Today’s brewers, it would seem, are cutting deals with their own personal devils. Where once you would never invite the devil to come dance in your brewery, many brewers are now opening their doors to Satan’s minions of sour (Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus and Pediococcus) in the hopes of joining the ranks of legendary beers and bellowing out the low pH blues.

In many ways, brewers are stumbling over each other as they race to the sour beer crossroads. Breweries that have never dabbled in the black art of sour beers are wielding machetes in the hopes of blazing trails and entirely new paths. And in doing so, many of them are dancing with Lucifer himself as they polka and cha-cha-cha their way into unfamiliar arenas. So it begs the questions: Are these beers any good, and how did we get here?

Historically, sour beer producers have never had to cut deals with the devil. They chose to embrace his personality years ago. Their Old World methods of wort production were designed to only make sour beers. Yet they represent such a small percentage of brewers making beer this way that their use of micro-organisms and wild yeasts is as if they are witch doctors.

The lambic producers around Brussels and the red ale producers surrounding Flanders share a commonality of sour beer aged in oak barrels for extended periods of time (up to three years). Here, the barrels are used as vessels of hope in the purest sense. Each barrel acts as its own micro universe, and there is only a degree of certainty surrounding each vessel.

In Belgian sour ale production, oak barrels act more as stewards than as custodians. Wort is sent to these barrels in the hopes that all the environmental factors will come together to produce an exceptional beer. Modern-day brewers, conducting most fermentations in stainless steel, are far more custodial in their zest to produce clean and predictable fermentations and resulting beers.

Yet there is a new breed of sour beer producers who are attempting both. And this group is hell-bent on challenging the status quo. While not seeking fame and fortune in the purest sense, they are clearly tempting the devil’s due and making some exceptional beers at the same time. And many of their beers are marrying the flavors of oak with sour beer production.

It was once thought that only Belgian brewers were the best producers of sour beer in the world. And while clearly they remain the specialists of spontaneous fermented beers, there is a brave new world of sour beers from all corners of the globe available to the adventuring enthusiast willing to seek out new and unusual sour beers.

Still, lambic brewers remain the coolest family on the block. The rest of us who are now producing sour beers are moving into their neighborhood. Yet this is no cookie-cutter master-planned community. Lambic continues its anchor tenancy in Sourville, resting squarely on its triumphs and single-style successful production details. In many ways, its brewers act more like parents of a college-aged student who has left to find his or her own lot in life. I’m jealous of them. They are like the cool parents whom every kid respects and looks up to without ever knowing why.

Modern brewers are far more helicopterlike in our parenting of our sour beers. We can’t help it. It’s in our DNA. Like parents with their firstborn child, we overprepare and sanitize everything the beer might ever come in contact with. We agonize over details. We plan and have contingencies for those plans.

The Belgians, they make wort, open the rafters in the attic and let whatever blows in blow in. A couple of years later and voilà, they have perfectly soured and aged bottles of beers. They make it look easy, almost too easy. But they have history and methodology on their side.

Our more sophomoric history of making sour beer dates to the late 1990s. During this time, a group of brewers started dabbling in wild-yeast barrel fermentations and dipped their toes in the low pH waters. Today these same artists are full-fledged swimmers making graceful strokes in the waters once dominated by the Belgians. And in moving into their neighborhood, we now share the community pool of sour-beer enthusiasts.

While our strokes may not be as graceful or as classical as theirs, we both share a love of sour beers and the places they can take us. In that way, we hope to share this Sourville neighborhood and coexist. Of course there will be neighborly squabbles (mostly over the role of wood in our beers), but we will respect the boundaries more often than we choose to blur them. And for that, I am thankful that I, too, am living in Sourville. The water’s great. And as an added bonus, there’s no shortage of great beer here.

The post The Crossroads of Sour Beer first appeared on All About Beer.

As a craft brewer, I am lucky that beer doesn’t require that kind of patience. Most of the beer we produce can be consumed after the 17th day of production. And like most craft breweries, our modern equipment and technology allow us to operate with a high level of precision.

But like Walt’s Magic Kingdom, there remains a place where a brewer’s disbelief is suspended and consumers come looking for that magical beer experience. This place is Brussels, Belgium, where brewing is shrouded in a heavy mystery. As a brewer of wood-aged beers, I have made Brussels my adult Disneyland, and it never disappoints.

In and around the city of Brussels and the Senne River Valley, brewers make a heritage specialty beer known simply as lambic. It remains one of the most romantic beers produced in the world. And like the best rides at Disneyland, it has a narrative, a protagonist and an antagonist. But most importantly, the production methods reach out and engage your senses.

Lambic brewing remains a controlled appellation, requiring a production method of making beer through spontaneous fermentation. Unlike New World techniques in which pure yeasts are added to each batch of beer, lambic is revered for the fermentation yeasts descending like manna from the heavens. Unseen microbes and wild yeast in the air populate the brew, leaving it more magical and mystical than Doc Terminus riding into Passamaquoddy looking for Pete’s Dragon.

In theory, spontaneously fermented beers can be made anywhere, though the best still come from Belgium. Many brewers outside Belgium are now attempting to make their own lambic-like beers by opening their breweries’ sugary wort to the native flora surrounding their brewery. Some have been enormously successful. Others have been epic failures. But it’s this sense of adventure I prize most as a brewer, and it’s also the very thing that drew me to visit the lambic producers of Belgium.

While I had read plenty about the families who produce lambic, my first brewery visit transported me to a fantasy-like world the moment I walked through the doors of the brewery known to most as Cantillon, and to the locals in Brussels as the Museum of Gueuze. This was a brewery that had been making lambic since 1900. I went in thinking it would be like every other brewery I had visited. I left convinced artisanal lambic breweries like Cantillon are places of wonder and amazement.

I wasn’t sure what I would see when I first crossed the threshold into the Museum of Gueuze. I stood there, frozen in time. I marveled at the sights, sounds and actions around me. The first 10 minutes of my visit were pure chaos, with equal parts beer production and theater going on. Members of the Roy family, the owners of Cantillon, were hard at work producing lambic and greeting guests. I half expected the entire family to stop and break into song, as if a Belgian production of The Pirates of Penzance was going on during the open brew day.

The brewery is multi-leveled. With the exposed wood beam construction and trap doors between levels, in many ways it feels very much like stepping into the belly of the Niña, Pinta or Santa Maria. The first person I saw was a young man playing the part of the captain. Always on the move, he was affable and respected by the staff and consumers alike. Breezing through the room, he approached and stuck his out hand, as if to say “Jean Van Roy, Captain of the S.S. Lambic. Glad to have you aboard on our journey today!”

His first lieutenant checked in periodically to give details about the preparations for the day. Below the wood deck, crewmembers worked to secure the supplies and move barrels and sacks of barley. It appeared the S.S. Lambic was sailing well at that moment.

Jean’s father, in the role of the ship’s doctor, greeted new travelers, documenting where they were from. One by one, he opened their bottles of lambic and sent them off to meet their fellow passengers. The queen mother tended to the storefront, where provisions and trinkets signifying the journey were being sold, gathered for takeaway back to the visitors’ home countries. All of this theater-in-the-round took place while brewing continued in the back of the building. It was a scene like no other brewery tour I have been on.

After the introductions, I took a seat in the galley and watched the barmaids chase down nonpaying customers. Off to starboard, I managed a glimpse of a mangy old mutt sleeping next to his owner, who had clearly overindulged. He reminded me of Disney’s blithering idiot in a rocking chair, hiccupping after too much grog. Next stop, Never Never Land.

I have now attended open-brew day at Cantillon on four occasions, and, like an epic amusement ride welcoming new riders, this scene repeats itself throughout the day. There is always a group of new enthusiasts boarding the ship, setting sail on the sea of lambic with Jean and family calmly navigating them through the waters. Disneyland has nothing on this place. Did I mention they sell beer here?

But in reality, this is but one day in the life of lambic, one of many in which the show must go on. Once the lights come up, the crew will swab the brewhouse decks and prepare provisions for the next journey. Artisanal lambic producers, such as Cantillon, do not set sail by brewing each day. Old vessels and systems need a chance to rest. Cantillon only produces about 20-21 brews per year, solely between November and March. This short brewing season forces the organisms to work together in a concerted effort, with no one organism able to dominate.

All of the beer is made during the winter season and left to slumber in oak barrels for no less than 12 months and up to three years before being released. Lambic production requires multiple years and vintages to achieve the goal of blending a great batch of beer. So much of what makes a lambic blender great is his ability to predict the future, to sample barrels of young beer and know how they will behave in years to come. The best producers can be thought of as lambic whisperers. As Jean Van Roy has told me on numerous occasions, the lambic speaks to you when it’s ready.

A living and breathing creation, lambic is very much a live beer, hellbent on always evolving. This is due to airborne yeast and organisms that refuse to take “no” for an answer. In many ways, the micro-organisms and wild yeasts that populate the air near Brussels (Pediococcus, Lactobacillus and Brettanomyces) are the Pirates of Wort Spoilage. Universally derided by modern brewers, these voracious critters are rarely invited to set sail in breweries. Yet, every fall we can count on the Roy Family taking to the stage and casting these very same Pirates of Wort to spin barley sugars into liquid gold in a very Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate’s Life for Me fashion.

Where once I was intimated and nervous to invite these souring organisms into our brewery, we are now on a first-name basis. Patience has become our friend when they come to visit. It’s true that our methods of production have a decidedly less Old School feel to them. Still, the results speak for themselves. We’ve come to understand the best barrel beers take time. Kind of reminds me of Disneyland like that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go speak to Captain Jack Sparrow about his drinking.

The post Sailing on the S.S. Lambic first appeared on All About Beer.

Chicago is almost the polar opposite of Flagstaff, AZ, home to Northern Arizona University and The Lumberjacks. About the only thing these two places have in common is that both can get quite windy from time to time and I’ve heard last call uttered more times than I can remember in both these cities. Because of this, I have a soft spot in my drinking heart for them both.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to explain why a city needs a plethora of dive bars and juke joints if it hopes to maintain a shred of credibility. Luckily, there’s no shortage of these in Flagstaff. My collegiate favorite was Charly’s. I quickly came to appreciate Charly’s as a silvering institution in downtown when I discovered my laughingly fake ID instantly made me a man at this fine establishment.

The windowless smoky watering hole was dominated by its pervasive bourbon, straight, no-chaser attitude. The rotting floor under the pool table slanted toward the Grand Canyon. Every Sunday a new acoustic trio plucked bass strings as cool-hand Luke brushed the snare drum from a corner stage.

Some were touring groups passing through Flagstaff pausing long enough to tune up on their way to Phoenix. Others were much more baby-faced, toting their inexperience and aspirations of grandeur to the stage in hopes of becoming the next big thing. From time to time we were blessed by the presence of a gifted trumpet player dissecting classics, adding new layers and riffs. The whole concept of drinking and shooting pool while new bands closed out each Sunday night was so very hip and entirely college-like.

Late-night Sundays brought early Mondays where I constantly nodded off during intro to music. The professor often reminded us that there is nothing more quintessentially American than jazz. For more than 100 years, it has moved in and out of the American fabric, allowing a group of craftsmen to weave the most amazing tapestry that we recognize as jazz. But if you distill it down to the core, jazz musicians are just people making music. What makes these greats legendary is the manner in which they are inspired to seek out new and unusual opportunities with their instruments as they hone their craft.

At our core, brewers are people who make beer. Yet the brewers I spend more time with consider themselves more artist than scientist. It leads me to wonder: Has craft brewing become another quintessential American form of expression? What if in the midst of this great American craft brewing revolution, brewers are acting more like jazz legends riffing their way through classics on their way to bigger, bolder and more amazing flavors?

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 in Denver that fall, inducing rumors, appreciative nods and whispers of something entirely new. Sure, the beer looked like beer, but clearly this was something altogether different. His improv succeeded and in doing so launched an entirely new genre of beer. While I wasn’t there, it clearly was a landmark release and pointed the compass of brewing down a new road.

It’s a safe bet that most brewers weren’t there when Miles Davis first took to the stage with Charlie Parker. And given the explosion of craft beer and breweries, it’s safe to assume many of today’s burgeoning craft brewing artists weren’t in Chicago when Greg Hall filled those barrels. But right now, we’re all a band of musicians who have adopted Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Stout almost as a jazz-like standard, all the while continuing to look, listen and collaborate on new flavors and improvisational opportunities from freshly emptied oak barrels.

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout proved that big beers could marry the huge flavors of American whiskey with skillful beer production. This statement of fact remains front and center today some 20 years later. Bourbon-barrel-aged beers dot the landscape and have become de facto collectibles for beer enthusiasts everywhere. It started in Chicago as a brewer planted an imaginative seed in a garden of fertile artists aching for more depth of expression. In many ways, bourbon-barrel-aged beers have been nearly reduced to jazz-like standards aspiring brewers must master. So many of them are now regularly executing this barrel-aged standard it’s almost become passé.

So what have we learned about this brewing standard in the past 20 years? Above all, we have learned that few, if any, styles of beers easily handle the rich flavors associated with freshly emptied bourbon barrels as does imperial stout.

To understand the success of each barreled version of the standard, it helps to dissect the components. Like a classic jazz trio, we can break the beer down into constituents from barrel aging, treating them like three musicians and their roles.

In order to support the bourbon flavors, there needs to be a rhythm to the alcohols. Sometimes this ethanol-based drumming can be fiery in its youth. As the beer ages, it takes on a more muted quality completely mature enough to sit back and enjoy its supporting role. As the captain of percussion, alcohol should never scream out “look at me, look at me!” Of course, from time to time, the leader will turn the spotlight on him for a solo. But alcohol should always be mindful of this conversation and work like a great drummer between the shadows of consistent plodding and deft touch. Always present and never overreaching is the collective call to action for this member of the trio.

Standing confidently off to the side of the trio is the string player. As the backbone of the group, the malt may be a bit clumsy in its handling. If so the malt may fumble its way up and down the fretless neck while trying to showcase classic flair and New World technique. Of course you’ll recognize the flavors of the malt, but  they will be muted. Over time the technician will emerge and the malted sugary notes will be almost seamlessly playful with the leader of the trio.

Daringly risky, gregariously confident or born smooth, every great band or beer is only as good as the front man. And in the case of bourbon-barrel-aged beers, many of these ales will take the stage with a vanilla axe to grind. As such, expect the aromas to be as expressively youthful like a punkish trumpeter hellbent on proving something. Each note will have you syncopating between vanilla and caramels imbued by the barrel. Most likely it will seem contrived. Not yet ready for the big time, this band will sound more than a bit bombastic and lacking the seasoning that only comes from practice sessions making perfect.

Should you find a wiser, more-polished silky saxophonist leading the trio through sultry vanilla, choice caramels and Peruvian cocoa bars, you will have found your jazz. The collective notes will harmonize and at that very moment the crossroads of improvisation and standards will have met in your glass demonstrating one glorious Bitches Brew.

It has been noted that imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery. And for the past 20 years, brewers acting like jazz musicians have been churning out versions of a new bourbon-barrel-aged American standard. And for that, we are thankful that a guy in Chicago had a vision to zig and zag in a way some had never imagined possible.

The post The Bourbon Standard first appeared on All About Beer.

Craft brewing has traditionally been best served by artisans who adopted a handcrafted mantra to separate themselves from megabreweries. Yet many craft brewers are now cranking out beer on systems that look as if they are being guided by the ground crew from NASA’s Mission Control. Specialized mechanization and machines have relegated handcrafted to the click of a mouse as computers are handling more than ever before.

Automation has created fewer opportunities for tradesmen to learn from a master anymore. Where once it was common for the unskilled to be apprentices before joining the work force, the term now rarely comes up in conversation unless, of course, you’re talking about reality TV show involving Donald Trump. Thing is, it used to be that to learn skills in life, you had to spend years working as an apprentice to become a true craftsman.

I’ve been lucky enough to apprentice several skills since my youth, culminating most recently in the art and science of brewing. I’m certain my first apprenticeship began some 30 years ago when Prometheus (my father) let me build—then ignite—the family campfire for the very first time. This was the first of many different father-son apprenticeships I would spend under his tutelage.

That summer, I mastered the art of splitting oak logs into kindling. We then perfected crinkling newspaper before moving on to thermal engineering and the structural design of making a teepee out of small splintered logs. As summer came to close, I was allowed to strike my first match to the edifice I had erected, thus ending my campfire-building apprenticeship. We celebrated by making s’mores.

As a lover of amazing spirited liquids, I have come to respect the mighty oak. While not quite as regal as the majestic redwood, the mighty oak is truly one bad-ass and versatile tree. From the humble smoking pits of Austin, TX, to the cellars of Bordeaux, oak remains the portal to our pre-Industrial Revolution woodworking past. It also connects us to a skilled labor force known as coopers who remain the stewards of an Old World tradition of bending oak staves into liquid-tight barrels.

Amazingly there are more than 500 species of oak in the world, yet barrel builders typically rely on only three species for building wine and spirit barrels. Yet, in spite of the automation creep into industries all around the world, the use of oak for barrel production, aging of spirits and storage remains a patient slog.

The mighty oak is a slow-growing tree and exists as the preferred material for barrel making, since it is a pure wood free from resins. American oak species grow at a rate about double that of French counterparts. Sourced trees must reach at least 50-80 feet before being harvested. This growth takes at least 50 years. Some of the most prized French oak trees can take between 80 and 150 years to become harvestable.

Once suitable trees have been located, they are cut down and sent for processing. Typically only the base of the tree below the first limb offshoots is suitable for barrel production. Each tree yields enough oak to make only one or two 59-gallon barrels.

After the logs are broken down into pieces called staves, they are sent out to an outdoor maturation area where they will “silver” in the elements for two years. This process breaks down many of the harsher tannins, making the staves better suited for aging precious liquids. The process of sourcing suitable wood is a slow one. It’s just not the sort of wood you select from the lumber yard.

As a student of brewing and fermentation, I had already digested much of this information about oak growth and usage. But I had never seen the coopering process in action. And so it was that some friends and I boarded a flight to Scotland with the express purpose of visiting the Speyside Cooperage. We tagged along with James Watt, co-owner of the Scottish brewery BrewDog, for the express purpose of visiting one of the largest barrel coopering facilities in the world. Our tour guide was Ronnie, who had been employed with the cooperage for more than 30 years. He spoke with a very thick brogue.

Our first stop involved examining staves from barrels shipped from bourbon producers in Kentucky. We all nodded our heads appreciatively as Ronnie described the process of acquiring American oak barrels and shipping them to Scotland. “Aye,” he said, as I commented we knew the bulk of single-malt whisky now slumbers away in discarded bourbon barrels.

Ronnie pulled open a door revealing the workshop where a crew of master coopers and apprentices were dutifully laboring. Given my research, I half expected to open the door and find seven gray-bearded old dwarves hammering away in unison belting out a “Hi Ho, it’s off to work we go” sort of song. But what I found were workmen in aprons noisily hammering away and using all sorts of strange-looking manual tools practicing Old World handcrafted methods of making barrels without the use of any adhesives.

The pace of the workers is what stuck with me the most. As American craft brewers, we’re used to working fast with a sense of purpose as if we’re being chased—in a time-is-money sort of way. But the coopers work methodically, as a leaky barrel is no friend of theirs. Each cooper churns out only 8-10 barrels per day.

Our tour continued with Ronnie shuffling his feet as we headed out to the barrel yard. It looked to me as if he was checking the dirt to see if it might rain. Thing is, it always rains in Scotland. No one seems to, including the sheep. Certainly the stacks of barrels in the storage yard showed no concern for threatening skies.

Ronnie closed the door to the workshop behind us. We were now staring at some 500,000 empty oak barrels in the Speyside Cooperage yard. Many of them were stacked on top of each others’ sides seemingly reaching to the heavens like the Great Pyramids of Giza. We continued to follow Ronnie as he led us around to discuss the different lots and provenance of the barrels for sale. We got a really good laugh at nodding our heads while nosing the inside of whisky barrels, each taking a turn exclaiming “Aye.” I wondered whether exclaiming “Aye” was the first thing taught to an apprentice cooper.

The tour ended as we headed off to a distillery. In the car ride, it became apparent to us that we were being guided around by a man who clearly spoke English, but the only word many of us understood was, “Aye .” He might as well have been speaking Mandarin because none of us could figure out what he was saying. But Ronnie was passionate about good wood and whisky, and sometimes that’s all that matters.

Seated at the distillery and reminiscing about the tour of over a whisky that slumbered in a barrel for 15 years, I realized these people embrace the slow pace that is a cooper’s life. Every day, they punch the clock and head to their stations, where they will work all day hammering hoops and assembling barrels.

There are barrel-making facilities in far-reaching corners of the globe. Each of them specializes in the very peculiar art of transforming planks of oak into round wooden barrels for aging precious liquids. And while there are many coopers working at each of these facilities, you get the sense that they could very easily be sent to any other operation in the world and continue their trade with no need of assistance. In this way, handcrafted is still very much a meaningful term in their world.

The post Patience! first appeared on All About Beer.

A stunning sexy shiny brand new American oak barrel answers:

“I have longed for this day since I was a tiny little oaky seedling. So, for better or worse, I do.”

Brewer with filling wand in hand:

“You may now kiss the bride.” (Brewer begins filling the empty barrel.)

Later, the newly joined Mr. and Mrs. Firestone Walker Double Barrel Ale dance together as husband and wife for the first time as Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt tearfully croon:

I don’t know much

But I know I love you

And that may be

All I need to know …

Amid a flurry of cheers, the stunning oaky bride and her new ale husband are sent off to honeymoon where they will slumber together for one week. She’ll lavish him with drying tannic kisses as he softly bathes her inner staves with an intoxicating caramel wash. Their consummated union will soon nurture stubby, little brown progeny sent out into the world as striking examples of a marriage made in heaven. And with each sip, the world will confirm what the brewers already knew—Quercus alba and ale can indeed be suitable life partners, and Firestone Double Barrel Ale showcases this with stunning clarity.

With each and every new union of malted barley, hops, water, yeast and oak barrels, we are reminded that this marriage of ingredients is still very much in its infancy. While wine and distilled spirits have a rich documented history of aging in oak barrels to enhance and flavor the liquids, beer does not.

For the past 15 years, the little brewery in Paso Robles, CA, has operated like a Vegas wedding chapel, acting as one of the busiest, most efficient officiants overseeing the marriage of oak and beer. But the employees at Fire-stone Walker are not alone witnessing the nuptials of beer and oak. Brewers worldwide are racing to the altar of barrel aging their beers, hoping to usher in new time-in-a-bottle moments.

As craft brewers practicing this alchemy, we’re doing far less in the way of navigation than one might imagine. A Google search lists more than 75.2 million entries for oak and wine. It lists 12.8 million for oak and spirits, while struggling to find a mere 39,500 entries for oak and beer. How did this disparity come to be?

Much of it has to do with freshness and spoilage. Beer remains the lowest alcohol-by-volume beverage of the three (if we assume the bulk of the beer consumed in the world is close to 5 percent ABV). As such, beer is prone to degradation in ways that distilled spirits and wine are not. Both of these liquids are inherently more suitable for aging than beer, given their potency (assuming most wine is packaged at 14 percent ABV and distilled spirits are bottled at 80 proof, or 40 percent ABV).

While production methods for wine and distilled spirits are largely unchanged, modern brewing methods have evolved considerably since Louis Pasteur published his landmark findings on single-cell pure yeast strain isolation. Certainly his research on fermentation applies across numerous alcoholic beverages, but clearly the production of beer has  shifted the most.

Beer remains a beverage that is most often consumed in its relative youth with an accelerated sense of urgency. Historically, time has not been its friend, making it the most perishable of the three alcoholic drinks. The bulk of the beer in the world is consumed before it reaches 6 months of age. Consider that few wines are ever bottled with such youthful enthusiasm.

Where wooden vessels once were common in brewing, breweries today are singularly focused on uniformity and the use of inert materials to deliver the highest level of purity to the consumer. Stainless steel, aluminum and glass have all become common carriers, displacing wooden tanks and casks as the vessel of choice. The remnants of beer production from 200 years ago are barely visible today, with a focus on modernity, efficiency and predictability.

And now that brewers have perfected the science of stable brews, we have set our sights on stretching the limitations of beer production in numerous ways. Front and center in this flavors race is the use of white oak (both American and French varieties). From what I have seen, the use of white oak for aging and flavoring beer is here for good. And like a mother-in-law who comes to visit and never leaves, white oak promises to exert considerable influence.

Her disposition may be subtle or wholly overstated, depending on the season. But minimally, you should expect that she’ll have the keys to affect the entire flavor house of beer. She’ll spend the bulk of her time being tannic. As a consumer, you can expect to be the object of her acerbic drying barbs. Rest assured, if you ride these out,  her demeanor will soften. Do not let your guard down. The aged, smoother tannins will always remain, albeit in a less intrusive way.

Hopefully, the two of you will have good days, and everything will turn up vanilla. Your world will smell familiar and sweet. Vanilla is so powerful you’ll swear white oak likes you. Caution, her daughter married down when she met beer. For a mother-in-law always believes her daughter should dream each night in a château somewhere.

When white oak acts up, you’ll need to break out the charm card. It might be best to ply her with some caramels and toffee-laced notes. These shouldn’t be hard to find. They’ll just be below the surface of the tannins and vanilla. Should you successfully find these traits, you’ll have the tools needed to predict white oak’s moods, their peaks and valleys. In time the subtle nuances revealed between batches and barrels will come with ease. With this road map in hand, you might even learn to appreciate white oak enough to invite her to hang around, opening your home to her extended stay in your cool damp cellar.

In many ways, your journey will echo mine. You’ll learn to appreciate the flavors of white oak and her almost cantankerous mother-in-law-like temperament without ever knowing all of “Mom’s” life story or how she came to be the preferred wood for aging precious alcohols. I know this because every time you uncork a powerful Napa cabernet or nurse three fingers of your favorite bourbon, you’ll be conversing with her. And like me, you’ll LOVE that conversation.

After 15 years of working with oak barrels and beer, I’m here to tell you that I don’t know much, but I know I love her. I am not alone in my love for her capabilities. There are captains everywhere who daily fill an armada of white oak barrels and set them afloat with the same hope, wishes and dreams as newlyweds leaving the wedding chapel in Vegas. But like some of those unions, we’re not successful 100 percent of the time … and that may be all you need to know.

The post Marriage of Ingredients first appeared on All About Beer.