Beer23_58

Binder1

BARREL AGING BREWING WITH BARRELS Something Old Is New Again T boozy hint of bourbon. Thesehink back to the first timeyou sipped a bourbon-barrelaged beer. You tasted flavorsof oak, vanilla, and maybe a words: Don Osborn photos: Don Osborn & Jeffery Halvorson Barrel aged beer has just begun. flavors might have been a revelation, like a beam of light breaking through the clouds. For the last 10 to 15 years, the popularity of using barrels to age stronger, bolder beers has increased. But using wood to store beer is far from a modern invention and is, in fact, quite old. Whether used traditionally, as in the case of sour beer makers, or in a modern twist, there is a lot to learn about putting beer into wood. PHOTO: JEFFERY HALVORSON THE OLDEN DAYS Ancient Egyptians used clay pots for their primitive homebrewing. Later, Western Europeans used wood for mashing wort and storing beer, but they favored copper kettles for boiling. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, advances in iron making and other technologies brought about by the Industrial Revolution gave brewers other materials to use when making beer. Surely cast-iron pots were a part of many historic breweries. Eventually wood, iron, and copper became scarce in the brewery as stainless steel became the most popular material to mash, boil, ferment, and store beer. 58:


Binder1
To see the actual publication please follow the link above