Barrels Left to Explore
I have filled and emptied hundreds of barrels over the course of my career in craft beer. I know the process and I can repeat it.
At Elder Piper, I’m not trying to repeat barrel-aged beers I’ve already made. We are trying to make barrel-aged beers and ciders that suit northern Michigan – The lifestyle, the climate, the flavors, and the smells. We are working towards a different aesthetic and different scale than I have ever worked with.
The scale for our barrel-aged beer and cider program is small. I’m a production brewing team of one, so all of our barrel-aged products will be small-batch and limited quantities. That small scale has limitations, but it also provides opportunities to explore.
Wood + Flavor
I like barrels for two reasons.
First, I like to work with wood. Wood is softer and more forgiving than stainless steel. Wood was the original vessel for many styles of beers and there is a long history of using barrels to make fermented beverages of all sorts.
Second, I like the flavors the barrel creates. The barrel is an ingredient in the recipe. The flavor of the barrel and time shape our beers and ciders just as much as the type of malt or variety of apple. Because barrels are porous all these ingredients interact. The barrel isn’t just a vessel for holding liquid. It becomes part of it as the wood breathes in oxygen, expands and contracts with temperature, and sometimes even leaks, a little.
To me, putting beer or cider or anything into a barrel is like going on a journey. You might know exactly where you are heading and still end up somewhere else along the way. There are twists and turns as temperature and humidity shape the barrel-aged path. Even the slightest change can have a big impact on where the barrel-aged beer or cider ends up.
Barrel-Aged Cider
The first thing we put in barrels was cider. We used the same base cider as our Apple Blossom Cider and poured that into seven-year-old rye whiskey barrels from Grand Traverse Distillery. As I filled the barrels with cider, I smelled marshmallow, caramel and holiday spice coming off the wood in waves.
With this Cider, our goal is mostly to get the flavors of the whiskey and the barrel infused with the cider. We want to minimize the impact of aging by not leaving them in there too long to maintain the character of those northern Michigan apples. We want the wood and time in barrels to accentuate what we have here. With this cider and our barrel-aging program, we are at the start of a journey and I am excited to share where it takes us.
