Beers with more alcohol gain market share

"This hasn't happened because of some half-billion dollar advertising campaign on behalf of the big brewers," he said. "It's truly the consumer becoming self-educated.

"It's a kind of a blue-collar connoisseurship. Anybody can afford to buy the world's best beers. But if you wanted to buy a bottle of the world's best wine, you'd have to spend thousands of dollars."

Growing out of homebrewers' efforts to emulate British and German beers, craft beers started showing up about 30 years ago, and bigger varieties bubbled up in the mid-1990s on both coasts as brewmasters chased their fantasies to the outer limits.

That's when Vinnie Cilurzo, a former wine maker, made his first double India pale ale at the bygone Blind Pig Brewery in California. It's when Rogue Ales in Oregon packed extra hops into its Imperial Stout, Calagione opened Dogfish Head and Boston Brewing Co. founder Jim Koch started brewing Samuel Adams Triple Bock, which evolved into Utopias. The market's strongest beer at 27 percent alcohol, Utopias is also its most expensive at $140 for a 24-ounce bottle.

"They are not lawnmower beers," cautioned Don Younger, owner of the Horse Brass Pub in Portland, who has been a close observer of the craft beer scene from its beginnings. "Your average run-of-the-mill lager will in most states come in around 3.8 or 4 percent alcohol. These have got something like 10 or 11 percent, so you are getting two and a half times the alcohol delivery with them.

"You've got to be careful with them. But they are self-limiting. They are very rich. It would be like trying to drink a quart of whipping cream. Your body will reject it because they are so rich."

The wine-level prices may limit their mass appeal, but plenty of people are still interested, brewers say.

"I sell beer for 15 dollars a bottle and I can't make enough of it," said Natalie Cilurzo, who co-owns Russian River Brewing Co. in Santa Rosa, Calif., with her husband, Vinnie.

Unlike wine, which is just grapes, beer is generally made from three or four ingredients. Malted barley delivers the body, yeast ferments with the sugar in the barley to make the alcohol, and hops deliver the bitterness. Some are flavored with offbeat ingredients, such as coffee, chocolate, spices and fruit. Wooden barrels that formerly held wine or whisky can add nuance and structure.

"It's just become like an arms race," said Younger, the Portland bar owner. "One brewer did it. Another said, `I can kick it up a notch.' "

At Elegance, a wine and antiques shop in Grants Pass, owner Carl Raskin recently bowed to entreaties from local beer distributors to add high-end beers. He found them a refreshing change from wine, which besides being pricier seems more serious.

At one of his monthly tastings, he served beer floats in champagne flutes. The drinks consisted of apple-flavored Belgian-style ale with dollops of caramel-vanilla ice cream. Another tasting ran through a range of IPAs and finished with a Belgian-style ale in bottles sealed with a cork.

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