These days, BA (barrel-aged) is a well-established acronym in the craft beer vernacular, but 30 years ago, that wasn’t the case. In the early ‘90s, the American craft beer boom was in its infancy, and for the most part, brewers still vehemently followed the beer purity rules of the Reinheitsgebot.
While experimentation wasn’t shunned, it wasn’t necessarily encouraged, either. So when the idea of aging a beer in used bourbon barrels came up at a cigar dinner attended by the Goose Island Brewing Co. team and Booker Noe, Beam’s master distiller, the brewers were hesitant to follow through on the concept. A few days later, though, when a near-empty bourbon barrel appeared on the Goose Island loading dock, the brewing team took a chance, filled it with stout, and let the barrel work its magic.
Today on “Taplines,” Dave Infante is joined by Seth Gross, a former Goose Island Brewing Co. brewer who attended the very first meeting where the barrel-aged stout was first discussed. Some three decades later, Gross is still barrel-aging his own beers at Durham, N.C.’s Bull City Burger and Brewery — just one of the hundreds, or more likely thousands of brewers who have taken up the BA gospel since. In this episode, Gross takes us back to the moment when Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout was first created, the very stout that kick-started the BA beer craze as we know it. Tune in for more.
