Now that craft-brewed beer—what we used to call microbrewery beer, until the “micros” that brewed it outgrew the term—has been around for a few decades, beer drinkers have grown accustomed to new flavors in their brews. The hoppy bitterness of an India pale ale or IPA comes as no surprise. Dark, roasty ales and lagers are far less intimidating than they once were. Even beers flavored with orange peel or coffee beans scarcely raise an eyebrow.
There is one new taste in town that’s bound to set palates aback and tongues a-wagging, though, and that’s wood. Or more specifically, wooden barrels that have spent generous amounts of time in contact with and soaking in the flavors of bourbon, Cabernet Sauvignon, sherry or pretty much any other alcohol you might care to mention.
Yes, barrel-aging has come to the world of beer, just as it arrived at the world of Scottish whisky so many years ago. As might logically be expected, the process is helping create beers that are all over the map.
Not that barrel-aging beer is specifically something new. Prior to the invention of metal kegs, of course, all draft beer was poured from the wood, as it were, and before the development of beer bottles, all beer was draft. More recently, Belgian brewers have been the proud upholders of the maturation of beer in wood, both in massive casks called tuns, as still sometimes seen in the country’s north, and in more conventionally-sized barrels, as with the highly esteemed Lambic beers of the area southwest of Brussels known as the Payottenland.
Outside of Belgium, the use of wooden vessels for beer had been largely phased out, disavowed because of the labor involved in maintaining the barrels and discredited for wood’s porous nature, which could and sometimes did allow for the infection or oxidization of the beer inside. Aside from a few traditionalist outposts, wooden barrels and beer had largely parted company.
Until, that is, America’s craft brewers started to look closely at the wood-finished Scottish whiskies that were then growing rather dramatically in popularity and wondering if a similar thing could be done for beer. Starting some years back with a handful of stouts being aged in used bourbon or Tennessee whiskey barrels, wood-influenced beer started to grow in popularity among a certain segment of brewers and beer aficionados.
Today, those early bourbon-influenced stouts—some of which, it must be said, tasted almost more like bourbon than they did beer—have been supplanted by a host of barrel-aged brews, from strong, Belgian-style blonde ales that have spent time in barrels that were previously home to Californian Chardonnay, to powerhouse barley wines tweaked by time in barrels that once held brandy or port. And yes, still more than a few stouts and dark, strong ales are aged in whiskey barrels, or in some cases, aged in stainless steel with the staves of the barrels added to the tank for flavoring effect.
When properly executed by a skilled brewer, the flavors from the wood, be they the buttery tones of a Chardonnay or the vanilla accents of a bourbon, are married seamlessly with the flavors of the beer, producing a complex and intriguing whole. It is this aspect that has made barrel-aged brews one of the hottest new properties in beer, and one that’s sure to be sticking around for some time to come.
Stephen Beaumont is a veteran beer writer and author of five books on the subject. His writing on beer, drinks, food and travel appears in a wide variety of national and international publications.