Expert Topic Wood Aging, A Bit Faster

In the famed Cantillon Brewery in Brussels hangs a sign with a simple message: “Le temps ne respecte pas ce qui se fait sans lui.” This translates to “time does not respect what is done without it.” The message is a warning to brewers looking to short-circuit the process of making certain labor intensive types of beer, including barrel aged varieties.

With all due respect to Cantillon, not every brewery can afford to wait years before releasing beers. And many simply don’t want to wait. For this crowd of anxious brewers, the market offers many products designed to help gain barrel flavor, aroma, and character without the long wait.

Marcus Baskerville understands the desire to use these process shortening techniques and products even if he advises brewers to take their time. “I think the biggest thing is patience,” he says. “I think when people start getting into wanting to barrel aged beer, especially for the first time, there’s that kind of anticipation of what this beer is going to taste like.” The former head brewer and co-owner at Weathered Souls in San Antonio, Baskerville authored a recent book on the subject, entitled Wood Barrel and Time: The Art of Barrel Aging.

Baskerville stresses that quick-aging barrel flavoring products are not a substitute for the depth and complexity of traditional barrel aging. These products, however, can be helpful for breweries looking to save time, space, or costs in contrast to adopting and maintaining a full barrel aging program. They can also effectively assist in complementing rather than replacing methods for creating longer barrel-aged beer.

For those looking to add barrel character without a wait of six to eighteen months or more of aging, Baskerville offers thoughts on using time-shortening products around the edges of a beer. “I’m aware that sometimes people don’t have the capacity to hold barrels for that long,” he says. “But if that’s the field of product that they want to get into, then they need to look at some alternative methods as far as being able to do that experience.”

Let’s review a few options for adding wood or barrel character to beer without extended aging in barrels.

Oak Chips

Wood chips look like garden mulch but offer substantial surface area to contact the beer, resulting in greater extraction of wood flavors and tannins compared to longer barrel aging. Added during fermentation or conditioning, these thin flakes of wood speed up the wood flavoring process. They can also be easily removed at any point, offering greater control and consistency over the wood character in any particular beer. They are relatively inexpensive compared to other long and even short-term flavoring agents.

“When you want to get into small nuances of flavor, oak chips can be beneficial when you’re trying to bring out certain flavor points,” Baskerville says. “The way that they extract those flavor points is a lot faster than using a regular barrel. Those can be particularly beneficial when you’re trying to include additional flavors within the beer, but not technically using it for the initial barrel aging portion of your process.”

Oak Staves

Staves are pieces of wood taken from a used barrel. As staves contain less charred wood to contact the beer, the flavors are muted a bit compared to aging in a fully charred barrel. The staves can be added to fermentation or conditioning whole or can be cut into blocks or smaller pieces. Depending on the type of oak and toasting levels, brewers can assert greater control over the aromas and flavors imparted by the staves. They also allow greater customizability compared to full barrels as brewers can add or remove staves to better control the oak character in the beer.

“One of the barrel aging beers that we did once, it was an extended aging beer that we did in a Maker’s Mark barrel,” Baskerville recalls. “But then we ended up using the staves that Maker’s Mark used for this particular barrel to give different barrel flavors. With the Maker’s Mark staves, they only sat in the particular beer for a week, because that’s all it took for that flavor to take. And so I think there are times where staves, alternate methods, can be beneficial when it’s to kind of grow or even change some of the flavor points that you’re looking for.”

Toasting Options

After deciding whether to use chips, staves, spirals, or one of several other options, you can also determine the toasting or charring level of the selection wood. With a barrel, you have little control over the toast or char level as that is accomplished when the barrel is assembled, usually for some third party alcohol producer. The level of toast and char affects the character the wood imparts to the liquid aged in it. When it comes to faster acting agents, you can either order them by a particular char level or even do-it-yourself. A light toast provides a fresh wood character, with lighter notes of fruits and mild oak and vanilla. As the char deepens, additional notes of vanilla and caramel appear. Once a barrel or wood media is heavily toasted, you’ll experience bigger smoke and spice notes.

Barrel Aging Different Styles

While using faster wood agents can short-circuit the flavors and aromas developed through longer aging and even oxidation, they play a role in modern brewing. They may be less effective with the beer styles often associated with barrel aging, including bigger styles such as imperial stouts and barleywines. Baskerville suggests using the fast-acting wood media on different styles. “I think when you get into some of those products, they’re very much beneficial in other styles because of the way that you’re utilizing them,” he says. “Not every style, to me, is particularly beneficial to use within the actual barrel aging process. But I think when you want to include certain flavor points in a beer, utilizing these particular products can be beneficial because you can implement different flavor points within that particular style depending on what you’re trying to do.”

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