Craft beer-lovers are known to get a bit fanatical about brews, tracking limited-edition releases, lining up at stores, and re-selling rare, hard-to-come-by bottles for well above retail value. And, like all collectors—whether their drug of choice is sneakers, stamps, or baseball cards—craft beer nuts all have that one “Holy Grail” bottle they're willing to pay small a fortune for.
Enter: “The End of History.”
Produced by the Scottish brewery BrewDog, the ultra-rare beer is being produced for the first time in six years. But instead of shelling out a couple hundred bucks for a cool label, The End of the World is packaged inside a taxidermied squirrel, and now comes with a price tag of $20,000.
According to Time, all that money will get you a little more than 12-ounces of suds. BrewDog is actually bringing back The End of History ale as part of a crowdfunding campaign. Along with a new pet squirrel and an exclusive bottle of beer, customers will also get an ownership stake in the brewery.
The funding push is to help BrewDog open its first U.S. brewery in Ohio, where laws dictating ABV levels in beer were recently loosened. To christen its new, $50 million American brewery, BrewDog decided to bring back its rarest and strongest beverage ever. The End of History—a staggering, 55 percent ABV Belgian-style ale—seemed like the right way to celebrate.
“Craft beer lovers in America have shown that they want to join us on the crazy ride that lies ahead,” James Watt, the co-founder of BrewDog, told Time. We wouldn’t have a US brewery without our investors, and we want to celebrate by giving them access to something extra exclusive that you just can’t get your hands on any other way.”
For those who take craft beer seriously, the deal isn’t all that ridiculous. As Time notes, The End of History might be the rarest beer in the world; only 12 bottles of the brew were produced during its initial run back in 2012. Plus, the beer comes packaged in those fury—yet unsettling—koozies. The dead squirrels come courtesy of a taxidermist known only as Simon the Stuffer. We kid you not.
“I absolutely love the beautiful, yet disturbing nature of taxidermy, so packaging our most evocative beer in such an unconventional, BrewDog way made sense,” Watt explains. “Beer is art. Art is also art.”
Start cracking open those piggy banks, beer-lovers.
[via Time]