If you’re a startup craft brewer scrambling to create your latest craft creation, maybe you should take a stab at barrel aging. The Craft Beer Channel has an excellent primer on barrel-aging beers — just watch the video above. After that, click here to read our barrel-aging Q&As starring the likes of Green Flash, Saint Arnold and Side Project Brewing. You’ll get such tasty tips like this one from Saint Arnold’s Brock Wagner:
To me the biggest tip: garbage in, garbage out. Whatever goes into the barrel needs to be an exceptional beer. The barrel won’t make the beer exceptional on its own.
And this pearl of barrel-aging wisdom from Green Flash’s Chuck Silva:
Barrel-aging a beer usually completely transmogrifies the original beer into a new and unique treat. There is flavor pickup from the wood, concentration of flavor due to evaporation, enhancement from the barrel’s previous dweller and flavor changing contributions from any added cultures other than the original brewer’s yeast.
