Due to their increasing share, the combustion of alternative fuels and in particular oxygenated, bioderived fuel components need to be characterised. The laminar burning velocity is one key parameter for the characterisation of fuels, and it also serves as an important quantity to validate chemical kinetic models. Methanol, ethanol, n-propanol, and n-butanol laminar burning velocities experiments were conducted in a spherical combustion vessel at an unburnt temperature of 373 K and a pressure of 10 bar. Measured burning velocities from this study and from the published literature are compared with numerical simulation data from published chemical mechanisms. The models tend to underpredict the experimentally measured values. A sensitivity analysis suggests further investigation of the pressure dependence for the fuel specific reactions with hydrogen and hydroxyl radicals. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.