It was recently announced that Australia’s highest selling beer, Victoria Bitter, will cut its alcohol content by 0.2% to 4.6% next month. This action was taken in order to curb an increase in retail price, as ingredients (such as barley) have risen 20% due to the drought. This is in addition to the 0.1% decrease that occurred in 2005. The Herald Sun interviewed a number of people and there was a general assumption that drinkers wouldn’t be [....]

Feast your eyes on the newest Swiss invention: Coffee-beer, a "fermented coffee beverage" that has been patented in every major market around the world by Nestac (part of the Nestle empire). The beverage is basically a super-caffeinated liquid that pours like a beer but smells like coffee. No alcohol included. To make it, coffee beans are roasted and the chemicals that contain the natural aroma are collected in a cryogenic condenser and then converted to [....]

A Scottish brewery has generated a storm of controversy by releasing the world's strongest and most expensive beer in bottles made from dead animals. Called 'The End of History', the beer sells at $855 a bottle and is 55 percent alcohol, UK newspaper the Telegraph reported. Scottish beer makers BrewDog made 12 bottles of the ale using the stuffed remains of seven stoats, four squirrels and one hare. Brewery co-founder James Watt described the ale as "the beer [....]

Now this is just excellent. A German brewer has created a frosty lager for smoking cessation. Each can contains 6.3 percent alcohol by volume and drinking three cans of the stuff, called NicoShot, is equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes. I think the implications are obvious: smoking makes you skinny and beer makes you fat. So if you add the two together, you get to your ideal weight.