Barrel shortage coming soon?

Eventually all beer trends come to an end. If a barrel shortage does occur the prices for BA beers will go up and I think people will begin looking for alternatives or simply the BEST BA beers out there. While the beer is highly rated, FiftyFifty Eclipse series seems to be on the shelves forever due to the price point. While I enjoy most of the BA beers, too many are NOT worth the price. There are hundreds of great ones, but I am not always willing to spend the cash to try everyone.

 

As long as wine, bourbon, and other spirits keep booming in popularity there is unlikely to be a barrel shortage for a long time, if at all. The cost of the barrels will continue to rise causing some breweries to abandon the use and causing the price of the beers to go up as well. I think that's where the tipping point is, not in the availability of barrels.

 

Important question that's relevant to the topic: what is the half life of a barrel? How many times can you reuse a barrel before it stops imparting flavors?

 

Has anyone used charred or not charred wood soaked in bourbon or other liquid and aged beer with them floating around?

 

If there's such a thing as cooper school, consider sending your kids there.

 

Well... seeing as there is a bourbon shortage in the state of Kentucky... and that a number of large distilleries are undergoing expansion projects to add additional warehousing for storing more barrels, I'm gonna go on a short limb and say that, yes, there will be a near-term shortage of bourbon barrels available directly from these distilleries, UNLESS they start cutting years off of how long they age the product. And doing that is likely a risky proposition - both in terms of quality of the product that customers expect, and the price they charge for it, not to mention the threat of diluting some of the super premium brands (i.e. your PvW). So those barrels are probably going to be tied up for quite some time to say the least. However in the long term, with this increased capacity, there should be more barrels to go around in the future. But again, that takes time because you don't just get bourbon overnight.

 

LOL, barrels have been expensive, always. Not a new thing. Total volume of all woods aged whiskeys, brandies, and wine compared to volume of BA beers is, a lot to a microscopic little bit.

Just an aside, wine >$15 is about 7% of the market by vol, 25% by revenue. So that's not exactly typical despite how you may feel (or they want you to feel) when shopping.

 

I've done homebrew with oak spirals soaked in Evan Williams a few times. Adds some great flavors.

 

One traditional market for used Bourbon Barrels has been Scotland as they have no law preventing re-use with malt whisky. Typically a barrel is reconditioned and recharred after each use to ensure it will stand up to another use. Malt Whisky is often aged 10-12 years and while its not typical, there are barrels in Scotland that have survived a hundred years of use. But I've never seen anything detailed about averages.

 

Charred or uncharred? And does the wood soaked in whiskey give different results than just using oak spirals and adding a dose of whiskey to the beer while aging?

 

I think a lot of places are reusing barrels which is leading to a lot of beers not getting the barrel backing they used to. I think a solid example of this is Russian River. The sours have been much more one dimensional, less sour, and less oaky then they used to.

 

I've only used cubes once so I have very little experience but there is actually a thread in the homebrew section right now questioning whether cubes, chips, or spirals can ever achieve the same flavor as using a barrel.

 

Uncharred wood. And the spirals soaked in shiskey gives a different taste than adding whiskey to the finished beer for sure, but never did it just adding the bourbon while the spirals are in. Always considered soaking the spirals a good way to disinfect them.

 

Agree with the previous post that short term there may be a shortage of used bourbon barrels. Considering that there are around 5 million currently in warehouses (they make a big deal that there are more bourbon barrels aging than people here in KY) and they are building new storage warehouses as fast as they can long term there should be plenty.

 

Well I've seen oak aged beers get comparable reviews to barrel aged when the reviewer didn't seem to understand the difference. :-)

 

I would choose an Oaked AB over bastard in the rye.

 

Sorry, I meant to include that the two beers were the same style, e,g, both pay RIS but one aged on oak chips and the other barrel aged. Apologies for confusion.

 

Follow up questions: When a former whisky barrel is used for a beer can those barrels get charred again to reuse for whisky? Or does the beer that soaks into the barrels make it unusable for whiskey? Or am I just not understanding the details of barrels/charring/reuse?

 

New Holland has done something like this. Barrels used for Dragon's Milk are used with Bourbon,