10 BREWING & BEVERAGE INDUSTRIES BUSINESS It is widely understood that the leading beer consumer organisation in Great Britain, and most likely the world, is the Campaign for Real Ale, better known to all by its acronym CAMRA. What is less recognised, however, is that before there was CAMRA, there was the S.P .B.W., or Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood. Founded in 1963, almost a full decade before CAMRA, the S.P .B.W. was dedicated to the same goal as its more famous cousin, namely the preservation and promotion of cask-conditioned ale in the face of an onslaught of artificially carbonated beers in ‘sealed dustbins,’ as the organisation colourfully described kegs. The ‘from the Wood’ part of its name came from the wooden casks which were at the time far more commonplace than they are today. While the S.P .B.W. does still exist, and is in fact presenting its first national Beers from the Wood Festival, or ‘Woodfest,’ in Castleford this July, it is highly doubtful that the barrels they sought to promote in the 1960s would bear much resemblance to the wood most frequently seen in breweries today, especially on the North American side of the Atlantic. For when most American and Canadian brewers speak of wooden barrels, they are most often referring to barrels that have previously served as a home to whiskey, more specifically bourbon whiskey. And for that we can thank the now-Anheuser-Busch InBev-owned Goose Island Brewing Company of Chicago. To explain, let me take you back to the Great American Beer Festival of 1995, held during a time when the event was still sufficiently small that a single notable beer could become the talk of the festival floor. And in 1995, that beer was “a very strong stout aged in Jim Beam Bourbon barrels,” Goose Island Bourbon County Stout. Bourbon County was, to my knowledge, at least, the first modern microbrewery beer to be so conditioned, and it certainly made an impact. Line-ups in front of the Goose Island stand became a near- constant sight from about mid-way through the first tasting session, while brewers and brewery owners were similarly assembling on the vendor side of the table to try for themselves the beer that had everyone talking. It was, in a word, a hit. As early as the following year, others had adopted the practice, with very mixed results. (I recall one such stout from around this time that tasted a great deal like bourbon and very little like stout.) By 2002, barrel-conditioning had grown sufficiently popular that it had been given its own judging category, Wood- and Barrel-Aged Beer, albeit with only a modest 26 entries. How quaint those days appear today. In 2017, it seems that there is nary a brewery in Canada or the United States that does not have some sort of barrel program. The good news, however, is that the barrels taking up this brewery space are now less likely to have seen the bold, often overwhelming flavours of bourbon. Partly due to the growing popularity of so-called ‘sour beers’ and partly because it appears that a steadily increasing number of brewers have discovered the value of nuance, bourbon and other whiskey barrels, though still a dominant force in terms of the wood most often employed in breweries, are growing less so. Neutral barrels – they being not new wood, but barrels used so many times that they have lost their original or spirit-charged character – and wine barrels are growing in popularity with brewers, as are seasoned or new wood foeders – basically over-sized barrels of differing shapes – and cider and brandy barrels. With numerous breweries now operating on-site distilleries as well, several have even been able to bring the barrel process in-house. Examples of this include when Rogue Ales of Oregon used local pinot noir barrels for its Pink Spruce Gin and then employed those same barrels to age a special edition of its Yellow Snow IPA or as British Columbia’s Central City Brewing is doing this year by aging its Imperial Pumpkin Ale in the house distillery’s own whisky barrels. What it all adds up to, besides growing creativity on the part of brewers, is a greater emphasis on subtlety and less reliance on the punch of vanilla and charred caramel that one gets from a bourbon or Tennessee whiskey barrel. For beer drinkers, this translates to greater choice and, for those who enjoy the myriad effects an oak barrel can bring to a beer, an occasional respite from the weight of the beers big enough to emerge unscathed after spending a few months inside a whiskey barrel Stephen Beaumont Letter from North America Barrels, Barrels Everywhere A professional beer writer for 27 years, Stephen Beaumont is the author or co-author of a dozen books on beer, including the new, third edition of The Pocket Beer Guide, arriving this autumn, and 2016’s fully-revised and updated second edition of The World Atlas of Beer, both co-written with Tim Webb. Stephen’s latest solo book is The Beer & Food Companion, which was published to much critical and commercial acclaim in October of 2015. Stephen has also contributed to several other books and written innumerable features, articles and columns for publications as varied at The Globe and Mail and Playboy, Fine Cooking and Whisky Advocate. When not writing, he travels the world extensively, tracking down new breweries and hosting beer dinners and tastings from São Paulo, Brazil, to Helsinki, Finland, and Beijing, China, to Seattle, Washington. 10_Layout 1 17/05/2017 10:17 Page 1