Why Aren't There More Barrel Aged Lagers?

An article from 1964 describing a visit to North American breweries has some interesting notes on secondary fermentation. Page 257:

So chilled down to 32 F while being unfiltered and in contact with the carry over yeast for a number of weeks. Then comes primary filtration and another period of cold storage (post primary filtration) again at 32 F, see below (page 251):

So as per this system the distinguishing feature of ruh was the presence of yeast and being unfiltered as opposed to cold storage which is beer that is filtered. Historically beer would be turned over either green with more yeast in suspension or lauter with less yeast in suspension to the secondary fermentation. Some yeast would be brought along in both cases. I will have to look into if there were older instances of filtering the beer prior to ruh. Still the idea that ruh means cold storage still holds true.

On changes in tastes during ruh (page 257)

So a few days shorter or longer ruh storage could be detected in taste tests. "All malt ales" might be ruh stored at warmer temperatures.

On kräusening (page 257)

Here we see an example of the old system of ruh followed by kräusening, ruh is carried out firstly at 32 F, then it is warmed to 42 F (so lower than the around 50 F of Budweiser today) and the kräusen is added. Here the ruh period is only 6 days as opposed to six weeks, with the kräusening period lasting five weeks. One can see that the emphasis has shifted over to the kräusening period compared with the old system, but still a period of ruh is maintained.

 

Some breweries in Europe still offer beer right from the wooden barrel at the brewery’s beer garden or nearby gardens and pubs. My personal favorite garden in the world, Augustiner Bräu Salzburg-Mülln, sells almost all their beer this way. Most of the Munich breweries do the same. The beer is so fresh that hardly any carbonation is lost, and barrels are quickly turned over throughout the day.

These aren’t liquor-barrel aging, and the barrels are lined so that little wood flavor is imparted, but having cask lager is a delicious and pleasant experience that I wish more American craft breweries would try doing.

 

Yes, a very important difference from contemporary barrel aging.

Cheers!

 

I think I remember seeing it at Montgomeryville Wegman's recently. Probably has hung around due to the high price tag

 

No one has yet mentioned another reason for a minimal number of barrel-aged lagers is that many breweries cannot brew lagers because of the lack of adequate refrigeration equipment to properly lager a beer. I've never seen a percentage of how many breweries have the equipment to chill lagers, but I'd guess that it's only around 25%. That stat keeps the number of available lagers in the marketplace relatively low, let alone the barrel-aged ones.

 

The few lagers I’ve had that have been aged on wood have been crazy good. Hill Farmstead has a series of decocted lagers aged in oak barrels and naturally carbonated that are draft only offerings at the brewery (Memoria and Poetica). Wren House in AZ has done some super interesting barreled lagers too. They had a bourbon barrel one that was interesting but I didn’t love, and a mead barrel fermented lager that was one of the best beers I’ve had this year