Balance Abounds At 11th Annual Festival Of Wood And Barrel-Aged Beer
By Chuck Sudo in Food on Nov 18, 2013 9:35PM
If there’s one style of beer the Midwest can claim as its own it would be barrel-aging. Pouring beer into casks and barrels is nothing new—even Budweiser boasts about being “beechwood aged”—but craft beer’s current fascination with the practice can be seen as equal parts shock and awe as craftsmanship. Every brewery can make a bourbon barrel-aged stout (and most breweries have tried since Greg Hall overloaded his first mash tun to make Goose Island Bourbon County Stout to celebrate Goose Island Clybourn’s 1,000th batch) but not everyone can do so successfully.
Craft breweries now recognize barrel aging isn’t limited to a bourbon barrel and some patience. Sour and wild ales like Goose Island’s “Sisters” line are proving to be as popular with beer geeks as the whiskey barrel bombs. The Illinois Craft Brewers Guild dedicated a room at last weekend’s 11th annual Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged beers to sours, showing how far the pendulum has swung. Fans of heavy beers still had plenty of options but the “sour room” showed how barrel aging programs among Illinois brewers and their peers nationwide have grown. The addition of the dedicated sour room also gave festival attendees more space to maneuver this year, the festival's second at the Bridgeport Art Center.
One of the reasons barrel aging is almost a prerequisite for Midwestern brewers these days is the short lengths of the seasons here. “If you’re on the West Coast a hoppy pale ale is perfect after a hot day in the sun,” Michael Kiser, of the website Good Beer Hunting, told me during the afternoon session. “Here in the Midwest the warm season is so short that it almost lends itself to breweries that want to age their beers in some wood.
Goose Island still leads the charge in barrel aging and medaled in several categories Saturday, but many of the standouts I sampled were from other breweries; St. Louis has more than Anheuser-Busch laying their beers down in some wood. Perennial Artisan Ale had some of the longest lines of the festival for their Abraxas stout aged in Rittenhouse Rye barrels with ancho chiles, cacao nibs, vanilla beans and cinnamon. The lines were only slightly smaller for their La Boheme Kriek, a Flanders Red fermented in cabernet barrels with a blend of wild yeasts and Michigan sour cherries.
Another St. Louis brewery, Side Project, blew attendees away with their two offerings. The better of the two, Fuzzy, was an American Wild Ale aged with Missouri white peaches, a blend of wild yeasts and aged in American oak chardonnay barrels. The sweetness of the peaches cut through the malt and tartness and brought to mind memories of hot muggy August days.
The inventiveness of local brewers also impressed. Off Color Brewing continued to show why it’s going to be a game changer among Chicago’s growing number of breweries with sessionable barrel-aged selections like “Cherry Trouble” and “Radlersnake.” Both use Off Color’s Troublesome gose beer as a base and are aged in gin barrels. The former has brett yeast and cherries added to the mix while the latter is a gin barrel-aged radler made with Pellegrino lemon soda. It took Off Color’s John Laffler to convince me these beers even kissed oak.
All these are examples of what brewers have known for centuries. Aging beer in wood doesn’t help the alcohol content; it provides flavor you won’t pick up in the malt or hops in the form of extra spices and sugars. If it’s good enough for Budweiser it’s good enough for me.