Should barrel aged beer be a separate type category on the site?

Depends if you want to look at it from the perspective that most ales would traditionally get something from being shipped in barrels, like a Flanders Red. Many ales were transported in barrels and some of those were bourbon barrels. If you do decide on separate categories do oak aged beers also get a category? Are they lumped in with bourbon aged beers, because they are both aged in barrels? I'm on the fence on this one.

 

This all goes to show that beer catagories/styles are a really finicky thing.

 

No there are far to many catagories now.

 

I think adding barrel aged as a category/style would be too confusing, but having a tag or attribute that could be set and searched on would make sense. It really is a property of the beer in addition to the style.

 

I wouldn't go overboard, and I certainly wouldn't create a generic "barrel aged" style group. But, I really do think a barrel aged imperial stout is a large enough category at this point that it could easily be justified. Otherwise, the imperial stout categories are getting a little ridiculous with barrel aged variants dominating the categories.

About 16 or 17 of the top 20 are barrel aged now for american double stouts:
http://beeradvocate.com/lists/style/157

And the RIS group isn't much different:
http://beeradvocate.com/lists/style/84

Personally I think it's time to just overhaul all imperial stouts (russian, american, or whatever) into one category, and barrel aged imperial stouts into another category. The line between RIS and American Imperial Stout has always been extremely fuzzy, and at this point almost nothing new is being made precisely true to the RIS category.

I suppose you could make a similar argument with barleywines, but the english vs american distinction is much greater, and both styles are still being made in large numbers. Also, barrel aged barleywines don't completely dominate the scene quite yet like with stouts. (Though it seems to be headed that way...)

 

The method of storage and dispense can dramatically affect the outcome.I have long supported a separate listing in the reviews section for cask ales as opposed to their bottled/canned/keg versions though of course they are the same styles.There are already vastly too many styles with the result that people get bogged down with trivial details. Barrel aged beers should likewise be reviewed separately but still within the style.

 

just going on the idea of stouts. are they now barrel aged or a barrel aged coffee stout? barrel aged oatmeal stouts? etc etc.

im down with putting a little "*" on the page to denote barrel aging. maybe even next to it denote what type of barrels used.
the way i look at it is on car models you just call it a gt model, or ss, or srt. by making it a catagory its more like writing what makes a gt model a gt all on the side of a car. its just overboard.

 

This.

 

If it is unfair to compare a barrel aged stout to a non barrel aged stout than it is equally unfair to compare a stout with coffee, or chocolate or vanilla beans or fruit to another stout without those specific ingredients. Break that down even more is it even fair to compare a cherry stout to a blueberry stout to a raspberry stout? Let's keep going down this road, is it fair to compare an IPA brewed only with Centennial to an IPA brewed with Simcoe to an IPA brewed with multiple hops? What about malt? Should we create separate styles based on malt used?

Bottom line is it is a slippery slope. If people use common sense things will work themselves out. You start separating one style based on one detail you have to separate all styles by all details, because that would be fair. The fact that we call them "Barrel Aged" Stouts implies we already understand they are different than your standard stout but we also recognize them as a stout. No need for further style divisions.

 

This is kind of what im trying to say. The beer page already has a spot for notes on the beer, putting something right there in the notes is all thats needed. im looking at this purely as a way to ID beers that had some type of barrel aging for those trying to see what is and isnt barreled. making its own category seems to glorify it a bit.

 

Seems reasonable.

I think the difference between a BA imperial stout and an imperial stout is at least as large as the difference between a stout and imperial stout, IPA and DIPA, etc. etc. And there are enough of them out there to justify their own category.

You can say it's a slippery slope, but a lot of people think that separating out BA'd beers would be helpful. That's what really matters. If IPAs hopped with just Simcoe suddenly see an explosion of popularity, then we can rethink adding a category for them.

 

But there is a bigger difference between a barrel aged imperial stout and a non-barrel aged imperial stout than there is between an "american imperial stout" and a "russian imperial stout".

We're already halfway down that slippery slope - not just stouts either, but separating german and czech pilsners, arbitrary categorization of IPA vs DIPA, etc, etc. Point being, it's all arbitrary, and we need to draw lines to make it work, and there is a a fairly reasonable argument to draw a line between a barrel aged stout and a non-barrel aged stout.

 

I really like the tags idea. Not a separate category, but some way for me to see if a beer is Barrel aged right on it's page with the name, brewery, ABV, etc.

 

I am not going to argue that we aren't already too far down that slippery slope for my liking but I will not use that as an argument to go further down. Styles have their place, but their place is not to dumb down every style to include every detail. I don't think we need to draw any more lines, it would be far more beneficial if we took a more realistic view of what the style guidelines were meant to be and accepted that there is variation with in the style and the variation is not a reason to create a new style.

Barrel aging is just an added aspect of a beer, just like using additional ingredients such as fruit, coffee vanilla or chocolate. If you want to separate one, then you have to separate them all. It seems far more realistic to view them all as stouts and use appropriate descriptors to further explain the beer needed.

 

Only if we can add a "Citra Hopped IPA" category because those distinctly blow other IPAs away, and while we are at it a "Coffee stout" and a "Coffee porter" category.

 

I think there is a big enough difference between non-BA beer ans BA beers to create a different category. A poorly made RIS can go into a barrel and create a magical result. Brewers have incentive to take a poorly made beer and add levels of complex and favorable flavors by putting them into barrels. Furthermore, I can only think of three non-BA RIS/DAIS that I've had that hold up in quality to BA versions. Even less if I consider Barleywines.

 

Barrel Aged *Insert Style* should be separate styles IMO. It's not really fair to compare non-barrel aged and barrel aged brews. This is particularly true with porters, though also holds true with stouts and other barrel aged beers. How can you expect a normal porter to stand up to a porter aged in spirit barrels? You can't—they're two completely different things.

 

I just recently had a conversation with another BA member. I cracked a couple of stouts recently that felt like Napalm or a flame thrower was shoved down my throat. When I can no longer appreciate a stout for what it should be, then a differentiation should be a consideration. Some are approaching ABV's equivalent to spirits.