Bourbon barrel beers without the barrel

Its the wood that is most important not the residual spirit.

 

I'd read up on using oak barrels for bourbon and/or wine. There's a multitude of reasons why fine spirits and wines use (new) oak barrels and don't simply drop wood staves into steel fermentation vessels.

 

Fortifying beer with just spirits is against TTB regulations AFAIK. It would also defeat the purpose of all the nice flavors you get from different kinds of oak.

 

^^^^^
this

 

Have people tried beers that have been aged in wine, cognac, or whisky barrels? Why does it have to be bourbon...

 

It's just not the same. You can mess around with dropping (bourbon) into beer till the cows come home (is that even an expression?), but you're never going to replicate that barrel aged character. As suggested, the wood itself plays a role, and all the flavors marry differently as they age in those barrels.

 

You can add Bourbon to a beer, if that is what you want. If you do that, you need to use about as little Bourbon as possible, unless all you want is a boiler maker. Though that is not the same thing as flavor imparted from the barrel.

 

Yes to all the above, plus gin and tequila and others. Doesn't have to be bourbon, but bourbon works oh-so-well with Imperial stouts, barleywines, and similar brews.

 

thousands of beers have been aged in barrels besides bourbon. good example are the Bruery Sucre varations, they even went to Port and Madaira barrels. Eclipse has a ton of different barrel varations too. And these are just the tip of hte ice berg

not to mention the hundreds of sours aged in wine barrels for the past 10 years ( Russian River has been at it for longer!)

 

From what I've heard, bourbon is easiest to get because the bourbon brewers only use them once, plus it's a nice match to the big stouts often aged in them.
I've seen beers aged in chardonnay, rum and even absinthe barrels, but haven't had a chance to try most of them. Tried a rum barrel brown ale one time, and did not like it at all.

 

Probably equally as important is that the beers (especially the malty beers) will age/mellow and blend well with the liquor flavor as well as picking up the wood characteristic too. You can't do that with a boilermaker.

 

Isn't another reason the fact that bourbon barrels are generally done after one bourbon batch, creating a bigger supply market, while non-bourbon other ones are re-used and therefore are much harder to acquire? This makes the occasional tequila barrel stout like OK-Si quite unique due to a more limited barrel supply.

 

Yes, you got it. Bourbon barrels may only be used once if the distillery wants to call the spirits aged in them Bourbon. Also Bourbon is rapidly gaining in popularity so they have little motivation to re-use the barrel and call the whisky something else.

 

Bourbon/Tennessee Whiskey takes the harshness out of wood. Bourbon barrels are cheap and all over the place. That's why so many Scotch distillers use Jack Daniels or bourbon.

 

Well you can add chips or pellets. Great Divide Yeti has one propperly Barrel aged version, the rest is with oakchips etc.

 

There's plenty of Beers available aged in other casks.Port,Sherry,Rum,Scotch etc etc.

 

Absolutely. There are tons of options. I noticed you are in California. If you happen to like sours then give one of these a shot to get a whole different barrel aged experience.

http://russianriverbrewing.com/brews/consecration/
http://www.firestonebeer.com/beers/products/bretta-rose

 

Unfortunately, I do not have an actual barrel, so with my homebrew, I soak oak chips in bourbon for two weeks and then add it to the beer until it reaches the necessary flavor level. It is not the same as a barrel; however, it is better than nothing.

 

I went to a brewery in Phoenix (Old World) that had this wine or brandy barrel aged beer. It was fantastic.

On a side note, it looks like the brewery is closed now, maybe temporarily.