barrel aged - which barrel?

Also, considering bourbon casks can only be used once, per law, it's a no brainer for the distillers to want to sell them rather than making them in to woodchips/throwing them out. I smoke food frequently and Jack Daniel's makes smoking wood that is made out of their oak barrels.

If a beer states what brand of bourbon barrel was used, that's good marketing. "I like Pappy so I will definitely try this beer" - that type of mentality

 

Just guessing, but I imagine that whether or not the brewer can state what kinds of barrel it is probably depends on a few factors including where the barrels came from (i.e. from distiller or secondary market), strength of liquor brand, and possibly licensing. If the barrel comes directly from the distiller, i would think this would more likely lead to the brewer being able to use the distiller's name, but this probably would need to be licensed at the vary list since those brands are trademarked. If the brewer gets the barrel from the secondary market, guessing they can't use the distillers name and frankly the name may have been removed from the barrel.

 

these are good thoughts, others have provided similar. i'll try to keep this brief but for the sake of a full(er) understanding, while there are a few distillers that do not want their names mentioned i'm pretty sure that's a minority with regards to the lack of info stated on beer labels or about specific releases.

what's more at play is what myself & at least one other mentioned with regards to Knob Creek. again there is no "Pappy Van Winkle" barrel. what we today know as a S-W Pappy Van Winkle or Old Rip Van Winkle barrel would actually bear the name: "Old Fitzgerald" on the barrels. the Old Fitz name is not a part of the current equation because Heaven Hill bought the brand several years back. a S-W Old Fitz barrel that survives long enough & tastes according would become a Pappy. if the same barrel tasted good but not quite great/good enough, it would instead be called/bottled Old Weller or something lesser than "Pappy".

so given the above, say you buy 100 barrels that are marked Old Fitz & have the DSP 16 (S-W plant #) but you have no idea which were specifically bottled as Pappy verses lesser such as Old Weller. if you are HONEST, you can't go scribbling "Aged in Pappy Van Winkle Barrels" all over the label of your beer. this is GI's problem & why they generally can only say we mostly use Heaven Hill barrels. they take barrels from Heaven Hill by the 18 wheeler truckloads, NOT by the batch or a controlled lot. 50/50 appears to buy smaller controlled batches whereas they know a specific set of barrels were bottled as a specific iteration - therefore they can honestly state "Aged in Evan Williams Barrels " aged in "Elijah Craig Barrels ".

 

Oh now, do tell us, what does this do to the meat/food? Does it give meat a whiskey like taste?

You should try a smoked beer. What some brewers do is smoke the malts and it gives the beer a very meaty/campfire taste. The seasonal beer called Urbock made by the German brewery
Brauerei Heller-Trum/ Schlenkerla tastes like Bar-B-Q in a bottle. Such a great beer! The Germans call them 'Rauchbier' which means 'smoke beer' in German. Brauerie makes a few Rauchbiers that are always available but the Urbock is the best they make. At least, I think it is...

Here's a link... http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/263/1324/

 

That sounds awesome! I put that in my beer menu notifications list; none of it is close by.

I like to mix my woods so I would do the JDs chips with hickory or mesquite or another type of bold wood. I'll have to try it with just the JD wood.

 

there are American brewers and other breweries that make them too. it shouldn't be too difficult to find one at your local craft beer store. Most of the time they simply call them "smoked". the popular style to add smoked barley too seems to be Porter. For example, Stone makes a beer called Smoked Porter. I like this beer quite a bit but the last few times I've had it, it's been very thin on the smoke flavors. I would suggest sticking to the German made smoked beers.

Alaskan Smoked Porter is another popular smoke beer.

 

Germans always make good stuff.

 

There has been talk about the importance of what was in the barrel. Some of the distilleries are quite open as to their grain bills, others no so much.

Heaven Hill's basic grain bill is 78% Corn, 11% each Rye and Malted Barley
Maker's Mark's basic grain bill is 72% Corn, 14% Barley and 14% Winter Wheat
Woodford Reserve's basic grain bill is 70% Corn, 18% Rye and 10% Malted Barley
Four Roses has two grain bills - (1) 75% Corn, 20% Rye and 5% Barley; (2) 60% Corn, 35% Rye and 5% Barley.

Those distilleries tell you the grain bills on the tour, the others either tell you it's a "trade secret" or simply don't mention it. If you ask they will then revert to the "trade secret" answer.

I need to take back what I said about Knob Creek. I looked at a picture I took at the Jim Beam Distillery when they let the tour dump a barrel of Knob Creek and the barrel head had "KC". I don't know if that was stenciled on at filling or later on if/when the barrel was identified as a Knob Creek candidate.

I am now intrigued by this whole subject and need to get better educated.

 

There has been talk about the importance of what was in the barrel. Some of the distilleries are quite open as to their grain bills, others no so much.

Heaven Hill's basic grain bill is 78% Corn, 11% each Rye and Malted Barley
Maker's Mark's basic grain bill is 72% Corn, 14% Barley and 14% Winter Wheat
Woodford Reserve's basic grain bill is 70% Corn, 18% Rye and 10% Malted Barley
Four Roses has two grain bills - (1) 75% Corn, 20% Rye and 5% Barley; (2) 60% Corn, 35% Rye and 5% Barley.

Those distilleries tell you the grain bills on the tour, the others either tell you it's a "trade secret" or simply don't mention it. If you ask they will then revert to the "trade secret" answer.

I need to take back what I said about Knob Creek. I looked at a picture I took at the Jim Beam Distillery when they let the tour dump a barrel of Knob Creek and the barrel head had "KC". I don't know if that was stenciled on at filling or later on if/when the barrel was identified as a Knob Creek candidate.

I am now intrigued by this whole subject and need to get better educated.

 

Sorry - Hit Post twice.

 

no worries mate, there's also some listings of other mash bills on other forums dedicated to the whiskey (or in this case bourbons) in question. Quite a lot of info out there actually! Always good to find more beer and whisk(e)y aficionados.

 

I can add a little something to the purchasing of barrels...a local nano brewery just purchased 4 jack barrels. He purchased them through his grain supplier who basically acted as a middle man. He sent the money to them, and in return he received 4 barrels straight from jack daniels. My understanding is that its easier for suppliers to act as middle men, taking money then sending money to the distillery who sends barrels directly to the purchaser. Saves and freight and what not and freight is incredibly expensive for a pallet of 4 used bourbon/whiskey barrels.

 

A great barrel can't undo a bad base beer.

 

IIRC, some years back there was a report that Beam planned to start actually distilling to specific specs for some or all of its small batch iterations & would actually have barrels that belonged to specific brand names. your mention is interesting. i wanna say the concept came to light in the last 3-4 years, maybe less.

i wouldn't think a Knob barrel would be ready for dumping already since they average about 9 years. of course, i suppose that does not mean the practice hadn't started a good period before the new intentions became public knowledge, or that they didn't go backwards & start marking barrels that had already been maturing.

my instincts make me think since it was a tour, the barrel was pre-selected & specially marked for the purpose of displaying to the tour. any chance you can share the picture of the barrel head?

i know most of this discussion probably delves way past what the average brewhead wants to digest. Retroman40's quoted post is significant because it leads up to barrels that might actually be pre-destined for a specific brand. it's pretty clear most here were under the impression that's been the practice for every or most barrels. in reality, barrels typically belong to a distillery, it's not even uncommon that the barrels that belong to a distillery were NOT distilled by their current owner. for the most part, the brand name barrels actually wind up being is at the distiller's or *bottler's* arbitrary discretion at the end of the maturation. which that's what i was getting at as far as the true challenges of brewers disclosing accurate info on their barrel aged products.

 

My opinion...in terms of importance:

80% - what goes into the barrel
15% - time it spends in the barrel
5% - what brand of barrel is used

 

Id like to see more of an emphasis on how long it has been in said barrel as opposed to what type.The more info the better, but duration seems to be a huge variable. I know some brewers claim 3 months is sufficient to barrel age, but 1 year seems to make a more viscous and well rounded beer. Ive also had some BA beers that I have my doubts if they even reached the 3 month mark.

 

Most barrel aged beers utilize rather inexpensive brand barrels. KBS comes from primarily Heaven Hill I believe. I'm sure part of it is to stop the question of why such great beers are aged in rather cheap brand barrels.

 

One "KC" Barrel Head - Taken at the Jim Beam Distillery on January 4, 2013. The KC is lined up so well that it sure looks to me like it went on at the same time. They told us how to read that code "C03 1 17" but frankly I can't remember. I absolutely have no idea what the chalk 10006 means.

 

I want to be clear that when I made my post referring to "Knob Creek", I was just using that as a stand-in for a brand name. Knob Creek may in fact be produced in a way that requires minimal blending of barrels.

As someone else pointed out, variations in temperature throughout the warehouse make a big difference in how the spirit matures in the barrel. The recipes for different bourbons often involves percentages from specific barrel locations (XX Brand might call for a blend of barrels from the first floor west corner, second floor center, and fifth floor east wall, etc.). But if a distiller rotates the barrels throughout the warehouse, the temperature variations can be evened out, like rotating a pizza in the oven as it is cooking.

Its entirely possible that Knob Creek is produced in this way and Jim Beam is comfortable in saying "this is a Knob Creek barrel". What I really meant though was that most bourbon is not produced this way, and I was just using Know Creek as an example of a bourbon brand to make my point easier to write and understand.

 

In addition to the different grain bills, each distillery also use different yeasts. So there has to be some differences in the barrels. There are also variations on the charring for the barrels too. Factor in a wheated bourbon, vs a rye based bourbon vs rye vs Tennessee whisky ( Jack & George) and such. What is needed is a side by side tasting. Volunteers?