Two tastes caught my attention this month, and both owe a certain degree of their attractiveness to American oak.
First up was the cask-conditioned ale supplied by Oakville, Ontario's Black Oak Brewing Company to beerbistro for our Late Autumn Beer Festival held as a benefit for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada. It was a special version of Black Oak's rich and malty Nut Brown Ale, aged for the occasion in an oak barrel supplied by the Jack Daniels Distillery. Tasted a couple of weeks earlier, the ale tasted fine if slightly disjointed, with the flavours of the barrel and malt not quite reaching a common ground. At the festival, however, the beer really hit its stride, as the chocolaty nuttiness of the malt blended seamlessly with the vanillas and fruit flavours of the barrel, creating a brown ale that was the talk of the day.
Complementing the Nut Brown's lasting impression towards the end of the month was the Batch 1,000 version of Firestone Walker Brewing's Double Barrel Ale. Fermented in new American oak and bottle-conditioned, this ruby-brown ale offers a slight whiff of smoke up front, alongside aroma notes of vanilla, gentle roast and orange toffee. In the smooth, almost creamy body, soft, round, fruity sweetness blends with notes of charred wood, some background nuttiness and a dry, slightly smoky and tannic finish. A very nice effort and certainly worthy of a repeat long before it comes time for batch 2000.
We're very interested in your news, notes, comments and questions, so please feel free to contact SBWoB by clicking on the link below. Or you can add your comments when you sign up for the World of Beer Update, a mid-month e-mail newsletter that brings even more of the world of beer to your computer.
