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Can be more than one use.
Do you reuse barrels after you’ve aged a batch?
Ron Jeffries, Jolly Pumpkin Brewing Company
Reusing barrels is the way that we are able to build up the wild yeast populations, which is why we use the barrels.
Vinnie Cilurzo, Russian River Brewing Company
We have sort of our own barrel program, which goes like this: for Temptation, Supplication and soon Consecration, all of those beers are aged in specific barrels with a specific wine type in them. Because we intend to pull some of the wine flavor from the barrel, it is important for us to bring in fresh barrels every year. With these three beers, we tend to call out 40% of the barrels each year and bring in 40% new barrels (that is, new to us). Then, we take the old barrels that have absolutely no oak or wine left in them and move them over to the Beatification, which we want to have no oak or wine flavor. With Beatification, we are only using the wood to harbor the funk.
In our new brewery we are building right now, I’m having trouble getting white wine barrels, and for some reason I have been overrun with Pinot Noir barrels from all of my winemaker friends. So, as it looks, in late 2009, we’ll have lots of Supplication and very little Temptation. Once we use up the barrels over the following few years, a lot of these barrels will be turned into Beatification barrels.
Steve Breezley, Avery Brewing Company
Yes. We especially like some of our wine barrels that have developed certain sour producing bacteria and we use that to our advantage aging some of our wacky “Belgiany” stuff.
Scott Vaccaro, Captain Lawrence Brewing Company
Sometimes we reuse barrels, but usually for sour beers only.
John Egan, Stone Brewing Company
I like to use the barrels several times and make notes on how much oak character is still left. Most often I will rack the beer out of a barrel and refill it with another beer on the same day. Even if barrels are spent of any oak character, they can still be put to good use. You can add oak alternatives, funky wild yeasts — or use them in your garden for decoration.
Eric Wallace, Left Hand Brewing Company
We use our barrels a few times – until wood flavor dissipates.
Barrel aged Flemish red or Lambic would be mighty awesome.......
