The Humble Gourmand

Ah, a beer event at the National Geographic Society. I pictured khaki clad safari-goers intrepidly plunging into the darkest vagaries of the brewing world.

Turns out I was mostly right — we did explore some very interesting beers rarely found in these parts, and there was most certainly government bureaucrat-khaki pervading the room. But this was no safari. This was a tasting of barrel-aged beers, a new trend in brewing as old as the forests providing the trees.

Led by our fearless guide Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, we ventured into the world of barrel-aged beers. Barrels were one of the original vessels for holding liquids like beer — wood is dense, bendable, and less pungent than animal skins, an earlier favorite. As Oliver told us in the pre-tasting lecture (like no college lecture I ever attended, though — I actually wanted to be taking notes!), “Wood can take on many different aspects.” He went on to enumerate the effects that a brewer can achieve using wooden barrels, and luckily, he had some examples to accompany.

Wood slowly allows oxygen to seep in, allowing for malty beers to lose some bitterness while developing the flavors of the barrel’s previous resident. We had some lovely examples of this; JW Lees Harvest Ale 2007 from port casks was a voluptuous tipple. It was most definitely beer, but had the nose of the best of ports — fresh figs, dates, and I swear I could taste honey-and-manchego-while-sitting-on-a-sundrenched-beach-in-Portugal.

Harviestoun Ola Dubh 30 Year Old was another stunner: aged in Highland Park 30-year whiskey casks, this beer took on the peaty brininess of the scotch and the dark chocolate espresso notes of the ale — it was like a Boilermaker of the Gods.

Wood can also host what Oliver called “microflora” — bacteria that live in the wood and, if employed correctly, give beautiful sour notes to a beer. My favorite of these by far was Consecration, from California’s Russian River brewery.

With two different yeasts, including the infamous Brettanomyces, and two souring bacteria, lactobacillus and pediococcus, this beer was tangy with a slight cheesiness. The beer also has 30 pounds of dried currants per barrel, which, along with the fact that Russian River uses Cabernet Sauvignon barrels, give it a subtle fruity wine-iness. A rare find — Consecration is that mating praying mantis we all clamor to glimpse in our binoculars.

The tasting would not have been complete without Oliver, pictured above, whose encyclopedic knowledge of beer and his New York sense of humor. He put together an impressive lineup of brews, from Japan, to Switzerland, to Belgium, Scotland, Chicago, and Oliver’s own Brooklyn — and not a Land Rover in sight.

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