INTO THE BREW Better with Age


Barrel-aged beers blend tradition with new ideas By Sam Tierney


Photo: Kayla Coleman


Sam Tierney began his love affair with great beer while studying and traveling abroad in Europe during his junior year at UC Santa Barbara. He began homebrewing shortly after, and has since won multiple awards. Sam is a graduate of the Siebel Institute, a professional brewing school in Chicago, and he is now a brewer at Firestone Walker in Paso Robles, California.


housands upon thousands of batches of beer have declared their intentions to leave their tanks and inhabit wooden barrels, infusing and facilitating the creations of flavors never before seen in beer. Led by mysterious brewmasters with alleged ties to the sour side, they threaten to cause unrest in the beer galaxy. Though still often the realm of special release beers and limited allocations, barrel-aged beers are surprisingly available in San Diego pretty much the entire year. Pricey? Yes, but they are a labor of love that can re- ward the drinker with a profound and complex experience.


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Barrel-aged beers can be broadly divided into two categories: normal yeast-fermented beers that are typically aged in barrels post- fermentation, and mixed-culture beers that undergo a secondary or even primary fermen- tation and aging in barrels. Mixed-culture beers such as the spontaneously-fermented lambic beers of Belgium are typically fer- mented in previously used oak barrels from wine and spirits producers. The barrels are key to creating the proper environment to sustain the necessary microorganisms for fermenta- tion, but they themselves do not typically contribute significant wood flavor to the beer. Flanders red ale brewers like Rodenbach age their beer in large oak tanks called foudres. Rodenbach maintains a small cooperage staff solely dedicated to maintaining their cavernous cellars of massive foudres, each holding thou- sands of gallons of beer for up to several years in some cases. They then blend the old, sour ale with fresh, sweeter ale to create the desired flavor profile. This technique was borrowed from porter brewers in the UK in the 1800s, who had been using this aging and blending technique for many years before that to create porter’s original sour, aged character. American brewers have explored almost every possible use for barrels in the last couple decades. Before the nineties, the only wood-aged American beer you were likely to find at the store was Budweiser, with its (in) famous beechwood aging, but since then, more and more brewers have begun experiment- ing with aging some of their (mostly strong) beers in barrels. Used bourbon barrels quickly became popular for both their wide availability (bourbon distillers are required by law to use fresh barrels for each fill) and desirable flavor contribution. To this day, bourbon is over- whelmingly the most common type of barrels used to age beer in the US. There are different ways to fill used bourbon barrels, but many brewers simply take the barrels as they come from the distillery and then fill them, avoiding cleaning or soaking them in order to preserve the most character. The barrels are typically still soaking wet with bourbon on the inside. This residual bourbon infuses into the beer, and the inside of the barrel, broken down by years of contact with a very high alcohol solution, lends the beer rich charred oak flavors that are often described as vanilla and caramel. The wood also gives structural tannins, which help balance the big flavors in stronger beers. Extended aging allows for the alcohol in strong beers to soften and subtle oxidation adds rich fruity flavors to complement the flavors from the wood and bourbon. You are less likely to find lower- strength beer aged in bourbon barrels because they typically don’t stand up as well to the strong flavors from the barrel (but there are always exceptions). A well-aged beer from a bourbon barrel is often an intense and complex experience. One of my absolute favorites is AleSmith’s Wee Heavy, which takes on rich caramel and fruity


Oak Foeders at Rodenbach Brewery, Belgium


flavors to complement its already massive and complex malty profile, almost blurring the line between dessert wine and beer. AleSmith is also well known for their barrel-aged ver- sion of the massive Speedway Stout. For a more widely available beer, Port Brewing’s Old Viscosity is a blend of fresh beer and beer aged in bourbon barrels. Once a year they also release Older Viscosity, the 100% barrel-aged version. Wine, brandy, various other types of whiskey, rum, and even tequila barrels have also seen use in differing amounts. Wine bar- rels have become particularly popular with brewers for making sour ales, as the residual wine flavors in the barrels complement the fruity, acidic flavors from the wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria used during fermentation. The Lost Abbey uses freshly drained red wine barrels to age their Framboise de Amorosa to complement the flavors from the copious amount of raspberries added to the beer as it ages. Russian River Brewing up in Santa Rosa has become famous for an entire line of sour ales aged in different types of used wine barrels including pinot noir barrels for Supplication, cabernet sauvignon barrels for Consecration, and chardonnay barrels for Temptation. All these beers undergo second- ary fermentation for multiple months while in barrel, which provides the perfect environ- ment for wild yeast and bacteria to do their thing. Wine barrels aren’t just for making sour beers though. Stone Brewing Co. has aged many of their strong ales in wine barrels including some of the Stone Vertical Epic Ale and Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine series. If you haven’t tried any of these, you really should seek them out.


Another less common use of barrels today is the Burton Union, a system of fermenting ales in linked barrels. Marston’s in the UK still uses this system, which was the standard method of fermenting pale ales in Burton once upon a time. At Firestone Walker we use a modified Burton Union to ferment our Double Barrel Ale. We let the beer finish fermentation in oak before transferring back to stainless to either be blended with stainless fermented beer or packaged straight as Unfiltered Double Barrel. One week in new oak is enough to get a nice toasty vanilla flavor without the over- bearing tannin that might occur with extended aging.


Perhaps the coolest part of aging in barrels is that it adds a dimension to creating beer flavor that is mostly thought of as the realm of wine: namely, blending. Aging a single beer in different types of barrels for different amounts of time gives you a palette of flavors to cre- ate a final blend from. Blending fresh beer with aged beer, which goes back hundreds of years, allows you to dial in the exact flavor contribution that you want from barrels and age. Our upcoming anniversary release blends eight different beers including fresh, bourbon barrel-aged, cognac barrel-aged, and retired union barrel-aged. Each component brings a different quality that we want in the final blend. Sour ales are also typically blends of multiple batches. After a year or two in barrels you can end up with very different tasting beers, even if you start with the same wort. Choosing what components you want to bring back together for the final blend allows you to craft the desired flavor like a painter blending paints to get the exact shade and color they desire on the canvas.


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