Barrel Aging: When is it necessary?

When is barrel aging necessary? This...

Night Stalker = below average imperial stout.
Bourbon County = world class barrel aged stout.

 

Tell that to Weyerbacher: Insanity vs Blithering idiot (http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/392/18199 and http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/392/1566) and Heresy vs Old Heathen (http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/392/18198 and http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/392/1128)

 

Not sure if you meant to imply that Bourbon County = BA Night Stalker, but my understanding is that is not correct.

My understanding:

Bourbon County = BA Cook County Stout
Night Stalker = Excessively Dry Hopped Cook County Stout

 

new oak is very pricey and often more intense than what is needed for beer

old spirit barrels have less vanilla/tannin left in the wood and have picked up notes from the spirit that can complement the beer well

 

look up the recent Whiskey Advocate article regarding Buffalo Trace's attempts with smaller barrel sizes. it's titled: "Small Problem", by Lew Bryson, page 42 of the Fall 2012 issue.

 

Always

 

If you've tried Goose Island Nightstalker, then you've tried the base beer for BCBS. I would guess that the Black Tuesday base beer would be unbearably sweet considering how sweet it still is after all that time in barrels, but who knows.

 

Nightstalker is not Cook County Stout, it may be close but it is still a variant. The hopping has a rather profound effect on the beer.

 

I defer to you, a midwest local and recognized aficionado around these parts. I guess you can't believe everything you hear, considering it was one of the waitresses at Goose Island Clybourn who told me that Nightstalker was the BCBS base. I was kind of surprised to hear that was the case since I hate the shit out of Nightstalker but love Bourbon County. Thanks for the info.

 

Firestone Walker uses all types of barrels for their beers. I am pretty sure some of them are never used oak too. Those might just be used for the DBA though and it really isn't aging the beer it used to ferment the beer. But they do use some of those used union barrels in their aging profile for some of their blended beers. Not sure that that counts as using un used oak, but close.

As for the topic, I don't think aging a beer is necessary, just another way to add some complexity to a beer without brewing up a whole new batch or developing a whole new recipe.

 

Approximately linearly with the size increase, because the ratio of surface area to volume decreases when you get bigger.

Let's pretend that they're spheres so that this easy. The surface area of a sphere (which for a barrel will be the amount of wood used in its construction) is 4*pi*r^2 (r is the radius). The volume of sphere (the amount of beer in our case) is 4/3*pi*r^3. So the ratio of surface area to volume (in our case the amount of wood to the amount of beer, which is roughly "how much wood/spirit flavor is available for each unit of beer") is r/3. That means that as the radius increases (as the barrel gets bigger) there's less wood (flavor) available for each unit (bottle) of beer.

As I said the exact ratio is going to be different with barrels as they're not spheres, but this principle holds very generally. It has some pretty extreme consequences for heat dissipation in animals, that's typically where I've seen it applied.

 

I can't disagree more about Night Stalker being below average.

 

Wouldnt a huge variable be the length of time in the barrel?
Just curious
Good knowledge.

 

I stand corrected about the oak-aged aspect. I still stand by my initial comment though that it is completely unnecessary to do to a DIPA. When I drink a DIPA I want hops. If I wanted oak and malt I'd buy a strong ale, old ale, or barleywine.

 

Yes and no, there's only so much stuff* that the beer can take from the barrel, so a larger barrel has less "potential" flavor to impart. You may be able to make it up via time, but probably not, because the way beer (probably) takes the stuff out is via some kind of diffusive process, so it would be exponential. That means that the increases in stuff in the beer in any given unit of time are biggest at the beginning and get smaller with time. Now, I'm guessing about this (though I'm quite sure I'm right just because it pretty much has to work like this), but the conclusion is that, depending on the rates of these processes, more time in the barrel won't really do much after a certain point.

In fact, given that barrels are relatively permeable it might be actively harmful after a while, with more "bad" flavors (such as oxidation) getting in, "good" flavors being reduced (we all know some things fade with time), and almost no new "good" flavors being added. I don't know about anyone else, but every time I've had a (non-lambic) beer that spent more than 2 years in the barrel it's been awful. I'm not guaranteeing that that's true, but I think there's a reason that 6-24 months is the norm, with many of the very best BA stouts being <1 year. (Sours are a different story since you have bugs doing stuff in the barrels, rather than a simple "absorb flavors from the wood" process.)

*"Stuff" just meaning the various flavors that are being taken out. This is obviously true as the absolute most the barrel could contribute to the beer would be if you took the barrel and pureed it and then blended it in. Mmmm, oaky.

 

Haha, I saw that and did a double take. I don't even see their normal beers around anymore, so it caught me by surprise that they would have a BA beer.

 

I don't know the answer to this, but, I was told by a brewer that aging in used barrels, bourbon, rye, etc.. do not add to a beers abv. I repeat, this is second hand information and other than what I was told i don't know shit.

 

When you age in a barrel there is a constant exchange of beer and liquor from the wood. The wood will release the liquor while drawing in beer in an attempt to reach an equilibrium. You are replacing some of the beer with alcohol of a much higher proof, there is no doubt the ABV will increase.

 

[Thae="kzoobrew, post: 753932, member: 77815"]When you age in a barrel there is a constant exchange of beer and liquor from the wood. The wood will release the liquor while drawing in beer in an attempt to reach an equilibrium. You are replacing some of the beer with alcohol of a much higher proof, there is no doubt the ABV will increase.[/quote]

The alcohol increase is small.
Add 60 gallons of water to a dumped barrel that maybe has a quart of bourbon left in it.
Very Low alcohol water (just an example)

 

Heavy Seas Greater Pumpkin, it's bourbon barrel aged IIRC. I've had tons of barrel aged beers but this was the first one where I really caught the flavor of the bourbon, it was fantastic. Most of the barrel aged beers I've tried are a bit more rounded out, maybe a bit more mellow. Sometimes a hint of vanilla or oak, but I could really taste the bourbon in this one.