to measure the difference in gravity and multiply that by the original alcohol content. See you in a moment...
Here are the results:
OG @ kegging = 1.008
OG @ current = 1.013
[13/8]*5.8 = 9.5% Alcohol
Lesson #1: an Ice Beer is easy to produce (in my case by accident)
Lesson #2: when an Ice Beer is produced it has the potential to be very strong.
5.8% to 9.5% is quite a significant change!!!
Be aware and, if you'd like, make one intentionally!
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