We’re kicking off our 2024 cycle of barrel-aged stouts with a blend composed primarily of 1 year-old beers that are all blooming fast. In general, we don’t really start tasting beers from the wood cellar until they’ve spent 9-12 months in cask, and it’s around this point in time in their maturation cycle that some casks start to really pop. Just as frequently, there are some casks in these cohorts that remain too young, green, closed, or aggressive. Sometimes it happens with casks from the same distiller with the same pedigree, re-filled by us with the same beer and then stored-by-side for months on end. How do those differences come to be? It’s the mystery of barrel-aging.

Fortunately, we found that a few threads of these beers– especially ones in some Union Horse Bourbon casks and some classic Heaven Hill Bourbon barrels were especially ripe. They expressed a good bit of roast, some green woodiness, even a hint of underripe banana and nougat. We loved the body and oak-expression in these casks and paired them with some 2- and 3-year old barrels that amplified the perception of spirit and sweetness in the blend. On paper this looks like a straight-shooting imperial stout in whiskey barrels, but selecting the right blender casks to achieve that balance required a deft touch. Cheers to a new year of exciting beers coming from our wood cellar.