AFTER THE FIRE: Hip Hops ... Bourbon-barrel aged Imperial Stouts.

AFTER THE FIRE: Hip Hops ... Bourbon-barrel aged Imperial Stouts.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

I'm always an quarterly issue behind when it comes to reprinting my columns from Food & Dining Magazine. This one is from Fall 2016; Vol. 53 (August/September/October).

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Bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial Stouts

You’ll hear one sort of pitch at a sales meeting, and see another thrown during a baseball game, but brewer’s pitch is completely different.

Brewer’s pitch is a resinous substance used to line wooden barrels so liquid doesn’t come into contact with the wood.

That’s because exposure to a wooden barrel affects the flavor of its contents, and generally over the centuries, brewers have preferred their wooden vessels to be neutral. Brewer’s pitch remains a handy means to this end, and anyway, stainless steel long ago supplanted wood for beer’s storage and serving.

But what if beer’s modification is the stated aim of the exercise?

If submerged wood can positively complement the taste of beer, as with white ash chips or oak spirals, and if wooden cooperage harboring funky microorganisms can leverage its own intended outcome (for example, in some styles of sour beer), then barrels formerly harboring spirits offer a wide potential range of flavor and aroma characteristics for beers aged inside them.

Consider an emptied oak Bourbon barrel. It was charred in order to properly host Kentucky’s indigenous corn-based liquor, and after a period of years, the mellow finished whisky was removed for bottling to proof.

However, this once-used barrel retains considerable evidence of Bourbon. Why not repurpose these flavors and aromas by aging beer in it?

It seems a forehead-slapping moment, and yet the genuinely strange thing is how long it took for someone to grasp the possibilities.

Lost Abbey brewmaster Tomme Arthur, no stranger to the nuances of barrel aging, identifies Bourbon Barrel Zero in this 2013 excerpt from All About Beer magazine.

In 1992, Greg Hall from Goose Island Beer Co. in Chicago might very well have become the first American brewer to produce a bourbon-barrel-aged beer when he filled six oak barrels that previously contained Jim Beam. He poured this experiment at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) in Denver that fall, inducing rumors, appreciative nods and whispers of something entirely new.

I can second Arthur’s emotion, for at a GABF vintage beer tasting in 1997, the late, great beer writer Fred Eckhardt was seated next to me. When I asked him the beer he considered the festival’s finest ever, he didn’t hesitate: Goose Island Bourbon County Stout.

In our contemporary craft beer era, all manner of spirit-soaked barrels are being merrily procured by enterprising craft brewers as creative mediums for aging and experimentation.

The number of beer styles deemed appropriate for barrel again also has expanded, although certain combinations strain credulity to such an extent that I’m almost afraid to joke about Organic Free Range Mezcal-Barrel-Aged Imperial Kolsch lest it somehow comes to tragi-comic fruition.

No timelessness for the impatient

Such embellishments are hip, and I’m square. 25 years are more than enough to concede the elegant pre-eminence Hall’s foundational Bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial Stout.

Hall sourced oak Bourbon barrels in Kentucky, and he filled them with Imperial Stout, the stout family’s brawniest hitter. This inspired pairing remains the bellwether. Bourbon and Imperial Stout are burnished and challenging, richly assertive and subtly intricate. They bring out the best in each other.

At strengths typically in excess of 10% abv, Imperial Stout’s dense, black, viscous intensity lends itself to a panoply of descriptors, including roastiness, coffee, caramel, smoke, vanilla, sultana, plums, figs, cherries, chocolate, brown sugar, licorice, fruit cake and bubblegum.

A wooden barrel saturated with Bourbon offers similar and complementary flavors and aromas, as well as a pinch of added alcoholic potency. The brewer’s objective is to choreograph these delightful factors by calibrating, aging and blending with ultimate “Bourbon Stout” balance in mind.

Consequently, Bourbon-barrel aging is a thoughtful, time-consuming process. Used barrels must be visually inspected for imperfections, and kept from drying out. While uncut whiskey is an effective disinfectant, it’s better to fill the barrels with beer relatively quickly, lest undesirable microorganisms find a safe haven.

Once filled with beer, the barrels need a place to rest, and you’ll sometimes see stacks of barrels in the brewhouse. Ambient temperatures matter, as well as ready access, because brewers will need to pull samples for taste testing. Often they’ll drill holes in the wood and use stainless steel nails as plugs after regularly scheduled nipping.

Just as most Bourbons are blended to achieve uniformity of character, typically beers from multiple Bourbon barrels are, too. Brewers often blend in a second batch of base beer. Aging and blending take time and money, explaining why Bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial Stouts tend to be limited cool-weather seasonal releases, both rare and expensive.

Save that cigar for the second bottle

Imperial Stout is ideal, but it isn’t the only style of beer suitable for Bourbon-barrel-aging. From the hoppy (Double India Pale Ale, Barley Wine) to the malty (Doppelbock, Belgian Quadrupel), characteristics of Bourbon can meld with those beer styles boasting the heft and complexity to compete.

Balance, smoothness and harmony are the watchwords when seeking worthy Bourbon-barrel-aged beers. Beer and barrel must co-exist as equals, with discernible contributions from each. If they don’t, a glorified boilermaker is the likeliest outcome.

Here’s how not to do it

Head Brewer: “We’re making our Bourbon-barrel-aged beer today.”

Assistant Brewer: “Great. How many fifths of Old Rotgut should I pick up at the package store?”

A small number of Bourbon-barrel-aged beers are available year-round (Goodwood Bourbon Barrel Stout, New Holland Dragon’s Milk). Others are the sporadic targets of fervent cult appeal, like Against the Grain’s Bo and Luke.

Plan now for the approach of winter. On-line ratings aggregators like ratebeer.com and beeradvocate.com are the best sources for building your shopping list. Brewery web sites list seasonal release dates, and it’s always a good idea to befriend the beer buyer at your neighborhood package outlet.

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout endures, more widely available than ever thanks to AB-InBev, the Chicago brewery’s parent. BCS remains an impeccable example of Bourbon-barrel aged Imperial Stout, these days the elder statesman in an extensive, ever-changing yearly barrel-aged program. Even I can remember the annual release date for BCS.

It’s Black Friday, on Thanksgiving weekend.

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November 21: AFTER THE FIRE: Hip Hops ... Goodwood Brewing Company: Touched by a Barrel.

October 17: AFTER THE FIRE: These old, old habits die hard.

October 10: AFTER THE FIRE: The Great Taste of the Midwest is the best beer fest of them all.

October 3: AFTER THE FIRE: New Albany’s Harvest Homecoming occupation isn't alleviating my "craft" beer Twitter depression.

September 26: AFTER THE FIRE: The seasonality of Oktoberfest in time, beer and year.

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An overview of Barrel Aged Imperial Stout and a profile of Brooklyn and The Butcher headline the current issue of Food and Dining Magazine.

The latest issue of Food & Dining is on the street, as I speak. Click through to the preview and compendium of articles, then follow the links to issuu.

Or, go straight there:

Food & Dining -- Fall 2016, Vol. 53 (August/September/October) 

I have my usual beer column byline in the current edition ...

Hip Hops: Bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial Stout — The complex but agreeable relationship between beer and used Bourbon barrels.

... and there's also a detailed profile by the inimitable Greg Gapsis about Southern Indiana's own Ian Hall and his Brooklyn and The Butcher.

Vision and Experience in a Historical Setting — New Albany restaurateur Ian Hall adds another jewel to his crown with the sharp, elegant restoration of a historic downtown building.

Printed copies are available throughout the metro area in bars, restaurants, coffee shops and bookstores -- and they're free of charge.

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THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Two decades of Beer Corner barrels.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Two decades of Beer Corner barrels.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

My first Great American Beer Festival was in 1997, and it proved to be a liberating experience.

By tradition and designer, the GABF is about beer brewed right here in America, as opposed to imported brands, which at the time still comprised the bulk of better beer options in metropolitan Louisville.

It always was my goal to help shift this balance. Denver was far ahead of Louisville, and seeing what worked in Denver was an invaluable opportunity.

My GABF tickets came through the good offices of Bluegrass Brewing Company, and I dimly recall this as being advantageous, as they included access to certain perks not available to general admission ticket holders.

It transpired that one of these was a tasting of “vintage” beers, including a vertical Alaskan Smoked Porter selection. Imagine my surprise when I was seated at a table with the late, great beer writer Fred Eckhardt. He seemed to be a perfectly regular guy, but then again, almost everyone was.

It was the primeval, pre-rock-star-brewer phase of the revolution. Very quaint, indeed.

Eventually I had the chance to ask Eckhardt a question: What did he consider the best beer he’d ever beer sampled at the GABF?

After mulling for a moment, his answer was Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout, and in retrospect, it seems surprising to learn that BCS was only brewed for the first time in 1994, a scant three years before my chat with Eckhardt.

Originally it was Goose Island’s 1,000th batch, and as schoolchildren in Siberia know by now, it came about by aging Imperial Stout in used bourbon barrels brought to Chicago … from Kentucky, of course.

Barrel-aging was a suitably exotic notion in 1997, although back in Louisville, the dawning age of “microbrewing” already had produced an instance of similar experimentation.

In 1994 at BBC’s original St. Matthews brewpub, brewmaster David Pierce filled a used bourbon barrel with Doppelbock and allowed it to sit outside during a wintry snap. Water freezes before alcohol, so voila! BBC barrel-aged Eisbock was the result.

I’m not sure any of it ever passed my lips, but that’s okay. The GABF tickets more than made up for it.

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My most recent assignment as columnist for Food & Dining Magazine was a profile of Louisville’s Goodwood Brewing Company, to be published in the May/June/July issue.

Goodwood’s identity dates to 2015 and a rebranding of the entity once noted for brewing Bluegrass Brewing Company’s beers under license for packaging and distribution. The brewery’s new name is fully intentional, meant to inform beer lovers of the roles played by wood and water.

“We became Goodwood because we are known throughout the region and industry as experts in barrel aged products,” says Goodwood’s CEO, Ted Mitzlaff.

While researching this essay, I came across a relic of past barrel-aged aspirations. A newer generation of visitors to the “beer corner” of Main and Clay in downtown Louisville might not know that “craft” brewing actually began there almost two decades ago.

Something's brewing on East Main -- or will be soon, by Terry Boyd (Louisville Business First; September 8, 1997)

A 30-year-old Pennsylvania native plans to brew and distribute bottled beer in Louisville for the first time since Falls City Brewing Co. left town for Evansville, Ind., in 1978.

But, unlike brewpub/restaurant operations that combine suds and grub, his new venture is only about wholesale beer, says Paul Hummer III, president and brew master of Pipkin Brewing Co.

Pipkin operated from 1998 through 2001, when BBC bought it and launched its own production brewery at the Beer Corner. In fact, Pipkin had been contract-brewing and bottling BBC brands prior to the changeover.

In retrospect, it’s easy to understand what happened. Pipkin was financed, planned and constructed to be profitable at a theoretical production capacity projected to be reached quickly. It never got there, with familiar ramifications.

Trust me. I know these all too well.

Pale Ale and Brown Ale were intended as Pipkin flagships from the outset, later augmented by Porter and a few gimmicks tied to local universities, and when sales of these brands were too slow, contract brewing was introduced for cash flow.

But the ultimate problem with contract brewing is that it enhances the value of someone else’s brands, not your own.

Many have since been compelled to learn Pipkin’s lessons: Whether the start-up capital comes from a financial institution, a helpful lottery-winning angel or the founding family’s own pockets, there is an unforgiving logic to its expenditure. Keeping one’s nostrils barely above water is better than drowning, and yet subsistence offers no margin for error – and no ability to leverage necessary further investments.

It is a painfully familiar sensation.

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Around the year 2000, Pipkin borrowed a page from the Goose Island playbook and released a Bourbon Barrel Stout. For many of us, it was Pipkin’s best ever beer. I’m not entirely sure who conceived and shepherded this idea, but my guess is brewer Paul Philippon, future mastermind of the Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery in North Carolina.

That’s right. Philippon brewed for Pipkin.

I’ll never forget my reaction. How could this not be the single best idea in local brewing history? Bourbon Barrel Stout, brewed in Kentucky and aged in bourbon barrels from Kentucky. Just imagine if the brewery partnered with the distillery and cross-marketed the results?

At the time, it annoyed me that Pipkin Bourbon Barrel Stout was a one-time seasonal release. I told anyone who’d listen that it should be the only beer Pipkin brewed; after all, there was ample warehouse space at the Beer Corner. Clear ‘em out, stack 'em high, and go all in.

Now I can see that Pipkin’s precarious situation surely precluded such a marshaling of resources. A barrel-aged program would have required substantial outlays of time and money, and the brewery had a surplus of neither. It’s a fond memory nonetheless, and Pipkin Bourbon Barrel Stout should be remembered as a Louisville trailblazer.

In 2006, BBC began brewing its Jefferson’s Reserve Bourbon Stout (the distillery tie-in later ceased). Alltech’s Bourbon Barrel Ale was launched around the same time. Bourbon Barrel Stout was BBC’s mainstay in markets outside Kentucky, and remains the basis of Goodwood Bourbon Barrel Stout.

In 2016, wood “touches” every beer Goodwood brews, whether by aging “in” (a barrel) or “on” (added to the process).

The rest of the Goodwood story? It's coming in May.

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March 7: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Can I get a “do-over” on Naughty Girl?

February 22: The PC: Beef Steak and Porter always made good belly mortar, but did America’s “top” steakhouses get the memo?

February 15: The PC: Swill in youthful times of penury and need.

When the Euro '85 series returns: Leningrad USSR. 

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Let bourbon be bourbon. We'll just brew beer.

Here's the pitch:

Will a barrel shortage hurt small distilleries and breweries? For some, it already has, by Kevin Gibson (Insider Louisville)

As for the longer term consideration of white oak barrels used in distillation, the real question might be this: Production of bourbon is predicated on the single use of a new white oak barrel, after which the used oak barrel enters the secondary marketplace ... but is this cycle environmentally sustainable?

“It’s really tough to see an end in the short term. Everything seems to indicate that bourbon, Scotch and Irish whisky are very bullish. It’s a question of whether logging capacity and cooperage can catch up with demand from the other side.”

Assuming there is enough white oak to go around, and the value of bourbon production dictates supply of the necessary wood according to the purportedly "free" market, then brewers in need of used barrels to inflate the value of their specialty products, as determined by the geek-driven niche market on Rate Advocate, should be able to procure plenty of them. It's probably a non-issue.

Is the future of better beer as a whole dependent on a niche market like this? One certainly hopes not. Sam Cruz provides the correct answer when asked how a barrel shortage might affect Against the Grain.

Asked how (AtG's) brewery expansion would be affected if the barrel shortage worsens, he says, “If something does happen, we would adjust our production plans. We’d make more of something else and make it well.”

Precisely.

What brewers of beer beer must do is brew better beer, perhaps even the sort -- generally, those styles that are non-barrel aged -- capable of being consumed during a baseball game.

BSB Patio Friday: NABC's Willet Bourbon Barrel Chocolate Stout, Willett bourbon, Bourbon Society and J. Shepherd Cigars.

On Friday evening (February 11), we’re turning over the heated Bank Street Brewhouse patio to the Bourbon Society for an evening of Willett bourbon, NABC's Willet Bourbon Barrel Chocolate Stout, and cigars from J. Shepherd (kindly note that the dining area inside is entirely separated from the patio).

Fear not: The public is invited. Before I explain further, our good friend Timothy answers the question, “Who?”

The official name is "The Bourbon Society," a non-profit organization devoted to the celebration of bourbon and its history. The organization puts on bourbon related events, does private barrel selections, and tours distilleries and whiskey related sites.

Here’s the “What?”

Last year, NABC's Jared Williamson brewed a Chocolate Stout with chocolate three ways (malt, nibs and cocoa; formulated by Jesse Williams) and some raisins to round it out. A portion of the batch was aged for six months in a freshly dumped wooden barrel from Willett bourbon (aka, Kentucky Bourbon Distillers), and it will be ready for drinking on Friday as Willet Bourbon Barrel Chocolate Stout. A keg of the non-barrel aged Stout will also be on hand for the sake of comparison.

The Bourbon Society plans to have a representative (Drew and/or Hunter) from Willett/KBD on hand to promote the distillery and their whiskeys, as well as J. Shepherd Cigars. The story of Willett/KBD is fascinating; the distillery opened after Prohibition but ceased producing bourbon in the 1970’s (blending and vending continued); it was among the first to ship bourbon to the emerging Asian markets; and recently, a new generation of family members has stepped forward to inaugurate a whole new bourbon-making era for the venerable and adaptive distiller.

It’s a great story, and I hope to hear more on Friday. If Chef Josh has tasty cuts of beef on hand Friday night, it pretty much completes the scene, and my knees already are shaking.

All of it takes place at the heated Bank Street Brewhouse patio, and it begins at 6:00 p.m. and lasts until closing.

And remember: You’re invited.

"Blue Grass & Brown Whiskey": Southern Foodways Alliance coming to Louisville in July.

In January, I learned about the Southern Foodways alliance:

The Southern Foodways Alliance documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor -- all who gather-- may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.

It's true that I often have an adverse relationship with certain social and political aspects of my Southern heritage ... but food and drink is a different matter entirely, and that's the whole point of the Alliance.

The specific reason all this came up was an interview I did with Amy Evans, an oral historian:

Southern Foodways Alliance oral history project includes the Publican's testimony about the late Max Allen.

The SFA is coming to Louisville for its annual field trip, and even though beer isn't a part of the program, it looks awfully interesting.

Lousiville: Blue Grass & Brown Whiskey ... Eighth Annual Southern Foodways Alliance Field Trip

Join the Southern Foodways Alliance as we travel to Louisville, Kentucky, home of the “most exciting two minutes in sports,” and the arguable birthplace of the old fashioned.

We’ll play dainty, an only-in-Louisville game, in the streets of the city’s Schnitzelburg neighborhood. We’ll gather in the Rathskeller, beneath a tooled leather ceiling, to toast the work of Minnie Fox and the African American cooks she honored in the Blue Grass Cookbook.

We’ll taste Benedictine spread and Henry Bain sauce. We’ll sip brown whiskey from the state’s best distillers and red wine from grapes raised by a onetime tobacco farmer. We will dine on fried catfish at the All Wool and a Yard Wide Democratic Club. And farm-fresh fare at Lilly’s. We’ll sample bourbon-marinated smoked fish. And bourbonbarrel-aged sorghum.

The region’s best scholars will show us the way, providing context and amplification. Smart talking and great eating (and drinking), that’s what we promise.

Bourbon-barrel stout for the world: Small scale brewing and beer exports.

It’s a cliché by now to cite the interwoven world economy as rationale for various unprecedented occurrences, and yet consider my reaction two nights ago when I visited the web site of the Birrificio Montegioco in Italy and noted the brewery’s extremely small size.

I’ve not bothered to decipher the production from hectoliters to gallons, but no matter; the point is that in Europe at present, impossibly small breweries are mining a lucrative export trade with other European nations, with places like Japan and with the United States, the latter coming in spite of the strength of the Euro and concurrent imbalances in value.

As for the situation in reverse, my peripatetic Danish friend Big Kim wrote last week to report his presence at a good beer bar (in Stockholm, I believe) where several American microbrews from the West Coast were being somewhat joyously sampled. Most were IPAs, which of course casts an interesting twist on the style’s British imperial origins and the unique (at the time) solution of letting the beer grow to maturity during the long period of travel to its destination.

Would it be possible for an American brewery as small as (for instance) Indiana’s Upland Brewing Company to do two-thirds of its business away from its home country (the norm for several small craft brewers in Belgium), as opposed to what I’m guessing would be a current percentage of 95% sales within Indiana?

It depends. The export beer would have to be specifically oriented to tastes of overseas markets. It probably would have to be big in terms of flavor and alcohol content, and specially packaged.

Something like BBC’s Jefferson Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout, shipped in something resembling a whisky bottle, with the word “Kentucky” and the name of the distiller providing the barrels highlighted early and often, and shipped to Japan and an Asian market that is willing to pay top dollar for luxury items.

Even better, the transit time would not affect the quality of the beer. It would enhance it.

If you don’t believe me about the potential of the Japanese market, ring your favorite Commonwealth distiller of bourbon and ask how much of its top-shelf whisky goes to Japan – and don’t be surprised at the answer.

To be sure, continental markets in Europe typically offer much greater resistance to such innovation, and grow more parochial about beer as one proceeds inland, so such an export strategy as that outlined above might work along the coastal periphery: Netherlands, the U.K., Scandinavia and Finland. In those areas, cosmopolitanism in beer is more pronounced.

It’s something worth considering, isn't it?