This study was carried to investigate the biodegradability of phenol in the wastewater with the two sludge blanket-packed bed reactor in series. Each reactor had a dimension of 0.09 m i.d. and 1.5 m height and consisted of two regions. The lower region was a sludge blanket of 0.5 m height and the upper region was a packed-bed of 1 m height. The packed bed region was charged with ceramic raschig rings of 10 mm i.d., 15 mm o.d. and 20 mm length. The reactors were operated at 35$circ$C and the hydraulic retention time(HRT) was maintained 24 hours. The synthetic wastewater composed of glucose and phenol as major components was fed into the reactor in a continuous mode with incereasing phenol concentration. In addition, the nutrient trace metals($Na^+, Mg^{2+}, Ca^{2+}, PO_4^{3-}, NH_4^+, Co^{2+}, Fe^{2+}$ etc.) were added for growing anaerobes. The phenol concentration of the effluent, the overall gas production, the composition of product gas, the efficiency of COD reduction and the duration of acclimation period were measured to determine the performance of the anaerobic wastewater treatment system as the phenol concentration of the influent was increased from 600 to 2400 mg//l. Successfully stable biodegradation of phenol could be achieved with the anaerobic treatment system from 600 to 1, 800 mg/l of the influent phenol concentration. The upper level of influent phenol loading was high enough to meet most of the practical requirement. The duration of acclimation increased with the phenol loading. At steady state of the influent phenol concentration of 1800 mg/l, the treatment performance indicated the phenol reduction efficiency of 99%, the COD reduction efficiency of 99% and the gas production rate of 37 l/day. At the influent phenol concentration of 2400 mg/l, however, the operation of the treatment system was noted unstable. While the concentration of methane in biogas decreased with increasing the influent phenol loading, the carbon dioxide was increased. However, the concentration of hydrogen was varied negligibly. The concentration of methane was high enough to be used as a fuel. As a result, it is suggested that anaerobic phenol wastewater treament was economical in the sense of energy recovery and wastewater treatment.