
Ethen Adams is launching a new sour-beer effort. (Photo by Jay Paul)
In May 2016, Chicago’s Goose Island Brewery, which is home to America’s largest beer barrel-aging program, recalled its cult favorite, Bourbon County Brand Stout. The brewery confirmed the beer had become infected with a strain of lactobacillus, which imparted an unintended sourness. At about the same time, Hardywood Park Craft Brewery quietly launched its sour-barreling program, intentionally adding a mix of lactobacillus, another bacterium and Brett yeasts to its Virginia Blackberry wheat ale to produce a sourness. Ethen Adams is expanding the barreling program at Hardywood, and he knows that extreme care needs to be taken with sour barreling.
Adams’ Virginia Blackberry project is a pilot, and the results, like any barreled beer, will be largely unknown for months while the yeasts are eaten by sugars and the beer sits. Hardywood is also making sure that the bacteria doesn’t affect other beers.
Head brewer and co-owner Patrick Murtaugh says the barrels used in this particular brewing process are separated from the others in order to avoid any accidental transfer of bacteria. “When you purposefully bring beer-spoiling bacteria into your facility, you just have to be extra vigilant in the cleaning and sanitation practices you already have in place,” he says.
Hardywood is known for its Gingerbread Stout, now with multiple variants — some barrel-aged in brandy barrels, some in bourbon barrels. Barrel aging is one way to impart flavor. Certain types of wood can add a vanilla or clove taste. Others can even impart the wood’s terroir. The number of times a barrel is used affects the flavor the beer will take on, as does the quality of the wood, the quality of the spirit, the age of the barrel and length of time the beer spends in the barrel.
“I came to work with [Hardywood’s] existing program, which is fairly well-established. ... They are excited to keep that program and start a sour program,” says Adams.
Hardywood isn’t the only local brewery with a barrel exchange. Ardent Craft Ales started a program with New Kent Winery. It also made the barrel-fermented Wild Ale with Blue Bee Cider and Catoctin Creek. According to co-owner Thomas Sullivan, it’s tough for smaller breweries to get barrels because wineries and distilleries typically send them to larger outfits.
Back at Hardywood, the team is eyeing wine, sherry and port barrels. “One of our new brewers here, his family has a winery in West Virginia,” Adams says, “and they are making sherry and port. We are going to give them some of our barrels. That gives us a way to add another dimension — we will get those barrels back.”