Avery Barrel-Aged Series

Is the vanilla, bourbon,coffee, choc they had on tap the the most recent release BA tweak with vanilla and choc?

BTW.. It was amazing!!!

 

I think the one they had one tap this past weekend was BA Tweak with vanilla and chocolate added. Whatever it was, it was absolutely unreal.

 

Fun! Fun! Fun! It's been on tap at a few of the releases. It's awesome. The non-BA is awesome as well.

 

It was on tap at one of the last 4-5 releases. I did prefer non-BA version but it's still awesome

 

Damn, def missed that important as hell point. Anyone know if there's any left at the taproom?

 

confirmed this afternoon with tap room they do have Antonius' bottles to go

 

Avery is putting Ratman 10,000 on at their taproom November 7 at 5 pm. you should try this tasty Barrel Aged Delight!

 

Sorry I haven't chimed in before this, folks... just catching up on things. Here are a few notes and clarifications.

- Up until now we've only done one barrel of Bourbon Barrel Aged Meph Addict/Tweak. That was... two years ago, maybe? I enjoyed that barrel, but at the time I preferred the all-steel Tweak. Mainly because the massive amount of coffee overwhelmed the barrel flavors.

- The vanilla/chocolate/awesome keg from last week's party was an early experimental spinoff of this year's Tweak. We needed to do some experiments on a barrel to figure out a good coffee amount, so a couple of months ago we transferred one barrel of Tweak into a handful of kegs. Each keg had a different amount of coffee so that we could do some blind tastings. With those kegs we were able to figure out an appropriate amount of coffee to dose into 210 bbls of Tweak. The beer you had was made from one of those experimental kegs. So it's not the final Tweak with a bunch of additions, but it's pretty close.

- We lowered the poundage of coffee in this first bottled Tweak compared to the all-steel versions. Our rationale (backed up by blind tastings) is that if you go very heavy with the coffee, you overwhelm the barrel-aged factor. And the goal on this beer is to be coffee-forward, but you also want to be able to taste the Bourbon barrel... oak tannins, coconut, vanilla, etc. We've also changed the method of coffee addition... for all-steel Tweak, we were making a cold coffee toddy in water, then adding it to the beer. After a good talk with our good friends at Founders, we decided to soak the coffee directly in the beer. The ethanol can extract much more flavor from less coffee. So this barrel-aged Tweak will be a bit different than the past. I'm sure everyone will have their favorite and some people will prefer the all-steel coffee bomb, but after tasting it off of the line I'm absolutely ecstatic about it. I tasted that first bottle with a little trepidation, but I feel like we hit a great balance on this one. The coffee is certainly in the forefront, but you get oak tannins, black malts, vanillin, coconut... all the good things in life. I know I'm a biased source, so your mileage may vary. But I'm extremely happy with it.

- For the first couple of years of Tweak, we used Unseen Bean's coffee... they were in our industrial area, but are now thriving with a roastery in Lafayette and a tasting room in Boulder. For the most recent all-steel Tweak and this first bottled batch, we're using Ozo coffee. Both are great, but Ozo was able to help us out with the massive amount of coffee we were looking for. From a totally subjective view, I feel like we are getting more caramel and chocolate flavors from Ozo, which balances out the massive amount of black malt in this beer. I honestly can't say which is better... all I can tell you is that I love it.

- As far as numbers go... I believe we did just over 2,000 cases and a bunch of 5-gallon kegs. So there will be plenty to go around at the release party. Unfortunately, Thoma and I will be out of town for it. FoBAB is happening that weekend in Chicago, so we'll be drinking barrel-aged awesomeness out there followed by Italian beef sandwiches. Anyway... I don't know the distribution pattern for Tweak. Not my area of the brewery. But I would make a totally uninformed hunch and guess that most places in Colorado will have a bottle limit when it goes out. So the best place to get more than a couple of bottles is at the release party. As always, we'll put a bunch of fun stuff on draft and make it as much of a party as we can.

And Ratman is right... "Ratman 10,000" shall be tapped on Friday. We've gotten together for a couple of tasting sessions to make something fun for his 10,000th rate. We did a blind tasting of the options last week, and fortunately there was a runaway winner. As he said, I don't know if we'll keep it on tap steadily... at this point I'm guessing that we'll tap it for the weekend, then use the remaining kegs for special occasions. But I'm wrong pretty frequently, so don't throw things at me if we leave it on tap longer than I thought.

Feel free to ask questions, but don't be offended if it takes me a while to respond. Things are a little crazy 'round Avery as we ramp up our barrel production and move into a new brewery, so I'm not always by a computer.

Rock on...

- Andy

 

@rekrappy After this one are you guys going to give our wallets a break?

Can you give us a preview of what's after BA Tweak?

 

From talking to Adam last month I know there are two more small batch sours coming out after Tweak, both smaller production numbers than anything we've seen in a while.

 

@rekrappy Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to respond and provide so much information, that's awesome of you. Keep doing what you guys are doing, some amazing stuff you are putting out.

 

This may be a dumb question as I've only been to a couple Avery releases and have never maxed out, but I'm confused on this so someone help me out... Is the one case limit 24 bottles here? (someone else told me an Avery case was 12 bottles)

I know, probably a dumb question...

 

A case is indeed 24 bottles at Avery. That's a whole lotta Tweak

 

A case is 24.

 

Thank you sirs. That's what I thought

 

Will Tweak be seeing any distro? If so, will it be coming to Northern California?

 

They will sell all night. Until they close or the beer runs out.

 

Avery posted it will hit distro. Obviously how much depends on what they sell at the brewery but with 2000 cases I don't think you'll have a problem

 

Yep, they usually deconstruction the beer-selling booth after the line dies down (typically after an hour or so) and sell them at the bar all day as mentioned