As I’m setting here with a 2006 Winter Solstice Ale from Anderson Valley, it occured to me to start a discussion about aged beers, oaked or not. It held up well spending the last year in my beer fridge. Nice, sweet and spicy nose, a rich creamy mouthfeel, and smooth finish. Here in West Michigan, Founders has been aging their award-wining Breakfast Stout in bourbon barrels-WoW! They have since moved onto doing the same with the Dirty Bastard, their Scottish Ale. We just got Stone’s Oaked Bastard- I likes it alot.
While I enjoy the new angle on the beer, it seems that this is the next trend in the microbrew business now that IPA and hop-monsters are played out. You can get oak flavoring at the homebrew supply now.
It’s definitely been gaining in popularity in the last few years. I can even get oak *barrels * at the local homebrew store. Unfortunately, they’re new ones and not Bourbon barrels.
My local brewpub typically has one cask conditioned ale on tap, including an oak aged vanilla stout which is quite tasty.
Earlier this year, Goose Island Wrigleyville and the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild hosted the 5th Annual Festival of Wood and Barrel-aged Beer. It was pretty crowded, but definitely worth checking out. There were some pretty outrageous brews, and some that I liked not at all, but on the whole there was some very tasty stuff going on there.
If you come across something at the store called Winter’s Bourbon Cask Ale skip it. It’s an Anheuiser-Busch beer that tastes like, well, Budweiser with fake vanilla flavoring added. I was so excited the first time I saw it that I bought it without looking too closely. I still have 5 bottles left and that never, ever happens.
Moderately edible. The rest of the menu is quite good, though. I can rag on them because a good friend of mine is the executive in charge of beer distribution for the company, at least in California.
If you would like the opinion of a former Chicagoan, it is some of the worst Chicago-sytle pizza I have ever had. YMMV of course. The rest of the menu is pretty good.
On oak aged beer, due to the expense of wine casks, my solution is to find old wine casks that are no longer usefull for cheap. Then I figured I would break the cask up into large chips and put them at the bottom of a polycarbonate fermentor. I want a polycarbonate fermentor because it is semi-permiable.
The same wood chips would be used over and over again so that they build up their own culture of bacteria. The ultimate purpose is to make lambic beer.
I am a ways away from carrying out this project. If I buy my hops now, it may be aged just in time for me to get going.
The only oak aged beer that I have tried is Innis & Gunn. I can’t say anything but good things about it. Full, rich and creamy - the beer is a nice thing to sip and savour.
Ah yes. Tried it at SeaWorld. After running around, chasing nephews and giving shoulder rides, I forgave myself for trying the AB products on sample. They did a black and tan with it that was okay.
The bottle shop I part-time at got a hookup from a distributor that had some 2004 Winter Ale from Mendecino. We sold it at cost- $.45 a bottle.
Miller does one too; I think it’s called Miller Celebration or something. It’s a totally heavy (10% ABV) lager with overpowering fake vanilla flavor added. Ick.
Many micros are aging in barrels now, and not just from bourbon. Russian River ages most of thier beers in wine barrels, and others have used caldovas casks, port, sherry, you name it–it’s probably been done.
Most of the beers I’ve had have sat in the barrels anywhere from 6 months to a couple of years. Of course many lambics are barrel aged for much longer than that.
I’m not a huge fan of bourbon barrel aging personally, but when it is done correctly on a big stout–it can be divine. Oak Aged Dark Lord from Three Floyds was amazing, but is only available at Dark Lord Day. Barrel Aged Speedway Stout from Alesmith is also incredibe—but very tough to get your hands on.
There’s a brew pub in my town called Prairie Rock Brewing Company that makes a Vanilla Cream Ale (scroll down) that could very well serve as a cure for alcoholism because I defy anyone to have more than two of them before throwing up. It says that it won an award, the “World Expo of Beer 2000 Award People’s Choice Gold Medal.” which must have been judged by people who’ve been locked in a small room with several Strawberry Shortcake dolls for the last 20 years because that’s the only way you could appreciate cloyingly sweet and synthetic like that.
Actually, the consistency of beer produced by Budweiser is pretty amazing. I don’t like the taste of their product, but the fact that it is produced so consistently at different locations all over the U.S. is impressive. Their use of additives is a cost saving measure that obviously affects flavor, but really has nothing to do with consistency.
