Hi everyone. I have a question regarding barrel aged beers. I can't find online or in any book I have a detailed explanation of the making of barrel aged beers. I am just wondering how the beers remained "sparkling" as oak containers are porous ? Is another fermentation happening in the bottle after the ageing or is there another trick that I am missing ? Thank you so much in advance !
So are you asking how they are carbonated after aging in the barrel? If so, they are carbonated like most any other beer. There are generally 2 options, bottle conditioning or forced carbonation. Bottle conditioning is another fermentation as you suggested. You can pitch more yeast and some form of ferment-able, which produced CO2. If the beer is young enough you can rely on the yeast from the primary fermentation instead of pitching more. The other option is forced carbonation, which is forcing CO2 from an external source such as a C02 tank with a regulator.
The beer is racked into barrels still, as in they are not carbonated at all. Or if they are, it is due to it still actively fermenting (i.e. sours) and something an air lock, or blow off tube can handle. I'm sure there are quite a few barrel aged beers out there that get bottle conditioned, but the majority of them (that I have seen and/or worked with) are force carbed in the bright tank before being released to packaging. There's nothing quite like an overcarbonated barrel aged stout.
