Guinness Readies New Stout

One new highbrow bottle, with 27% alcohol, costs $150

(NEWSER) - Beer with a high alcohol content is in the spotlight after two breweries announced supercharged creations—Boston Beer Company's Utopias, with 27% alcohol, and BrewDog's Tactical Nuclear Penguin, with 32%. Are they good for the average guzzler? Salon gets details from expert Brooks Hamaker:

• They don’t come cheap: Utopias will set you back $150 a bottle.
• Yes, it is beer: Regardless of alcohol content, it’s made from barley, malt, hops, water, and yeast—but it’s not carbonated, "or at least not very well," because of its high sugar content.

(NEWSER) - The ever-adventurous US microbrewing community has embraced a new flavor, the Los Angeles Times reports, and it’s sour. Brewers are taking a page from the Belgian playbook and turning out tart lambics and gueuzes aged in oak barrels. “Sour beers are our connection to the ancient history of beer,” one aficionado says. “Someone was drinking a similar beverage dating back to the 6th millennium BC.” More»

Senate moves to OK booze-by-mail 103 years later

(NEWSER) - The Senate has an idea to help save the Postal Service: Let people mail alcohol. After all, FedEx and UPS carry the stuff all the time. But a law from 1909—established 10 years before Prohibition came into effect—bars the Postal Service from shipping "all spirituous, vinous, malted, fermented, or other intoxicating liquors of any kind." Dumping the law, as new Senate-passed legislation would do, could be particularly helpful to the USPS in these days of online shopping, Time reports. More»

Study shows it makes you better at bar games, anyway

(NEWSER) - You know how you get when you've got a couple pints in you: You stumble a bit, talk too loudly, and completely rock at brainteasers. A new study suggests that downing a little beer actually improves some cognitive functions. Researchers at the University of Illinois in Chicago got a group of 40 men to compete in a bar game in which they were given three words, and asked to come up with a fourth that fit the pattern, the New York Daily News reports. More»

Legislation could cost heavy drinkers hundreds per year

(NEWSER) - Britain's heaviest drinkers could soon find themselves paying an extra $200 a year for booze. Despite resistance from his health secretary—and despite his own limited-government philosophy—David Cameron is today announcing a plan to set a minimum price of 40p, or about 63 cents, per unit of alcohol, the Guardian reports. The prime minister also plans to bar supermarkets from some bulk deals on drinks. The Guardian found that would raise the price of 20 cans of Stella Artois (the equivalent of 44 units of booze) at one store from $16 to $28. More»