So I did a quick search and the closest match thread was a while back, so rather than resurrect it, I thought I'd start a new one. Thinking about Bourbon County Rare having a 2 year barrel aging versus the regular bcbs having 1 year, I'm interested in learning specifically about other barrel aged stouts that have longer barrel age durations, and if there's any correlation between time in barrel and quality of beer. I don't have a cicerone's tasting skills, but I know that I enjoy barrel aged stouts far more than even the best non barrel aged versions, and that I personally consider Rare to be the best beer I've ever had, so for my taste preferences, I can do a pretty strong regression between age in barrel and my opinion on the beer. I'm not convinced that the bourbon that was in the barrel plays as much of a role as the time the beer spends in the barrel itself, although I think the number of years the bourbon was in the barrel might play a significant role. So my question is, are there other barrel aged stouts that have spent multiple years in barrels, and is there a list of beers that have spent time in 20+ year barrels?
No, there probably isn't at the consumer level cos barrel aging beers for the specific purpose of acquiring the characteristics of the barrel is still a fairly recent thing. The bourbon or whatever was in the barrel will have an awful lot to do with the characteristics if you want to really fine tune your palate towards what the original product in it was and it will also impact the price per barrel the brewery pays and also what you will wind up paying at the party store. If the barrels are racked into wet will be where a good chunk of the heat in As far as time spent. It really just depends on what the head brewer is looking for for flavor when they do tastings and then they feel the time is right to release the beer to packaging. All I can really think of for why a beer should spend more time in the barrel is if it was a wet barrel to begin with. Because spending more time in the barrel is going to smooth out the heat, and give whatever the barrel originally held a chance to infuse and get in cahoots more with the base beer. Also. If any of the barrels are infected, and that got past whatever testing the brewery may or may not do. A longer aging will invariably highlight what microbes and interesting funk particles got into the barrels in question. This is a bigger risk if the barrels are dry, and received open. This is where tasting for quality is critically important because one off barrel getting racked with the bunch means the whole release is now infected. Yum. Vicks 44d flavor in a stout.
The thing is, generally the time needed in a barrel is unique to the brewery, the beer, and even the barrel itself - the brewery may have different conditions for storage that will affect the time needed, each beer (even each batch brewed to the same recipe) will react slightly differently, and otherwise identical barrels will impart their flavors at a different rate. This is why when most breweries brew an aged beer, they will take all the barrels and blend them into one tank prior to packaging - to make sure that this bottle / keg / pint is the same as much as possible as the next and the last. Time in barrels also does not make for quality - I could homebrew the crappiest beer ever (or take Coors Light, same difference,) bung it into a barrel for 10 years, and that won't automatically make it a great beer - or alternatively take the same base, and put it in Pappy Van Winkle 21 barrels won't make it great either. In fact, after a certain amount of time, the beer will be negatively affected, due to the oxygen getting through staling the beer.
