What's your barrel preference for aged Stouts?

Apple Brandy used correctly is utterly phenomenal. Another barrel I wish saw more use in beer aging.

 

Utopias barrels are a thing, but not really available. It would be interesting to see what others could do with them. Just thinking of having a UBA Stout...

 

Did a side by side tasting of World Wide Stout, Utopias WWS, and BBA WWS. My friend and I both agreed that Utopias was the best.
I wish that there were more wood aged beers. Probably because of Ballantine IPA 40 years ago. I remember using toasted oak chips in my early homebrewed IPA because that was the recipe.

 

I wasn't thinking of trying that beer, but the tap room manager brought a taster to me and said "you've got to try this Apple Brandy barrel aged stout!" I took a sip and was like Wow! That's impressive!

 

Local brewery did a barleywine in rye and apple brandy. I thought the latter was utterly phenomenal, although I enjoyed the former. Turns out the former made the top 10 on the weekly releases for Untappd. Until that time, I always wrote off apple brandy, especially after Prairie's mis-hap.

Here's to hoping 2022 brings us both more rye and apple brandy aged beers.

 

Bourbon for me and it’s not even close.

Although I will say that red wine barrels seems to be underutilized and could hve potential. I remember in the early days of Westbrook’s barrel program (and this was before every brewery on the planet had barrel aged offerings) they had a few absolute gems that came from red wine barrel aging. That first batch of Red Wine BA Mexican Cake (circa 2014 I think, maybe 2013) was just divine. I do feel like red wine barrel aging probably works harmoniously with a lower range of recipes and adjuncts though. Seems like bourbon characters kinda blanket work across the board, at least when it comes to imperial stouts.

Also, not to go on a tangent here, but it needs to be said. Bourbon Barrel Aged Cabernet Sauvignons are an abomination to wine, and to bourbon. I’m not much of an agenda or even a “cares about issues” guy, but I can only take so much. Let’s take a stand here people and all agree to stop buying those so that their ever expanding shelf space invasion can stop.

Ok wine rant over, back to the beer discussion. Carry on folks.

 

Well there is peanut butter whiskey like Screwball that is (was?) popular.

 

Speaking of abominations….

 

Yeah, when I started getting back into distilled beverages a year or so ago, I was especially shocked at the flavored Bourbons. WTF?
Is Nothing Sacred?

 

Have you had the port cask version of JW Lees? Fantastic stuff

 

Honestly that Utopias WWS was better than I expected. A nice happy medium between the two beers. Quite drinkable

 

No. I haven't seen jw on shelves in a while

 

I do enjoy when a maple bourbon barrel gets blended in to the final beer.

 

“Is”, and my opinion is that it’s killer. A half shot of that with a half shot of Howlers Head banana bourbon in my split shot glass gets you an “Elvis”. Quite enjoyable as far as I’m concerned.

 

Good news.

I have two bottles set aside to mellow. One I gave to a friend, one to be cracked open as a baseline soon. My last “fresh” WWS was too hot for me, and age definitely took the edge off.

 

This. Brewers go easy on the barrel!

I’ve had beers aged in all sorts of barrels and I believe the reason I most often rate/review a barrel aged beer poorly is that there was too much barrel and not enough beer flavor.

And for this reason I tend to shy away from barrel aged beers because aging adds cost to the beer and quite often detracts from the taste of the underlying base beer.

I don’t want to spend a lot of money for a beer that I often won’t like.

 

I doubt they still make it, but 21st Amendment had a DIPA called Hop Crisis that was a pale, citrusy DIPA aged on white oak spirals for vanilla notes, and it was fantastic.

 

I feel like Bourbon (or Rye for that matter) melds really well with beer. I also really enjoy Port barrel aged beers. Bourbon is not my spirit of choice (I can take it or leave it) and actually prefer to drink Scotch or Rum when not having a beer. But I generally do not like the way Scotch or Rum barreling works with beer. So make sense of that.

I went for a tour there and saw that as well. I feel like it was either 2014 or 2015. I think it was Odyssey and they were calling it “Iliad”. I don’t think it was ever released. Not 100% sure on all but that’s as much as I can recall.

 

The best BA beers I’ve enjoyed have been in apple brandy/Calvados barrels. But, I like bourbon, rye, and rum as well.

I haven’t yet found a a tequila BA beer I’ve really liked. I dislike tequila though, so…