Cycle and Cigar City and maybe others have advertised aging their beer in “vanilla bourbon barrels” with the labels clearly indicating they are not normal bourbon barrels with vanilla beans added after filling with beer. Does anyone know what these barrels actually are? Most flavored whisky seems to be mixed with extract or a liqueur after dumping the barrels, someone suggested maybe a barrel aged vanilla extract? I’m just curious where these vanilla bourbon barrels come from.
Looks like Bourbon barrel aged vanilla extract exists, so probably barrels used for that: https://bourbonbarrelfoods.com/bourbon-madagascar-vanilla-extract-100-ml/
The White Oak lumber used for Bourbon barrels contain natural sugars called vanillins that are soaked up by the whisky as it ages and it takes about 7 1/2 to 8 years for the barrel to be depleted of these flavoring agents. By law the barrel can be used only once for the whisky to be called Bourbon (it can of course be used for many more years aging other spirits) and a barrel used to produce a 3 year old Bourbon will have much more residual vanillins than one used to make a 6-8 year old Bourbon. So it's technically correct to say a younger barrel will impart more vanilla flavor to an aging beer than an older one. Whether this is what the brewers are talking about I do not know.
I'm going to guess that is not what they are going for. As an example they also have "Double Barrel Cinnamon Rare DOS" which is "Bourbon Barrel then cinnamon bourbon barrel-aged Imperial stout." So I imagine it has something to do the liquid in the barrel not just residual normal barrel stuff.
Words have meaning but their arrangement may imply a different meaning. For instance does "Double Barrel Cinnamon" mean two barrels or one barrel aging beer for awhile then cinnamon added and aged further. To me all these twisty sentences are saying is our barrel aged beer is more special than the other guy's barrel aged beer.
Double barrel Baptist used barrel aged coffee. Is it possible they packed a barrel with vanilla beans? Just email the brewery.
"Bourbon" refers to the type of vanilla bean in this context. Vanilla grown in Madagascar is of the "bourbon" variety, hence vanilla extract made from Madagascar vanilla is often called "bourbon vanilla," or some other permutation of the words. Which I realize doesn't mean you can't also age Madagascar extract in bourbon barrels, giving you "bourbon Bourbon vanilla extract," or something. My best guess, given the confusion-inducing fact that "bourbon" refers both to a type of vanilla and a type of spirit barrel popular in beermaking, is that they are indeed referring to barrels used to make vanilla extract. But just from the name it's impossible to tell whether these barrels are ones that previously held actual bourbon.
The label on that bottle of vanilla extract I linked to does say "Bourbon barrel aged', so it should be the latter.
Someone already did and they responded that the barrels held vanilla flavored bourbon but they possibly came from different distilleries and did not provide any further info.
I asked the same question in a whiskey group and was shown this: Http://whiskeyreviewer.com/2014/12/a-smith-bowman-releases-vanilla-bean-infused-whiskey_120514/ So apparently there are people taking bourbon and adding beans to the still full barrels. I haven’t personally seen a product like this in a store before so I was just curious.
Not to get to far off track, but “bourbon” is technically whiskey if it has anything besides corn (which must be 51%), rye, barley, and or wheat. So technically, no. There are no vanilla bourbon barrels. Unless of course it is a blended bourbon... but I digress. Typically it is a bourbon that has had vanilla beans added to it. Flavored Whiskey in other words
