Helium beer does not exist as a real commercial product, and it never has. What does exist is a long-running April Fools’ Day tradition among breweries, and the actual chemistry reason why it would not work even if someone tried to sell it seriously.
The Samuel Adams “HeliYum” Hoax and Its Imitators
On April 1, 2014, Samuel Adams released a video announcing “HeliYum,” a beer supposedly infused with helium instead of carbon dioxide, complete with a fake press-release pitch about helium’s refractive index creating “brilliant clarity” and its odorless properties letting hop and malt aromas come through unmasked. It was a well-produced April Fools’ joke, not a real product, and the brand eventually confirmed as much. The gag had roots even further back, mirroring a 1994 humor piece about a fictional Japanese beer infused with hydrogen instead.
The joke did not stay contained. A German beer review podcast, Die BierProbierer, revived it the following year with a video claiming to have gotten hold of an actual HeliYum bottle, and when later reposts of that video dropped the joke disclaimer, plenty of viewers ended up genuinely confused about whether the beer was real. Berkshire Brewing Company and Stone Brewing Company both ran their own helium beer April Fools’ promotions in other years too, which is part of why the idea keeps resurfacing online well outside of April 1st.
Why Helium Beer Would Not Actually Work
Setting the pranks aside, there’s a real reason no brewery has seriously tried this: helium does not dissolve into liquid the way carbon dioxide does. CO2 carbonation works because carbon dioxide reacts with water to form carbonic acid, which is what gives beer its fizz and mouthfeel. Helium is chemically inert; it does not form that same reaction, so pressurizing beer with helium instead of CO2 would not carbonate it in any comparable way. You would end up with flat beer under helium pressure, not a lightly effervescent novelty drink. Any helium-voice effect from drinking such a beer would also be essentially nonexistent, since you’d need to inhale a significant volume of helium gas directly, not drink a liquid that happens to have been in contact with it.
If you’re curious about the beers that genuinely do experiment with unusual gas blends, nitrogen is the real-world equivalent worth knowing. Nitrogen-infused (“nitro”) beers, most famously Guinness Draught, use a nitrogen and CO2 gas blend specifically because nitrogen’s smaller bubbles create the smooth, creamy texture nitro stouts are known for, a genuine brewing technique rather than a hoax.
