You may have witnessed one of those stuffy wine snobs taking a sip from a carefully swirled glass, then exclaiming to all within earshot that this particular wine has been heavily oaked.
Much of the time, you can just ignore what those stuffy wine snobs are saying, as lots of them just make stuff up. However, the oak part does have merit.
Most red wines are aged in oak barrels, which imparts many desirable flavours and aromas into the wine, including vanilla, smokiness, and assorted spices.
Aging in oak also softens up the harsh tannins in a wine, making for a smoother mouth feel, and all-around more enjoyable wine.
Lest you think that only the wine snobs appreciate a good oaking, the whisky producers have been paying the same attention to oak barrels for hundreds of years.
In fact, up until relatively recently, even beer was aged in wooden barrels named firkins or hogsheads, which held from 40 to 250 litres of beer.
It was not until the 1950s that breweries switched from wooden barrels to stainless steel vats for ageing their beers.
Not only was the stainless steel much stronger, it was much easier to clean, which was critical for reuse. The old wooden barrels were pretty much impossible to sanitize, which meant they had to be regularly replaced. Stainless steel vats could be cleaned and reused pretty much indefinitely, making for a cleaner and fresher beer than those aged in wooden barrels.
However, with the growing craft beer movement worldwide, there have been some brave or foolhardy brewmasters trying their hand with the old methods of ageing their beer in wooden barrels.
The modern-day pioneer that spearheaded this movement was Innis & Gunn, a small family-owned brewery from Scotland that opened its doors in 2003.
Innis & Gunn were originally trying to produce an ale-flavoured whisky. They started out by marinating a whisky barrel in beer, later intending to age whisky in the beer-soaked barrel.
However, in a happy accident, they found that the barrel-aged beer was delicious, so they switched gears and started bottling beer instead of whisky.
Innis & Gunn have gone on to become the most popular bottled British beer on the Canadian market, so they must be doing something right.
Your humble narrator has enjoyed Innis & Gunn many times, although only in moderation; at 6.6% ABV, it packs more of a kick than your average beer.
The beer itself is only lightly hopped, and provides a full and malty mouthfeel. The oak ageing provides lots of nutty flavour, with undertones of toffee and vanilla, and a slight butterscotch aftertaste.
Innis & Gunn have even produced one-off special beers for the Canadian market. The brewery obtains used barrels from Canadian whisky distillers, ages their beer in them, then ships the beer back to Canada, usually just in time for Canada Day.
Beer nerds wait for this limited release every summer, quickly snapping them up in a frenzy of patriotic boozing and fireworks.
While Innis & Gunn were the pioneers, many other craft brewers have jumped on this bandwagon. Here in Canada, Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company in eastern Ontario makes an IPA called Screaming Beaver that is aged on oak staves.
Using oak staves or oak chips is cheaper and easier for the modern brewmaster, as they can continue using their existing stainless steel vats, then throw in pieces of oak to impart the desired flavours to the beer, without having to worry about wooden barrels rupturing or leaking.
Your humble narrator has even used this method in his homebrew experiments, by adding sterilized oak chips while ageing the beer, then filtering them out before bottling. One of my homebrew creations even won a red ribbon at the recent Chestermere Country Fair, so the oaked beers are definitely seeing critical acclaim.
Here in the Alberta market, Edmonton’s own Alley Kat Brewing has released three limited edition brews aged in whisky barrels from the Glenora Distillery on Cape Breton Island.
The oak aged brews from Alley Kat are only released in limited quantities, in no small part because the Glenora Distillery on Cape Breton Island is pretty small, making the barrels hard to come by.
Keep an eye out at your local booze merchant and snap up any you see on the shelves – that’s what your intrepid liquor reporter will be doing!
