Sierra Nevada Catapulted a Keg of Their Beer Over 438 Feet to Set a New World Record

More than just a party foul, keg tossing is a staple of strongman competitions. Guinness World Records lists the "highest keg toss" as belonging to Thor Bjornsson—you may know him as "The Mountain" from Game of Thrones—who tossed a half-barrel 26 feet, 4.93 inches.

Sierra Nevada Brewing may not have a "Mountain" at their disposal, so to set their own World Record, the California brewery found the next best thing—a catapult—and made history by slinging a barrel filled with beer an eye-popping 438.81 feet!

Sierra Nevada—best known for their ubiquitous Pale Ale—decided to set the record for "the farthest distance thrown by a trebuchet (with a projectile weighing 20kg and over)" to promote their latest beer release, Big Little Thing Imperial IPA, a 9-percent ABV brew which is now available nationwide year-round. The brewery loaded a keg of the new brew—weighing in at approximately 120 pounds—into their over 20-foot-tall custom-built trebuchet-style catapult which then flung the keg the length of four football fields as you can see in this video:

"Usually we'd launch a beer through sampling events, music festivals, and more, but that obviously wasn't possible this year," Robin Gregory, Sierra Nevada's communications director, stated. "Watching those kegs fly across the field was a really fun way to celebrate the launch of Big Little Thing, and we're excited to now hold a Guinness World Records title."

Sierra Nevada—which only needed the keg to travel more than 253 feet to set the record—says they officially broke it on March 2, but the public had the chance to watch the launch during a livestream a week later. If you're interested in watching all three attempts as they happened live, the entire 45-minute event is available on YouTube.

Meanwhile, it's been an exciting week for Guinness World Records. Yesterday, we covered a British guy who set the World Record for drinking a Capri Sun. It's not always about distance, okay!