What’s the most expensive beer in the world?

Think of beer and you don’t necessarily jump straight to fine, rare and expensive. You’re perhaps more likely to think of a night at the pub with your favourite pint in hand, or a cool crisp lager in the park on a hot summer’s day. But beers can certainly hold their own when it comes to costly rare expressions.

Yes, beer certainly has previous with expensive novelties and finely crafted rare bottles – and that’s before we even consider the fact that an average pint in London is soon expected to set you back £7.

Indeed, it was only November that we were bringing you news of the beer that would set you back the cost of roughly four roast dinners: a Bourbon barrel-aged ale, with a load of added toasted coconut thrown into the mix.

But what’s the most expensive beer in the world, and where you can you get your hands on it?

Well, it’s actually surprisingly difficult to get a straight answer on this one. It would perhaps also be worth defining our terms. If we’re talking about the most expensive readily available, widely produced beer in the world, that would be a whole new question.

But we’re looking instead at rarities and unique bottles to try and get to the bottom of things.

A glance at most collated data will tell you that Brewdog’s The End of History finds itself near the top of most lists of the most expensive beer in the world. The beer was priced at $765 per 330ml.

Clocking in a whopping 55% ABV, the blond Belgian ale is infused with nettles from the Scottish Highlands and Fresh juniper berries, according to Brewdog’s website. Sadly, it’s no longer available for purchase, though it did come packaged in taxidermy roadkill, so there’s that…

Now, depending on the source you check, Nail Brewing’s Antarctic Nail Ale might actually pip Brewdog’s outlandish blond Belgian ale to the post. That’s because the beer – of which only 30 were produced – has been auctioned at different price points. The first auctioned for AUS$800 (roughly £420), though a subsequent auction saw a bottle sell for AUS$1850 (roughly £972).

Antarctic Nail Ale is a limited edition Australian Pale Ale made from water melted from a block of Antarctic ice. It was released in 2010 by Jarrah Jacks brewery in Pemberton from ice collected by the crew of the Sea Shepherd by helicopter from an iceberg in the Southern Ocean.