Avery Barrel-Aged Series

Oh yeah it looks incredible, I'd love to attend. Like you said though, that's a serious chunk of disposable income to throw down.

 

Sorry I've been off the ol' radar, folks. I check in on BA every once in a while, but as our barrel program has grown the herding has become a little more hectic and I've been spending less time at the computer. But I have a little time right meow, so I'll try to answer a few of the last questions. One thing to note, though... I'm up to date on the beers themselves, but I do not have hard release dates for some of these. With the way things have ramped up and the number of beers coming out, we actually need to move some release dates around and delay a few so that they're not right on top of each other. As always, feel free to ask questions and I'll do my best to answer All The Things.

There will be a TLR at the bottom if your attention span is like mine.

In no particular order:

- Lunctis Viribis. I also would not have thought that this particular mix of barrels was going to go prime time. But this one was the product of two months of blending sessions and blind tasting sessions with a good number of Avery folk. And this particular blend won out consistently. So we ended up with this blend of three projects, involving five different Brett strains, Cabernet Sauvignon barrels, and Tequila barrels. Will it be every sour beer drinker's perfect beer? Of course not. But that's what this long series of one-offs is about. Some of them are bound to be polarizing, and that's fun.

- Expletus. Speaking of polarizing... this little 5%-ish abv sour beer is 100% Tequila barrel aged. And because it's lighter on the abv and malt bill, it really accentuates the barrel aspect. The original intent of this project was to make a sour beer based around the Tequila Sunrise. I did a chunk of research on different variations of the drink and figured that if we added cherry in the fermenter, soured it, and then added grapefruit zest (after some Sunrises with grapefruit juice, I'll never make one with orange juice again), we'd nail it. Then we tried some samples out of the barrels... very little cherry flavor, but more Tequila than expected. And everyone at the table loved it. We decided to release the beer the way it is instead of adding grapefruit zest and more cherry. While there isn't much cherry flavor, the sugar from the cherry definitely gave our Brett strain some extra food and made it funkier than some other projects we have in house. It's pretty cool.

- I'm intrigued that the prices of our barrel-aged beers are going up in liquor stores when we haven't raised prices here at the brewery. I'll chat with our sales folk and see what the deal is.

- The Pumpykn, Tweak, and UJ release dates over the last year were (hopefully) all anomalies. The move into the new brewery meant a lot of shifting and delays as we settled in. Ideally Tweak comes out in November each year, but we weren't able to put one out in 2015 proper. But Tweak three months later is better no Tweak at all, methinks. And I'm of the opinion that this year's Tweak has more coffee flavor right away than last year's, but it's obviously difficult to accurately correlate what you think you tasted a year ago. In any case, I'm very happy with it. As for UJ... I didn't know the official release date, but it looks like Hawkbill721 was on it and the official release is Sunday. We debarreled it last week and are bottling it this week, so hopefully all goes as planned.

- Callipygian (look it up on dictionary.com. Great word) - poonamibaxter has some good questions. I'm gonna cut 'n' paste them for ease:

"What is the point of adding coffee, cocoa, and what ever else to beers with the abv that fucking high? It's an instant hangover fresh and if you cellar it, which I assume is the reason for the novelty size abv, the flavoring is going to disappear. I am an Avery fan and love the demon series beers for cellaring but I'd very much like to see them tone down the abv on these barrel series to make these beers approachable to alcoholics with jobs such as myself."

As for why we're making so many beers with giant abvs and adjuncts... different breweries have different objectives with their beers. We're doing our best to make these beers ready to drink as soon as they are bottled. Then if you prefer the caramel/sherry flavors you'll get from cellaring, cellar away. If we did our job well and kept oxygen out of the bottle, they should cellar well. But we're not constructing every Barrel Aged Series release for drinkin' five years from now, we're constructing them for the near future. But you have a good point... I think that aged UJ will last longer in the cellar than aged Tweak because the coffee is another compound that could oxidize. On the other hand, I also popped open a 2014 Tweak last week and it was still doing quite well. After sampling the last 10+ years of demon-strength beers, our staff might have an unusual tolerance for fresh, high-abv beers. And we're going to make what we like. I think you'll end up with that same hangover if you funnel a couple of Tweak bottles whether it's fresh or aged.

It's also notable that we're trying to vary the abvs on these beers... last month we put out two Barrel Aged Series beers in the 9-10% abv range. Which has meant a few people not entirely pleased with the shift to the lower abvs, but then also some people who really love 'em. And once again, that's fine... this series is where we get to play around. That means that sometimes we'll have big 18% abv beers like Old Perservence, but it also means that we just filled 50 Bourbon barrels with what should end up as a 10-11% abv barrel-aged Mayan Goddess for a one-time release. And we're trying to make Vanilla Bean Stout and Raspberry Sour year-round. We're also planning out sour beers everywhere from the 4% abv range to the 9% abv range so that we can do bigger and better blends with more options. So we'll do our best to make some huge beers, make some "normal" 9-11% abv beers, and keep playing around. I don't consider the high abv beers a "novelty" thing any more than I think ports and Madeiras are a novelty thing. They're fun beverages that have their place in the world, albeit a smaller one. And while the folks on BA have been aware of these huge abv beers for a decade, you'd be amazed how many people show up in our tap room and didn't know that beer over 9% abv exists. It's still a crazy mind-blowing experience for a huge portion of the beer drinking folk out there. And Tweak still blows my mind, but I'm obviously very biased.

As for the point of this particular beer... this is a much bigger extension of a small experiment that popped up a couple of times last year. It was either called Lastarya or Vanilla Coffee Chocolate Bourbon Stout (or something like that) depending on the single keg. And we remembered seeing comments like this on a BA forum - "Was anyone else blown away by Averys LaStarya? Best beer of the day for me. It was like a perfected tweak. Love love loved it!" LaStarya was a standout for me, too. I hope we see it in the taproom again -- or in bottles. Bottles would be good. I can see it being a fan favorite, for sure."

And then we found ourselves with an extra 50-ish fresh Bourbon barrels and thought this would be a fun one-off. So while it's not necessarily built for cellaring for ten years, I'm pretty happy that I get to drink it again (it's a project of Leigh, who also works in Special Projects). Callipygian should release in April/May.

- Old Perseverence. It needed some more time in the barrel for sure. I'm specifically trained to dislike oxidative flavors (for better or worse), but this one definitely needed a few more months to mellow out. It might have been our most successful demon-strength fermentation ever. But that means there's almost no sugar left in there. It's such an overwhelming beer that we tried mellowing it a bit through rounds and rounds of blending experiments and adjunct experiments. In the end, we settled on a wee bit of maple syrup and muscovado sugar (kind of like brown sugar on steroids. High molasses content). When we debarrel this beer next week, we'll add just enough to balance it... a wee bit goes a long way.

I don't think we have an official release date, but mid-March seems likely.

Alrighty. That's enough words for now.

TLR - We're making a lot of different beers because it's fun. Some are polarizing. I can't wait to drink 'em and then start on new projects.

If anyone has questions, fire away. Either on this chain or to the ol' work email. [email protected]

Rock on.

- Andy Parker

 

wow, thanks for that andy. its refreshing to see a rep from a brewery come on here and speak with us directly.

love everything you guys do, keep up the good work!

 

Also, I have no idea how the "D" turned up as a green smiley face in two places.

I'm all for the occasional emoji, but that was accidental.

EDIT: I do. This is why tl:dr is usually in lower case, not capitals.

 

Awesome reply, I love this look behind the curtain at the process. Avery BA series has produced some of the most memorable beers I've ever tasted, although I haven't loved them all. I need to start squirreling away money for Old Perseverance and Callipygian, at the minimum. Old Perseverance sounds really bold.

 

Crazy you said that. I remember having both "versions" of that at a couple releases and I remember telling my wife they were the best Avery beers I have had. I was hoping this beer was going to be mirroring those previous versions and now I am looking forward to this release way too much.

 

I was hoping for some wallet recuperation time after Tweak, but I want to drink UJ even more

 

@rekrappy its not just you, this years release of tweak has more of a coffee presence than the first batch from a few people I have talked to. I love it.

 

Uncle Jacobs Release is 11 AM Sunday, price is $12 each and there is a 24 bottle limit (1 case).

 

I think it's awesome when people post about releases or information from breweries that even the brewers are unaware of:
From Andy at Avery:

"As for UJ... I didn't know the official release date, but it looks like Hawkbill721 was on it and the official release is Sunday. We debarreled it last week and are bottling it this week, so hopefully all goes as planned."

Come on peeps. lets not shoot the gun here. Lets let the breweries make their own decisions.

 

They told someone weeks ago that the release date was on the 21st. I'm pretty sure that Avery made the decision, not some forum post reporting what they had heard from an Avery employee.

[this was posted on Feb 1st]
There's nothing wrong with people on the forum speculating on release dates or passing along information. It's not that odd that Andy wouldn't know the release date of every beer coming out off the top of his head.

 

Not sure what you're comment is about but Hawkbill721 posted about an event that was announced on FB so the release was a decision the brewery made

 

This is an awesome post in so many ways because rarely do we as fans of barrel-aged or special beers get to see so much insight into the everyday happenings of a brewery, let alone the barrel programs. It's really cool to see this progress over the years.

Andy- The one question I have for you as a brewer and a fan of barrel aged beer is your thoughts on coffee and the oxidization you mentioned.- What do you think that "sweet spot" is for coffee forward beers like Tweak? As fresh as possible? The high abv of beers like this make you think they would be great to cellar and see them mature, but the coffee adds an interesting dilemma as far as aging goes.

 

If it was common knowledge posted on facebook then it is interesting that Andy wouldn't know the release date?

Maybe someone at avery is jumping the gun, not the poster on beer advocate?

 

Fair enough. but I still think its weird that the person in charge of releasing a beer wouldnt' be aware of when it was supposed to be put out. I know the barrels are regulated pretty closely until bottling time.

 

When there are this many big barrel releases coming, I don't want any part in deciding when the release parties are happening... we have folks in our tap room and restaurant that know far more about their schedules than I do. So I don't sit in on the conversations where they decide their optimal brewery release dates. So yes, it's a little odd, but I'd much rather spend my time working on new projects. My job is to make the best beer we can and let them know when things are ready to debarrel and bottle. Then the smart people take it from there. In the next four weeks we have release dates for six beers: UJ (2/21), Perzik (2/29), 23 (3/7), Old Perseverence (3/13), Samael's, (3/14), and Expletus (3/21). And some of those dates have changed repeatedly as our schedule has changed. We also put two new TR-only barrel-aged beers on tap, so my mind has been on those.

So while I thought UJ was likely happening 2/21, I didn't want to give anyone an incorrect date. Even some of the dates I just listed could change, so please don't take these last two sentences as an official announcement.

And ricelikesbeer... I honestly can't say I know the sweet spot on coffee-infused beers yet. We're only made Tweak twice so far. One is around 16 months old, one is 1 month old. So on the 16-month old one, I really don't know how much of the changes are hop compounds oxidizing, malt compounds oxidizing, or coffee oxidizing. I can only say my personal opinion on the 16 month one, which is that I don't notice any significant oxidation. When I try them side by side, I notice some malt oxidation and the coffee flavor has faded a small amount on the old one. And as I noted before, the new batch seems a little more coffee forward than the last one right off the bat. But I also feel like I've had coffee beers from other breweries that have a "stale coffee" flavor that I've never been able to pinpoint. All I know is that I haven't liked it. That could be different coffee sources, different brewery processes, or possibly oxidation, but I don't think I have enough information yet to give a conclusive answer. So far I have not gotten that flavor out of the 2014 Tweak at all. So that's good. Give us another five years of making Tweak and we'll chat again...

 

Here's to another five years of making Tweak!!

 

Looking forward to Uncle Jacobs again. This time, I am going to stock up.

 

tweak is best brew of year so far ..im sure the uncle will give it a run!

 

Batch 2 Tweak is kick ass fresh!