King Henry barrels

The initial release was draft only. The bottle release was Rare barrels. No significance that I can see to this.

 

2010 wasn't bottled. It was only kegged. Small yield. Special events and festivals largely. More of a test batch.

 

More importantly, how many New KHUs is the original King Henry worth?

 

It was just regular barrels, so it should be low.

 

So, like, 1 OKHU = .334 NKHU?

 

I was thinking the other way around, but just thinking about it seems like a waste of my time.

 

See, to me the most interesting question is this:

What's going in the used Rare/King Henry barrels next? I vote for unicorn tears.

 

Didn't they sell all their pappy barrels last year?

 

Didn't a cider or a mead already go into them from another brewery? Or was that regular BCBS?

 

Dark Dark Goose from B. Nektar used regular BCBS barrels

 

I have the only Rare barrel not filled with King Henry here at the store. It smells delicious, and that's after multiple rinses.

 

And what, may I ask, are you planning to put in it?

 

unicorn tears, white whale extract, and actual zombie dust.

 

First off: yes, there was an initial run of a BA barleywine called King Henry (in the regular Heaven Hill barrels, not previously used for BCBS) served at FOBAB 2010. No bottles whatsoever, not even a blend with the PvW 23. Let's stop that rumor here before the goofy ISO posts start...

King Henry was probably the last run in Goose for most of those Pappy barrels. Perhaps some of them went to the sour program or resold to a brewery like Jolly Pumpkin, but the odds of them being used a third time to make a barrel-aged RIS/barleywine/strong ale at GI are pretty slim. For instance, regular BCBS is all first (beer) use barrels - some may be used again in the sour program, but not for more BCBS.

If you're talking about the public sale, those were the HH barrels.

 

His nose, many times over.

 

Has this been confirmed/suggested by GI themselves, or is it just SOP for barrel-aging programs?

 

So they never aged a barleywine in the 07 PVW BCBS barrels?

 

That is what I was thinking of. Thanks.

 

The answer is a little bit of both: It's common for brewers to stretch out the life of barrels to 2-3 uses. However, with each use you lose barrel character and if you keep using the barrel, presuming it remains viable, it eventually won't have any bourbon character left, which is where breweries like Jolly Pumpkin come in (side note: can you taste any KBS in La Roja?). Also, barrels will become non-usable for other reasons, like infection, damage, stave warping, etc.

Per John Laffler, BCBS barrels are used only once. I know some of their small run sours (non-Three Sisters) use the old BCBS barrels, some get sold publicly, and perhaps some get sold to other breweries.