I was wondering what everyone thought of the level of the barrel programs around New England. In MA, CBC has always been great (though I wish they did more non-sour stuff), Jack's Abby has been expanding nicely, but I struggle a bit to think of many others. Is it just a scale issue for most? Does Harpoon ever do anything? Sam Adams (Utopias notwithstanding)? Hoping to learn about others if there are ones expanding/improving out there.
Lefty's has just released a barrel aged stout, but I believe it is only available at the Ryan And Casey liquor store in Greenfield (and maybe at Lefty's, but not sure).
We can throw Clown Shoes into this conversation, too, for MA. But if we're really talking New England in general, there are others. Just off the top of my head, of course HF and Allagash deserve to be near or at the top of that last. Lawson's and others dabble as well. As well as Hogshead Red from Wormtown, which I think is coming out again soon.
Trillium has released two barrel aged bottles and more are coming; Idle Hands has also done a few things. A good amount of folks do at least a beer or two, you just have to watch your favorites really carefully as some come and go so quickly it doesn't seem like they do it at all.
At Night Shift we currently have 100 oak barrels filled and plan to expand to 200+ by the end of year. We pretty much always have a barrel aged offering or several on tap. Most of them end up in bottles too. Right now we have Art 18 on tap/bottles. It's an american wild ale that was a blend of several of our funky beers. Great raspberry lemon flavor profile. Bottles will be gone by this weekend. As always you can view our current taplist on our site here: http://www.nightshiftbrewing.com/visit-night-shift/on-tap/ Cheers!
Smuttynose (Smuttlabs) is just getting theirs off the ground, but I would expect great things from them.
Came in here to say Night Shift has been doing some pretty impressive and interesting stuff lately with their barreled beers.
In MA, we have more brewers than we have breweries. Contract brewing and barrels are a tough combination to make work. As mentioned in this thread, it seems like most of the guys that own their own brewery are putting out something interesting from a barrel. For many, I suspect they're reluctant to dedicate a bunch of their production to barrels when they're already brewing at capacity and selling out quickly, so you get these very limited runs of several hundred bottles sold brewery-direct. For CBC, the only hole in the barrel program is the lack of extended availability of a BA stout. But everyone and their mother has a BA stout. Blunderbuss, Arquebuss, the sours, and the assorted things like BA Om that pop up more than make up for not having the 100th version of BCBS available at all times. But I'm a sours guy, so I'm biased.
Allagash and Oxbow have the best BA programs in Maine. Allagash is probably one of the best barrel programs in the US or the world.
Everyone has said all the good ones, I'm actually pretty excited about Grey Sail's upcoming barrel program.
Nebco makes some good barrel aged beers. Also Beerd has two beers in barrels at the moment, believe one is a wine barrel aged tripel or dubbel. Forget what the other one is though. Two roads does Igors dream which is a pretty good BA RIS ( only beer from them I actually like)
I'm excited for them too as they're one of my favorite breweries -- the people are great! I wish they would produce more variety in their lineup as they have the same beers each year with an anniversary special and/or a few different one offs, but doesn't seem to have as much as competitors in the area. I know they were strapped due to capacity and had gotten some new tanks in, but I'm stoked they're finding other ways (i.e., barrel) to get different products out there.
