Curious if someone knows which barrels the bruery uses specifically - which bourbon, rum, brandy, port, madeira, rye, etc. distilleries - and for each bourbon barrel beer do they source the same barrels, or does black Tuesday get a different set than the anny series?
These days breweries don't have the luxury to source the barrels they want, especially at the scale of the bruery. For the most part they get what they can get and apply them as they can.
That makes sense, though it wouldn't surprise me if the Bruery had some contracts/relationships that would grant them a better pick. It would be hard to imagine that the Bruery needs to use Koval barrels, for example, than a smaller start up brewing operation. Any society members know about this specifically? Also just generally interested in what the non-bourbon barrels are from.
They use pappy 1,298,001 year barrels for bourbon and the rum barrels came from King Richard III who preferred to bathe in rum and were crafted by the finest slave labor that could be found. But seriously, this craft beer fascination with barrel source is ridiculous. With the exception of single barrel one-offs everything is blended and any minor specific barrel characteristic that the beer may pick up is gone.
Agreed. Most of the sours are done in wine barrels and the amount of blending to nail the taste wouldn't matter as to where they were sourced. The end result is the only thing worthwhile to me.
This is absolutely true. When you are buying 100+ barrels at a time you get whatever was emptied. Most brokers don't even mess with the special stuff, just containers of Heaven Hill barrels.
I asked this question during a bruery barrel room tour. They stated that all the bourbon barrel are different, they just blend them together after the aging process.
Agreed, from a hoarders member. They dont use the same barrels and everything is just blended. Its just a matter of what they can get.
Abita's Bourbon Street series is supposedly aged in Pappy barrels, and people dismiss that idea since Abita is a 'lowly' brewery. They may be, but they also have a shit ton of money, and can go about procuring higher end barrels than a lot of other smaller breweries could. I think The Bruery is likely getting at the very least some good level barrels at the amount they're buying, brokers usually set aside medium to good stuff in bigger quantities.
I was told Four Roses, Elijah Craig, Heaven Hill and Buffalo Trace are what the brokers have been giving them lately. The prices of barrels is (no surprise) also up from the demand -- over $150 a barrel.
I did the Parabola Release tour last month and asked their brewer about the barrels. He said that they (FW) also get a random assortment of barrels, once they hoarded the pappy barrels and did a small run exclusively in those but other than that they also mix them all together. Since FW is such a high $ brewery with practically unlimited funds I wonder how it is that other brewers are able to do specific barrel aging, like Eclipse. Maybe some just sort and store their barrels where other don't, I'm guessing.
Everything has a price tag. If someone really wants a ______ barrel, you can probably get one. The hard part i imagine would be tracing a specific barrel to a specific brand. Most of the large distillers like heaven hill don't make batches and throw them in barrels that are specific to one brand, they sample the barrels at whatever schedule they use and then determine which brand it is suitable for blending.
