What Makes a Good Barrel Aged Beer

Patience

 

A proper base beer and a good barrel. Too many breweries are plopping whatever they have in whatever barrel they can conjure up. And then selling it for a premium due to the popularity of the ones that were well thought out. And we're unfortunately suckered in to buying many of them because we love the good ones.

 

dat base beer
dat mouthfeel

I don't give no shitz about how much of a bourbon bom it is if it is thin and watery. Gotta strike dat balance.

 

How eloquently put.

 

I expect the barrel aging to have added a new dimension to the beer or significantly enhanced an already present feature- imperial stouts aged in bourbon barrels should have a serious vanilla and caramel thing going on with a tad more boozy flavor. Russian River's beers that they age in wine barrels add a completely different element to the brew without having directly added grapes.

 

1.Start with a good beer
2.Then add barrel
3.???????
4. PROFIT!

 

dat hype

 

"Don't confuse de body with ze mouthfeel"
- Chablis winemaker who I tasted with recently

Among other things discussed, his take away was that big alcohol content in a chard will result in it burning strong flavors onto your tongue (mouthfeel), but if you let it sit there, you will get a better idea of the actual "body" (sans alcohol's effect)... my interpretation was: mouthfeel is a "timeline" and the body is more of a stagnant fact.

Definitely worth reading if you're in this thread, even if you aren't a wine drinker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_(wine)#Differences_between_French_and_American_oak

edit: if you're not a wine person Chablis are (just about) the only white burgundy whites that DON'T spend time in oak (instead steel or cement vats). This is a synopsis of responses to my questions about the upsides of NOT aging in oak.

 

Wine barrels > whiskey barrels > tequilla barrels = gin barrels = whatever else... vodka barrels?

Seriously though I do love what a wine barrel adds to a sour beer, and until recently I didn't think it would work for a stout... but holy balls with Red Wine BCBS was better than Rare. More breweries need to do RWBA stouts.

 

Underpants Gnome Brewery

 

Goose Island, Founders, Bell's, North Coast.

 

I like it when I can distinguish a rye flavor in there.

 

Flavor balance, complexity & drinkability.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself. I came to this thread to post one single word. B-A-L-A-N-C-E, but you beat me to it, and put it much better than I could have.