Episode 26
Why Barrel Aged Beer is Just Better
Just put it in a bucket and let it sit right? No so much. Gary Arndt, Allison McCoy, and Bobby Fleshman delve into the intricacies of barrel aging beer, exploring the unique flavors and complexities it brings. They also discuss the technical and economic challenges of creating such distinctive brews .
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TIMELINE
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:56 What is Barrel-Aged Beer?
01:23 The Barrel Broker and Barrel Types
03:12 Barrel Preparation and Aging Process
08:38 Sour Beers and Wine Barrels
18:06 The Economics and Challenges of Barrel Aging
22:02 Special Beers and Accidental Discoveries
23:39 Conclusion and Farewell
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CREDITS
Hosts:
Music by Sarah Lynn Huss
Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow
Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co
Transcript
Hello everyone.
Gary Arndt:My name is Gary Arndt and welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer with me.
Gary Arndt:Again, as usual are the brewers slash scientists, Allison McCoy and Bobby Fleshman.
Gary Arndt:And today I wanted to talk about a special type of beer that quite frankly, I was introduced to by you guys.
Gary Arndt:Cause I'd never really had it before until here.
Gary Arndt:And it's a style of beer.
Gary Arndt:That is very hard to find, quite frankly, if you get most of your beer at a store and you walk into a beer cooler, you're probably not going to find it.
Gary Arndt:It is barrel aged beers.
Gary Arndt:And I've had people, I've been sitting at your bar, people will come in and, Joel will of course recommend a 547.
Gary Arndt:And I don't drink it all the time for reasons we'll get into, but I do believe the best beers you make are your barrel aged beers.
Gary Arndt:And not a lot of people do it.
Gary Arndt:So why don't we start by just going into what a barrel aged beer is and what it does.
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Can I take this one?
Gary Arndt:It is a beer that we age in barrels.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: That's it.
Bobby Fleshman:There you go.
Bobby Fleshman:the extremes of short and long
Gary Arndt:So you get a five gallon bucket down at home Depot, you put beer in it and voila.
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: it.
Gary Arndt:Right.
Gary Arndt:No.
Gary Arndt:So, there's this great, place called the Barrel Broker in Milwaukee.
Gary Arndt:John Gill is his name, I believe.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, he's one of several we buy from.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Anyway, and you go into this, it is, imagine that you're in the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and they're pushing the Ark back into the big vat of, you know, closet.
Bobby Fleshman:It's like that with, with barrels.
Bobby Fleshman:They're just a big warehouse of all these barrels,
Gary Arndt:And we should clarify, we're talking about wooden,
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Sorry, yes, wooden barrels.
Gary Arndt:These are like the, yeah, cask
Bobby Fleshman:The terminology is going to get kind of thrown around here.
Bobby Fleshman:So, we'll call them oaks around the brewery because otherwise we're either saying barrel, which is a unit of measure.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Bobby Fleshman:Or we're saying cask, which is something else in here.
Bobby Fleshman:So, we'll just say oak.
Bobby Fleshman:Okay.
Bobby Fleshman:Here.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: I mean, this
Bobby Fleshman:If it's not oak, we know what we mean.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: The wood staves that are the, from a cooperage where you've got like the wood and then you've got these bands of metal around it, holding it together.
Bobby Fleshman:That's a barrel.
Bobby Fleshman:Or these
Bobby Fleshman:So, so John Gill, you brought him up.
Bobby Fleshman:He has a direct pipeline to Kentucky in, drawing a blank.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: California.
Bobby Fleshman:No, well, yes on his wine side.
Bobby Fleshman:He does collect wine barrels
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: So these barrels come, they have,
Bobby Fleshman:They're almost always
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: their second wind.
Bobby Fleshman:So they're either bourbon barrels, rye whiskey barrels, chardonnay barrels, cabernet barrels, their French oak, their American oak.
Bobby Fleshman:They're, I can't see what the other kinds are.
Bobby Fleshman:We should say bourbon has to be second it has to be only used once as a For...
Gary Arndt:yeah, I was going to say..
Bobby Fleshman:For spirits.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah by law.
Gary Arndt:According to the bottled and bond laws.
Gary Arndt:I did an episode on this, for American bourbon.
Gary Arndt:It must be a white oak barrel that has never been used before.
Gary Arndt:Which of course then creates this huge secondary market for used barrels.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Oh shucks!
Bobby Fleshman:And so we get a barrel and it's got some extra bourbon in the bottom.
Bobby Fleshman:Well, they've gotten really good at pulling all that out.
Bobby Fleshman:I
Gary Arndt:I should say, and they char the inside of the barrel.
Bobby Fleshman:They first toast them.
Bobby Fleshman:Believe it or not, there's two steps here, right?
Bobby Fleshman:There's a toasting and then there's a charring.
Bobby Fleshman:The toasting is sort of that deep seasoning.
Bobby Fleshman:It's really getting the stave.
Bobby Fleshman:The wood that makes the sides of the barrel, it's really getting that flavored and dried out on its interior.
Bobby Fleshman:It's well, it's been dried before they even start building it, and that's a long process, but By the way, I want to become a Cooper before I retire.
Bobby Fleshman:So that's going to be another
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: I'm done facing your career changes,
Bobby Fleshman:Cooper the guy.
Bobby Fleshman:Cooper is the person who's, who's building and repairing these barrels.
Bobby Fleshman:But anyway, so yeah, then after they get it toasted at a various, at a certain level, then they'll try it at a certain level.
Gary Arndt:level, Just a fun fact that is an aside, Winnie Cooper from the wonder years.
Gary Arndt:Her actual name, the actress is Danica McKellar, has a PhD in mathematics
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: I knew this!
Gary Arndt:and she is one of the, are you, are you familiar with like the Kevin Bacon number?
Gary Arndt:Like how close you are based on, okay.
Gary Arndt:So there's also a number in mathematics and science called the Erdos number.
Gary Arndt:Danica McKellar is one of the only people that has both a Kevin Bacon number and an Erdos number.
Gary Arndt:And you can connect the scientific research literature to acting.
Gary Arndt:Oh my god,
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Oh my God.
Gary Arndt:I love her so much.
Gary Arndt:Now she writes a bunch of books on math anxiety and how to like be excited about math.
Gary Arndt:Side note.
Gary Arndt:back to barrels Get excited.
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Back to barrels.
Gary Arndt:Right.
Gary Arndt:So we put the, so the barrels come with not only the flavor compounds from their pre life before they become barrel aged barrels for beer aging.
Gary Arndt:But they also carry with them.
Gary Arndt:Oak.
Gary Arndt:Oak is incredible.
Gary Arndt:It's got so many different compounds in it.
Gary Arndt:They can seep into the beer.
Bobby Fleshman:Vanillin is the biggest one that we
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: stole my thunder.
Bobby Fleshman:No, that's fine.
Bobby Fleshman:Go ahead.
Bobby Fleshman:Talk.
Bobby Fleshman:You're the more interesting one.
Bobby Fleshman:Didn't mean to
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Anyway, but there's just so many different flavor compounds.
Bobby Fleshman:And so you can get, like Bobby said, vanilla and the molecule that you get from the vanilla bean is the exact same molecule that you can find in oak.
Bobby Fleshman:And so if
Bobby Fleshman:if it's been toasted
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: There's a lot like chardonnay, for instance, has a lot of vanilla flavors, but no vanilla has been added.
Bobby Fleshman:It's from the oak.
Bobby Fleshman:And there are certain beers that you'll have that are barrel aged that really optimize that oak beer balance.
Bobby Fleshman:It's so is why American oak, white oak, is fresh ones that are used to make bourbon and make bourbon so, so flavorful.
Bobby Fleshman:It's an intense flavor you won't find in a scotch, whereas a scotch is using a second turn of that same barrel
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Hold up, we, so we brew a beer, we put it in the barrels and it, or we firming it first and we put it in the barrels and it ages for about nine
Bobby Fleshman:All of these, there's so many.
Bobby Fleshman:So let's talk about, let's talk about bourbon aged or, or rye whiskey aged.
Bobby Fleshman:That's two different.
Bobby Fleshman:I mean, those, that category is separate from our sour category.
Bobby Fleshman:So sour beers are something totally different.
Bobby Fleshman:But if we're talking about the bourbon barrel aged, we'll typically use something high in alcohol in there because you want it to be able to stave off contamination over time.
Gary Arndt:So is that the reason why barrel aged beers have such a high ABV?
Bobby Fleshman:It's largely so it needs to be robust enough to hold up to that long of aging.
Bobby Fleshman:I mean, I'm looking over your shoulders at a dozen barrels that are full of, of high ABV beer.
Bobby Fleshman:It's going to be at warmer or maybe fluctuating temperatures.
Bobby Fleshman:it might even get some oxygen ingress because those staves might not be absolutely impermeable to oxygen.
Bobby Fleshman:And that's going to cause its own sort of.
Bobby Fleshman:I would say damage, but in the case of these barrel aged beers, that oxygen is, is really not doing so much as oxidizing the product, but Esterifying it.
Bobby Fleshman:It's creating these esters and people will sell our beers over time to try to, to, to get to that more refined ester production.
Bobby Fleshman:I don't know how much I buy into this.
Bobby Fleshman:Honestly, I, this is the romance and the dogma behind it.
Bobby Fleshman:There, there are companies now that are making really good barrel hoops.
Bobby Fleshman:So the barrel hoops are the metal parts around the outside of the barrel.
Bobby Fleshman:It keeps the staves tight and the air out.
Bobby Fleshman:You don't, you see really shitty ones from the bourbon guys.
Bobby Fleshman:Cause they just need them once.
Bobby Fleshman:They don't need awesome staves and they don't deal with the same oxidation problems that a beer person would.
Bobby Fleshman:Cause they're, it's a spirit.
Bobby Fleshman:It's a, it's a liquor.
Bobby Fleshman:So.
Bobby Fleshman:What I'm trying to get at, though, is there are people that are building really good hoops that we can clamp down and keep all the oxygen out.
Bobby Fleshman:I think that we need to look closer at that.
Bobby Fleshman:If we're going to do long aging and these barrels, there's another, another technology coming around where there are people are chopping up staves of a barrel and they're distilling off of it's all, they're distilling its essence off and they're selling that back to like a bird to just dump into a finished beer.
Bobby Fleshman:I think that has some benefits.
Bobby Fleshman:Potential.
Bobby Fleshman:I think that we have a lot of romance seeing stacks of barrels when in reality, we're just doing it.
Bobby Fleshman:So we get the flavor out of the oak and off the char and maybe some of the spirit remnants.
Bobby Fleshman:That's fantastic.
Bobby Fleshman:But how much damage have you done in the to the beer in those 9 months while you're getting these benefits?
Bobby Fleshman:So I'm I'm thinking there might be a combination.
Bobby Fleshman:Like a short term aging added to augmented by supplemented by some of these novel products.
Bobby Fleshman:So
Bobby Fleshman:I don't know where that question came from or where I went with it, but, that's the, bourbon side.
Bobby Fleshman:We also have a sour beer program that we age in wine barrels because in that case, we're making Belgian style beers that aren't necessarily high in alcohol.
Bobby Fleshman:We're not looking to prevent the stave off contamination.
Bobby Fleshman:We've already thrown in 25 different bacteria into these.
Bobby Fleshman:They're already quote contaminated
Gary Arndt:Is that the 10 paces?
Bobby Fleshman:paces.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah,
Gary Arndt:Didn't know that was barrel aged.
Bobby Fleshman:Absolutely.
Bobby Fleshman:All wine barrels.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:All Cabernet Chardonnay.
Bobby Fleshman:Some are French oak, some are American oak.
Bobby Fleshman:You want different kinds of barrels for different reasons.
Bobby Fleshman:The French tend to be a little thicker, I think, on the staves, and the American tend to be a little thinner.
Bobby Fleshman:I know I have that reversed.
Bobby Fleshman:The French are thinner, the American are thicker.
Bobby Fleshman:Different types of oak.
Bobby Fleshman:Result in obviously different continents.
Bobby Fleshman:You get different sorts of oxygen ingress in this context.
Bobby Fleshman:We're not thinking about the vanilla and we're not thinking about the flavor from the oak.
Bobby Fleshman:We're thinking about the functionality of the oak and we're actually looking at letting oxygen in.
Bobby Fleshman:So where I was, I was complaining about on the bourbon side, these hoops that let air in on the sour side, we're actually kind of encouraging oxygen to get in because we want to keep the bugs alive and happy for up to three years.
Bobby Fleshman:We don't want it to just be an onslaught of oxygen because that obvious that's gonna be unbridled.
Bobby Fleshman:But if you give it just what we call micro oxygenation it keeps the ecosystem going and it's it's a mixed fermentation.
Bobby Fleshman:This month we've done this with some students from from Lawrence University.
Bobby Fleshman:This month we might see this bacteria dominate Same barrel next month measured precisely the same location different one takes over So it just happens over time that they just keep going back and forth passing the baton back and forth They're the metabolites from one become food for the other Etc, etc,
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: et cetera.
Bobby Fleshman:The
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, I was telling you how shitty they are from bourbon barrels, but great for wine No!
Bobby Fleshman:But there's a really cool thing.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: There's a language to the hoops, that I didn't know about.
Bobby Fleshman:And so, American beers or American barrels have a certain frequency of where the hoops are on the barrel, and French ones have a different pattern.
Bobby Fleshman:So you can look at a barrel and see where the, where the hoops are, and you can identify from across the room, is that an American barrel, or is that a French barrel, or is that a different type of barrel based on the language of the hoops?
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:I thought that was fascinating.
Bobby Fleshman:yeah, yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:And all of the wine barrels are, are works of art.
Bobby Fleshman:They look just so beautiful.
Bobby Fleshman:They're just so well made, because they're, they're meant for years and years and years and years.
Bobby Fleshman:And then probably another set of years after that, they, and they're often galvanized.
Bobby Fleshman:You might even see stainless hoops.
Bobby Fleshman:There's all kinds of.
Bobby Fleshman:They're just beautiful to see them.
Bobby Fleshman:And I'm like, I used to be a carpenter.
Bobby Fleshman:So I look at that as a different work of art.
Gary Arndt:a bourbon distiller will lose about, I want to say, I want to say it's about 20 percent of what's in the barrel over time.
Gary Arndt:And they're, they're aging in a lot longer than you
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Called angel's share.
Bobby Fleshman:It's what is it?
Bobby Fleshman:Five year minimum to be a bourbon.
Bobby Fleshman:That something to that
Gary Arndt:That effect.
Gary Arndt:Two.
Gary Arndt:Be bottled in bond.
Gary Arndt:I believe it's five years.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Got That makes sense.
Bobby Fleshman:Cause we probably see about a fifth of that evolve off in a year.
Bobby Fleshman:So that makes a lot of sense to hear that that's called the angel's share.
Bobby Fleshman:And it used to be, we would get devil's cuts.
Bobby Fleshman:That was what was left after they pulled out what was in the barrel.
Bobby Fleshman:Now they're don't, they don't ever send us the devil's cut, but, but if they dried out too much, then that barrel is shit for using for beer.
Bobby Fleshman:So we don't, they don't want to dry it out too much or it'll have no value to us.
Bobby Fleshman:So, so there is sort of a balance here.
Bobby Fleshman:They don't want to pull all their spirits out of that.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:When we have new barrels, you can tell that they're brand new cause we get them.
Bobby Fleshman:And then the process is you have to set them up, right.
Bobby Fleshman:And then fill the top with water.
Bobby Fleshman:And
Bobby Fleshman:We call it birdbath because they look like birdbaths when you stand them up.
Bobby Fleshman:So we birdbath the barrels and the capillaries of the staves are pointed upwards.
Bobby Fleshman:So it just sucks the water straight down in and it expands and becomes watertight.
Bobby Fleshman:So I used to, before I thought about it, we used to like put towels over them and hydrate them from the outside.
Bobby Fleshman:And then it occurred to me one day.
Bobby Fleshman:We can hydrate the heads on this and the staves just by standing it on its end and filling this, what we call bird bath with water.
Bobby Fleshman:And then a day later, if it hasn't moved, we know it's watertight, top to bottom.
Bobby Fleshman:So anyway.
Bobby Fleshman:That's country boy, salt solutions.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, kinda science.
Gary Arndt:the best beer I've ever had from you.
Gary Arndt:is one that you don't make very much of.
Gary Arndt:It was the Gertrude
Bobby Fleshman:that doesn't
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: She's gorgeous.
Bobby Fleshman:I mean, we don't know what you're
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, well, it's hypothetically
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Hypothetically.
Bobby Fleshman:so,
Gary Arndt:but in the process, 'cause someone asked me this on, on my podcast in a question to answer episode and I said, ice Bach, it was my favorite type of beer.
Gary Arndt:But you, it's very hard to find.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:Explain what an icebox is.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:And why it is so difficult to make in the United
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:So it is separating the alcohol or the.
Bobby Fleshman:Concentrating the alcohol by removing water.
Bobby Fleshman:So you're, what you do is you take a beer and you freeze it.
Bobby Fleshman:Part of it will freeze.
Bobby Fleshman:Part of it won't.
Bobby Fleshman:The part that's freezing is ice.
Bobby Fleshman:It's going to be almost entirely H2O minus a few maybe bound flavor molecules, but then you just remove that ice or conversely remove that, that liquid
Bobby Fleshman:and you have something that's now more alcoholic and in terms of its concentration.
Bobby Fleshman:So that is.
Bobby Fleshman:By the letter of the law, distillation.
Bobby Fleshman:It didn't involve heat, but it was still by the letter of the law, removing, or concentrating by removing water.
Bobby Fleshman:So, hypothetically
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: we live in Wisconsin.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, I'm sorry for that non sequitur.
Bobby Fleshman:But we live in Wisconsin, a very cold,
Bobby Fleshman:cold Oh, yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:So, once upon a time In this story, there was a brewer that left a barrel outside.
Bobby Fleshman:It was a barrel that had our triple debauchery, which is our Doppelbach, which is its own podcast worthy beer.
Bobby Fleshman:But we made this beer, which itself takes 36 hours just to brew it.
Bobby Fleshman:And then
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Hold up.
Bobby Fleshman:Was it Doppelbock or was it debauchery or triple debacle?
Bobby Fleshman:Okay.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah so so then we would take it and, Put it into a barrel after it fermented for 12 16 weeks.
Bobby Fleshman:So this is before we even get to the barrel.
Bobby Fleshman:And then it sits in the, in a rye with a written house rye barrel for nine months to Alison's point though, before it goes through that full nine months of aging, it's called triple debacle, triple referring to some steps that are involved in making it.
Bobby Fleshman:And then after it comes out at the end of that nine months, we call it triple debacher rye well, somewhere in between a and B.
Bobby Fleshman:Somebody accidentally left one of these barrels outside and it happened to be negative 20 and apparently that's a good enough temperature to do what I just described and the barrel became half full of ice.
Bobby Fleshman:And so we had to remove it to save what we had left and well, you might call it that, but,
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: you can call her, call her
Bobby Fleshman:We did was we made a doppelbock.
Bobby Fleshman:We aged in a rye whiskey barrel, and then we removed its contents.
Bobby Fleshman:It became a 14 percent beer, whereas it started close to 10, because just because of the proportions of water removed.
Bobby Fleshman:And it is hypothetically one of our most sought after beers.
Bobby Fleshman:we hypothetically
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Malt tastes like.
Bobby Fleshman:It is so good.
Bobby Fleshman:It's like velvet.
Bobby Fleshman:It's so good.
Bobby Fleshman:but that requires someone makes the same mistake every year at the same time.
Bobby Fleshman:So, we have forgetful brewers, so you never know.
Gary Arndt:from what I understand, that, that is, That is an American law,
Gary Arndt:like that, that doesn't exist in Europe.
Bobby Fleshman:it is an American law.
Gary Arndt:And by all,
Bobby Fleshman:E I S it's German.
Bobby Fleshman:I
Gary Arndt:by any measure of common sense, that is not distilling.
Bobby Fleshman:No, it's to the letter of law.
Bobby Fleshman:And actually, you know, I'm kind of dancing around it, but the people that, that enforce these laws, I have no idea about it, but if a fellow brewer listened to this podcast, wanted to come down on it, they, they could enforce or force the enforcer to come down on us.
Bobby Fleshman:But we don't do it.
Bobby Fleshman:So it's neither here nor there.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: but
Gary Arndt:these beers I found were really popular, but it's almost like a cult status.
Gary Arndt:And I think some of it's because they're so hard to find and make that you just can't, you know, that there aren't a lot of brewers who can legally make it because they don't have distiller's license.
Bobby Fleshman:Right.
Gary Arndt:And.
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: It's also hard to get down to that, that cold of a temperature
Bobby Fleshman:Be in Wisconsin or somewhere like
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Well, to freeze the beer though, I mean, that's going to be, that's a hefty lift for your glycol
Bobby Fleshman:I will tell you a story.
Bobby Fleshman:Another accident that happened.
Bobby Fleshman:We'd missed our window.
Bobby Fleshman:We weren't as forgetful one year.
Bobby Fleshman:So we did put our yuck like call system through the bases because someone forgot to turn that off.
Bobby Fleshman:But yeah, there are other ways to get there.
Gary Arndt:it, I don't, you know what the temperature is.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:That you would need to reach.
Bobby Fleshman:I want to say honestly, it has to be, it's a time and temperature question.
Bobby Fleshman:So It
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: So it has to be at a certain time or for a certain time at a certain temperature.
Bobby Fleshman:time, or a certain time a certain time.
Bobby Fleshman:let's end then by talking about
Gary Arndt:end then by talking about the economics of
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: of
Bobby Fleshman:brew
Gary Arndt:brew a beer, you put it out on tap, bada boom, bada bing.
Gary Arndt:For this.
Gary Arndt:You got to buy a barrel and the barrel has to sit around for months doing nothing, making, you know, money.
Bobby Fleshman:the liquid that went in, by the way, is some of the most expensive we make too, before we ever start.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Sprinkle that that on.
Bobby Fleshman:no, but we, you know, we, we find ways to, you know, make money
Bobby Fleshman:But then the package, but then the package of this, we should mention is some of the best that we have.
Bobby Fleshman:It's a 375 mil cork and waxed bottle that it's, it's just,
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: pretty.
Bobby Fleshman:is very pretty.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: And what's fun is so she's, she's called the Gertrude and named after a portrait a good friend of mine has in her that she found at a garage sale, I think, or a thrift shop.
Bobby Fleshman:Anyway but Gertrude is on an adventure of a lifetime and she has written, written postcards back and forth.
Bobby Fleshman:And so over the time, if you collect multiple Gertrudes you might see the conversation that's going on that she's having with.
Gary Arndt:one in my refrigerator.
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Go team.
Gary Arndt:I have not, I have not opened it.
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Oh, yeah.
Gary Arndt:Don't open it.
Gary Arndt:You can just read the postcard without opening it.
Gary Arndt:I don't know if I want to open it.
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: I wouldn't.
Bobby Fleshman:It's I think we have one of our patrons that has, About a
Bobby Fleshman:that has Oh, yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Jay?
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:But then,
Bobby Fleshman:yeah, it's, it's what malt tastes like.
Bobby Fleshman:It's
Bobby Fleshman:and and I will say that we've had years where It wasn't up to my standards.
Bobby Fleshman:There there are there's not there's not like every
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: you want to talk about a fight that Bobby and I had, he's like, yeah, I'm going to dump the Gertrude.
Bobby Fleshman:I was like, what?
Bobby Fleshman:had to dump a year the barrel.
Bobby Fleshman:It just didn't work
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: And there, there was, there
Bobby Fleshman:can't have a beer that's that sought after and it not be
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: So, Gary, back to your point, though, about how a lot of folks don't do barrel aging.
Bobby Fleshman:One, you need to have a space for the barrels to sit in a non moneymaking, you know, state.
Bobby Fleshman:But the second is it could go wrong.
Bobby Fleshman:So it's now, not only is it, an investment, but it becomes more of a risky investment compared to some of the other beers that we sell.
Bobby Fleshman:And the Gertie being, it was two years ago, right, that we lost her.
Bobby Fleshman:have this year's ready to go, though.
Bobby Fleshman:She's tasting mean, I
Bobby Fleshman:think,
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: but that's, that's a hard call and we've had to dump a couple of other barrel age beers that have just, the, the, the conditions just weren't quite right for them.
Gary Arndt:but you also charge a premium for it as
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: We do.
Gary Arndt:Labor of love.
Gary Arndt:I know like if, if I'm here and I see someone order a triple debauchery or the vantage point I know it's like, I kind of always nod at them.
Gary Arndt:It's like, you have made a good choice.
Gary Arndt:But it's something that, like I said, I cannot drink a full pint of
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Oh, you wouldn't want to?
Gary Arndt:No.
Gary Arndt:They come in 10 ounce sifters.
Gary Arndt:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:But I think in that it's, it's, it's, you're gonna have the one drink for the evening and you're probably not gonna drink it in July, you know, especially in the colder
Bobby Fleshman:The really good cigar beers if you're into cigars.
Bobby Fleshman:They're just campfires in general.
Bobby Fleshman:They're
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:In the colder
Gary Arndt:The first time I ever had it, I think you gave it to me because I was doubting the
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: oh, the
Gary Arndt:premise of these barrel age beers.
Gary Arndt:I'm like, yeah, it's just a, it's a marketing
Bobby Fleshman:I think Jay, it may have been Jay's bottle.
Bobby Fleshman:I think Jay may have brought one of
Gary Arndt:Well, he later like had a bottle that he poured and that's where I tasted it.
Gary Arndt:But the first time I was like, yeah, I, and I was, I was actually shocked at how much of the bourbon flavor was infused just through the barrel aging.
Gary Arndt:Like if I didn't know any better, I would have thought that somebody dumped a shot of bourbon
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: We, our Gertrude is so rare and, and, we, we don't advertise it and it was actually last year at our lager fest, which is the big craft beer fest that we do the first weekend in October, our pub clubber.
Gary Arndt:So our special mug club group on their ticket, it said something special like pub clubber surprise for you in the tap room.
Gary Arndt:And we actually put Gertrude on tap for them.
Bobby Fleshman:the first time that's
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Yeah, and it might be the last time that ever happens, because everyone got It
Bobby Fleshman:was good.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: with a lot.
Bobby Fleshman:but that was a fun surprise for
Bobby Fleshman:I know we're up against the clock so I wanted to mention one other wood story very, very briefly.
Bobby Fleshman:I heard previous episode you guys were talking about beechwood aging.
Bobby Fleshman:The beechwood has a function.
Bobby Fleshman:The reason AB did and does use
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: A.
Bobby Fleshman:B.
Bobby Fleshman:equals Anheuser
Bobby Fleshman:Anheuser Busch Budweiser.
Bobby Fleshman:They use it to collect yeast out of their beer.
Bobby Fleshman:It has like a matrix of a surface area and it has the right charge to bond So it's a pre filtration.
Bobby Fleshman:And in the old days it might have been the only filtration.
Bobby Fleshman:Today it's just step one.
Bobby Fleshman:So they'll steam and they'll reuse these giant staves of beechwood and And they'll pull them out of these giant horizontal tanks.
Bobby Fleshman:They'll put them right back in, having been sterilized.
Bobby Fleshman:So that's why that would exist.
Bobby Fleshman:That wood is a purely functional wood.
Bobby Fleshman:I heard it mentioned last time.
Bobby Fleshman:I thought it'd
Gary Arndt:So hold it.
Gary Arndt:When they say Beachwood age, it's not in a Beachwood barrel.
Bobby Fleshman:barrel.
Bobby Fleshman:No,
Gary Arndt:wood into the beer.
Bobby Fleshman:put it in their giant stainless horizontal tanks.
Bobby Fleshman:They'll, they'll, they'll put, you know, 40 feet of these.
Gary Arndt:I think that kind of takes a little bit of the magic out of it.
Bobby Fleshman:Well, but, but from the, from the, well, I mean, from the technical side, you have to admire though what they did
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: did.
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah, but these, these logger tanks that they have are what?
Bobby Fleshman:Like, the size of our building, almost.
Bobby Fleshman:I think they're, yeah, they're like 10, 000 They're a lot.
Bobby Fleshman:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: be a big ass barrel.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh!
Bobby Fleshman:That's, oh, okay, well, next time we'll talk about the barrel that opened and flooded that town.
Gary Arndt:That town.
Bobby Fleshman:Oh, yeah.
Bobby Fleshman:Let's talk about barrel.
Gary Arndt:podcast episode
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: this.
Gary Arndt:Oh, never
Bobby Fleshman:We'll talk about brewery accidents.
Gary Arndt:London beer flood.
Gary Arndt:Allison McCoy-Fleshman: Yes!
Bobby Fleshman:Yeah.
Gary Arndt:All right, then that concludes this episode of Respecting the beer.
Gary Arndt:Make sure you subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player so you'll never miss an episode and feel free to join us on the Facebook group to get updates between the episodes and to support the show over on Patreon.
Gary Arndt:Links to both of these are in the show notes and until next time, please remember to respect the beer.
