Make mine a half

In the balmy days of summer, there's nothing more refreshing than a nice cold beer in the garden. Well, at least that's what I'm told, since I prefer to sip on an exotically coloured cocktail. Although I defy anyone to watch The Shawshank Redemption and not wish they were up on that prison roof, choking on tar-fumes and knocking back a cold one with Andy and the lags.

Beer drinkers themselves are a diverse bunch. There are some who like an ice-cold Mexican beer with a lime wedged squished pretentiously into the neck of the bottle. Others drive old Morris Minors and will happily quaff room-temperature bull piss as long as it's been recommended by CAMRA. And then there are the guys who sit in the park, shouting at pigeons over a can of Tenants.

However, by far the most interesting subset of beer drinkers is the connoisseur. He's the one who dedicates his life to searching for exotic new flavours and liver-rupturing alcohol percentages. Two such pioneers are James Watt and Martin Dickie, owners of Scotland's largest independent brewery 'BrewDog'.

As they say on their website, they're "dedicated to making cool, contemporary and progressive beers showcasing some of the world’s classic beer styles. All with an innovative twist and customary BrewDog bite." But their newest beer doesn't just have bite, it has a full set of teeth.

Appropriately named 'The End of History', the 55% alcohol beer is an extremely limited edition - only 12 bottles were made. And despite the hefty £500 price tag, they sold out within four hours.

It doesn't really matter what the beer tastes like (although I'd hazard a guess that it's like battery acid filtered through a rugby-player's sock), since it's the packaging that really grabbed people's attention. Forget about bottles and cans - that's far too 'high street' an approach for a product that "pushes the boundaries of extreme brewing". This beer comes encased in the body of a dead animal.

So if you had half a grand to splurge on a bottle of grog, you could be supping it from the mouth of a dead stoat. Or squirrel, if that better suits your palate. Looking like something Leatherface might keep in his fridge, this Belgian blonde ale is presented inside the hollowed out body of roadkill - each of which was lovingly created by a "very talented taxidermist".

It's not enough that these poor rodents had their final moments extinguished beneath the wheels of a Ford Mondeo, they get to spend the rest of eternity as a novelty bottle holder.

Now, whose round is it?