The World's Strongest Beer Is So Intense, Your Tongue Might Go Numb

Some food is meant to be enjoyed. Other foods are meant to be endured. From Da' Bomb, the ultra-hot sauce that makes some celebrities cry tears of spice on "Hot Ones," to the dangerous One Chip Challenge, you can make a good amount of money by selling unpalatably intense foods for people to eat on camera. The usual approach is to make it incredibly spicy, but there's more than one way to make a TikTokker squirm, as Scottish Beithir Fire, the strongest beer in the world, easily proves.

Scottish Beithir Fire isn't the kind of beer you might pop open at a cookout and drink with your buddies. Each bottle costs roughly $62, and that doesn't even count almost as much for shipping. A bigger obstacle, however, is the alcohol content. While the average beer contains about 5% alcohol by volume (ABV), Scottish Beithir Fire contains a staggering 75% ABV — that's more than some brands of vodka. The brew gets its name from a dragon-like creature from Scottish folklore, even though, in an ironic twist, the beithir doesn't actually breathe fire. Then again, Scottish Beithir Fire carries enough heat for both itself and its namesake: thanks to a unique brewing process, starting life as a Scottish barley ale that gets brewed for two months before being blended with powerful spirits and filtered to make it ultra-pure, it will absolutely clobber you.

It should be noted that Scottish Beithir Fire isn't entirely a "Da' Bomb-esque" weapon of mass destruction for streamers to suffer through. The Edinburgh-based 88 Brewery that manufactures Beithir Fire suggests serving it in a small, 35-milliliter glass with cherry syrup and lemon juice to help it go down easier. But the publicity that those user reaction videos create for the beer certainly doesn't hurt 88 Brewery's bottom line, either.

According to 88 Brewery, the beer "heats the mouth and challenges the taste buds, followed by a hit of dried fruit and smokiness, with a very malted barley-like finish," (via Daily Mail). But TikTok's 1 Minute Beer Review had a somewhat different opinion. "It tastes like burning," he said, "My tongue is now numb." Maybe it's not quite as painful as the spiciest instant ramen on the market — spice is different from alcohol, after all — but much like spicy food, a beer with an ABV this high probably also packs a wallop the following morning.