If memory serves, my first encounter with barrel aged beer was a brief one. It was at the Great Taste of the Midwest sometime in the mid- or late-90s. A brewery, which I cannot recall (but I suspect it was from northern Illinois. Freeport, perhaps?) announced it would pour their new bourbon barrel aged stout at a particular time. I wandered over to the brewery's neck of the woods at the appointed hour and found a gentleman removing the cork from a magnum. He was, like many of the attendees, on the large and burly side with a rather long beard and a bardolphian countenance.
Upon removing the cork, he hoisted the magnum onto his shoulders and began pouring as he turned around slowly in a circle so that the throng of beer nerds that had gathered around him could get a taste. I, being over 6 feet tall and having long arms, was able to easily get a pour by reaching over a couple of shorter geeks. While I recall enjoying the beer, I have absolutely no recollection of what it tasted like.
My current attitude towards the style was formed during the inaugural Madison Craft Beer Week back in 2011. A friend and I were at Jan's Unfriendly Tavern where O'so Brewing, whose HQ is up in Plover, were doing a tap takeover. At some point a gentleman took up a spot by a window and began preparing to pour samples of the brewery's first ever bourbon barrel aged beer, which I suspect was their Night Train porter given the treatment, from growlers. Unlike the guy from the Great Taste, he seemed to be of average height and weight and did not have a beard that would put Rip Van Winkle's to shame. My friend and I each got a sample and, upon our first sips, our faces contorted in agony as if we had suddenly found ourselves sitting next to Satan in the ninth circle of Hell as he nommed on Judas Iscariot. Once the pain had abated enough for us to speak, we proclaimed simultaneously, "They forgot to take the booze out of the barrel!"
On a recent listen to an episode of The Beer Temple Podcast I learned that barrels arrive at breweries with 2+ gallons of bourbon or whatever spirits they held soaked in the wood. (As I recall, anyway.) That's a lot of potential for an extra flavorful beer there. But that booze is also a monster waiting to subsume your beer like Satan chowing on traitors and hide its malty goodness behind a wall of spirits. My own preference is for barrel aged beers that still have some semblance of beer instead of bourbon that has had the edge taken off of it.
For example, there's Tyranena's excellent Rocky's Revenge, a blend of barrel aged and unsullied brown ales. And there was Lakefront's Wendy, a doppelbock aged on bourbon-soaked oak chips. Both of these beers featured the unmistakable taste of bourbon but their beery pneumas were still able to come through. But these seem to be the exceptions so I am more than a bit shy when it comes to barrel aged beers. Taking up valuable space for extended aging in specially acquired vessels, these beers are rather expensive and I'd hate to invest in some only to find that a few drams are plenty enough for me.
My highly inexhaustive search for the first time beer was commercially aged in a bourbon/spirit barrel reveals that Goose Island is commonly credited with that feat having done so back in 1992. And the subsequent Bourbon County line of barrel aged beers would go on to become the stuff of craft beer legend. Somewhere along the way, however, Bourbon County would lose its luster, perhaps after Goose Island was acquired by corporate brewing behemoth AB-InBev.
With the progenitor of the style having fallen out of the good graces of many drinkers, the enterprising folks at Chicago's Revolution Brewing stepped in to fill the void. My impression is that, around the Midwest, at least, Revolution's barrel aged beers are considered the ne plus ultra of the style, having taken the crown from Goose Island. These brews, collected in the Deep Wood series, are renowned for their high tastiness quotients as well as for not being brewed by a multinational corporate leviathan. I am unsure if it's always been the case, but, these days, Revolution staggers the release of their barrel aged beers over the course of a few months.
This year they are offering Ryeway to Heaven, a rye ale aged in rye barrels. If Revolution was going to come out with both, um, barrels blazing with secale cereale, then I would overcome my wariness of beer aged in the former home of a spirit.
I have come to the conclusion that ethanol is bad for foam. These big beers always produce a small head that never sticks around. Such is the case here where a diminutive tan bit of foam was here and gone in no time. The beer was, as I think my photo actually illustrates for a change, a lovely reddish brown. A cloud of rye (the spirit) vapors hit my nose despite it being several inches from my glass. (It is 15.8% A.B.V.) When I finally got the courage to stick my proboscis into the glass and take a whiff, it smelled that rye (the spirit), tobacco, and a hint of plum.
Despite the paucity of foam, the beer had a firm fizziness to it which was a good thing because it was thick and heavy bodied. It featured a trifecta of honey, caramel, and malt flavors all adding sweetness as well as a deep smoothness. The marketing division of Revolution must have been reading about understatement the day they designed the label because it says, "(Share and)** Enjoy an ample body that suggests sweetness..." That's a bit like saying that the Atlantic Ocean suggests wetness. This stuff tasted not unlike a syrup. It tasted boozy too. Really boozy. The sweetness and booze stood in stark contrast to one another on my tongue.
The marketing division may be been doing something else that day because the front of the can says "Aged in rye barrels" while a 45 degree turn reveals the claim that the beer was aged in rye and bourbon barrels. Harumph.
After swallowing, the sweetness lingered for a while before giving way to a modicum of hoppy bitterness which was followed by a big, boozy burn.
The key, I found out, was to let this brew warm a bit. The sweetness remained cloying and the rye (the spirit) retained its potency, but, instead of these tastes having a purely antagonistic relationship in my mouth, they reached a kind of détente. Everyone mellowed out just a bit and the flavors didn't seem quite so...antipodal. They had melded into something more accommodating.
Ryeway to Heaven didn't turn me into some kind of barrel aged beer junkie, but I appreciated half a can on cold evening in February. It definitely warmed me up.
Junk food pairing: You're gonna need a bigger chip! To cut through this big, sweet brew you're going to need a potent snack. I suggest a bag of Ruffles Cheddar and Sour Cream Potato Chips. They're thicker than your average chip and so carry more fat and dairy goodness to further mellow your tongue.
**OK, I put that in there.
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