Barrel Aged Beer a New Idea? (rant)

The rise in barrel aged beer has been one of the most notable trends in American craft beer over the last 15 years. These days barrel aged beer is mainstream enough that even Budweiser is getting into the act with Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale (which according to the label is aged on, not in, bourbon barrels) and a few breweries, like Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, oak age all of their beers. Among internet beer nerds many of the highest rated beers on both BeerAdvocate and RateBeer see some time in barrels that previously held a spirit or wine (each site has just under half of the top 50 rated beers barrel aged and that doesn't even include the beers aged on oak cubes or chips).  The most highly prized barrel aged beers are generally either strong (and often dark) or sour, these three characteristics can help to fend off the gradual oxidation that results during barrel aging.

Some people will tell you that this oak aging idea is an invention of American craft brewers (or homebrewers), and that before 1992 (or so) any barrels used to store aging or fermenting beer were coated on the inside with brewer's pitch to prevent wood flavor and oxygen from getting into the beer.  An alternative history from Innis and Gunn claims that their bourbon barrel aged beer "Is unique to us, a world first!" despite having been brewed for the first time in 2002... a full decade after Goose Island first brewed Bourbon County Stout in 1992.

The first, and most obvious, counterexample to the America First Theory is the use of unlined oak vessels to age/ferment most of the great sour ales of Belgium.  Traditional Lambic and Flanders Red producers have long relied on wooden barrels and tanks to age their beers.  These would never have been lined to prevent wood-beer contact because the use of oak here is specifically for its oxygen permeability and microbe harboring characteristics.  These breweries go to great lengths to clean off any impermeable beerstone buildup on the oak vessel before they fill it back up.  This cleaning ensures that each batch of beer gets the same wood contact as the previous batch (Rodenbach scrapes the inside of their large tuns by hand, and Cantillon agitates barrels filled with hot water and metal chains, while others just use a high-pressure hot water spray).

Fine, fine, sour beers are often a special case, they are the loophole answer for just about every brewing best practice.  However, according to Wild Brews one of the Lambic brewers' favorite barrel sources are the Czech Pilsner breweries that still ferment/age some of their beer in the traditional fashion (Pilsner Urquell Kvasnicovy for example).  Once the barrels get too old for pilsner (not enough wood character?!) the breweries sell them to breweries that want barrels without much character left. 

As these rants with a historical slant often go I'll turn to Ron Pattinson for some information I couldn't dig up on my own.  I sent him an email asking about the history behind barrel aging beer a few years back and he related the story of obtaining barrels from Guinness back in the 1970s that were not pitch lined.  So that makes three examples from different brewing traditions across Europe, more than enough to show that oak aged beers are anything but an invention of American craft brewers in the 1990 (although I will admit that it was Americans who popularized barrel forward beers).

With all of that said I have read that there were plenty of breweries that did use pitch lined barrels, especially for shipping beers long distances (like in the case of the original India Pale Ale), so while today some people may enjoy adding a bit of oak character to their IPAs there probably isn't much historical basis for it.  History aside, I think any unnecessary aging (especially with exposure to oxygen in a barrel) for a hoppy beer is a waste of time and hop character, but that's just me.

If you have any suggestions for rant topics please post a comment or send me an email.  For example, Chris Colby, the editor of BYO Magazine, recently complained to me about the use of the term "infected" to refer to an unintentionally sour beer (he made the excellent point that it is organisms that get infected, a beer should be called contaminated).