Blending Barrel-Aged Beer With Regular Beer

Breweries are constantly striving to “innovate” (a problematic word), even though trying to figure out a new ingredient or technique in a country of half a million beers seems impossible. There are a couple hacks, however. Some clever breweries look back when they’re seeking to move forward, recognizing that history may contain a hidden gem that, dusted off and repurposed, might delight a modern audience. One recently did, and I mentioned it briefly, but I’d like to put it here at the center of its own blog post.

The beer in question was Fort George’s Tide Land, a blend of young, weak stout and strong, aged barrel-aged stout. I don’t know the proportions, but the final result was a 5% stout with a medium body and a rich, barrel-aged flavor. It was a startling experience, because I’ve conditioned myself to brace when I smell whiskey in my beer—for a smack in the face of both booze and sugar. Tide Land was silky, but hardly saccharine, and the bourbon was like a magic trick—all the aroma and flavor without the alcohol.

Of course, this isn’t a new idea. It’s not even new to me. Two of my favorite beers are made using this technique. Yet in the manner of boxed-in thinking, I somehow failed to see them as a blueprint. Tide Land managed to pop me out of the box, however, and now I see loads of potential.

The first beer is the more obscure—Greene King’s legendary Strong Suffolk. The last remnant of England’s tradition of vat-aged, Brettanomyces-inoculated old ale, Strong Suffolk is made of a blend of fresh pale ale and two-year-old, 12% beer known in the old manner as XXXXX (5X). That aged beer is full of acid and oak, and it spices Strong Suffolk without overwhelming the drinker. I always wished it was a bit more assertive, but I understand modern tastes. Quibbling aside, it always seemed like a brilliant use of those vats, which would have been decommissioned decades ago if they were trying to sell 5X straight.

Even more obvious is one of my all-time favorite beers, Rodenbach. Except for the rare straight-foeder bottle, all Rodenbach is a blend of young and old. The “standard” beer has 25% aged stock, and in Belgium it counts as an everyday beer. Many people feel the aged percentage could be a bit higher there as well, but leave that aside. It’s a popular beer you find everywhere, and it gets its unique flavor from the old stock of mixed-fermentation ale.

There’s no reason Americans couldn’t crib from these classics. Nationwide, there’s an overcapacity of barrel-aged beer of all types. Breweries invested in barrel rooms because, for a time, beer geeks were paying a lot of money for bottles of the stuff (both wild ales and barrel-aged beer). That has changed, and while people still pay a premium for aged beer, it doesn’t move like it used to. Blending those excess lots with fresh beer, it seems to me, would be a great solution. It also might kickstart a new trend in blending aged and fresh beer that customers might actually like (especially with the wild ales).

Here’s where “innovation” might actually earn its name. Fort George blended a stout with a stout—but the possibilities are pretty broad with barrel-aged beer. A bit of bourbon-barrel beer (stout or otherwise), would work with most British-style ales. Wild ale has even more potential, since acidity and funk can work with almost any flavor profile. They could add zest to anything with fruit, to dark ales, possibly even to hoppy ones. Breweries could even develop base beers designed for accepting aged beers—just like Rodenbach.

The biggest challenge is that blending isn’t easy—or at least, blending well isn’t. Like any new (or recovered) technique, breweries will have to experiment and practice with proportions and blends. With all the barrel-aged beer out there, though, it seems like a practice worth trying. I know I would like to see more of this stuff. I’m still pining for a couple pints of Tide Land, just to see how it wears. It would be fun to see breweries experiment with the technique for even more out-of-the-box experiments.

If you have done beers like this or do in the future, let me know.