BEER TRENDS: Brewers rolling out the barrel for fine, aged beers
BEER TRENDS: Brewers rolling out the barrel for fine, aged beers
Apr 12, 2012 6
(WashingtonPost) - Fine wine is said to improve with barrel aging. So why not fine beer?
That’s the thinking behind the emerging craft beer trend of aging brews in the barrel to give them more complexity.
“There’s something extra about the flavor,” says Dougal Sharp, master brewer and owner of the Scotland-based company Innis & Gunn, which has just introduced its Irish Whiskey Cask Stout in the United States.
“Oak aging anything — a wine, a spirit or a beer — imparts enormous depth of flavor and mellowness and complexity. Just think about some of the best, the real premier cru oak-aged wines that you’ve had. You might not be able to point to exactly why you just love the wine, but you do because it has this enormous depth of flavor. That’s what barrel-aging gives beer.”
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