On Saturday, November 14, 2009 we made a short journey to Hayward, California to attend the 4th Annual Barrel-Aged Beer Fest, which is organized by The Bistro. When we arrived, we encountered 65 wood barrel-aged beers from about 30 different breweries, all available for tasting form the souvenir tulip-shaped glass. The tasting was $40 and included said glass, a very detailed listing of the beers available, and 10 tasting tickets, additional tickets were available to $2 each but I didn’t need more.
This beer festival featured some of the most interesting beers, in a wide variety of “styles,” from breweries all across the nation, all with two common themes: wood barrel-aged and high alcohol content. Although most were West Coast based breweries other breweries from other parts of the country and the world were there, such as Avery (Colorado), Allagash (Maine), Dogfish Head (Delaware), and Rodenbach (Belgium).
The festival itself, on average, wasn’t terribly crowded. I only had a little bit of trouble getting around when I first arrived but within 20 minutes the number people around was manageable. The people attending the festival and serving the beer all were very interested in beer and all seemed to be enjoying the beer being sampled at this event.
There were no two beers that produced a similar tasting experience, each beer was very unique, interesting, and well crafted. This would be no surprise when inspecting the beer list and the details of each beer. The “styles” ranged from barleywine, imperial stout, Belgian-style strong dark ale, Scotch ale, doppelbock, Flemish red, IPA, fruit beers, and many were blends of everything in between or experimental styles crafted very well. I’m using “style” in quotes because it seems like by-the-book styles were thrown out the window in favor of creating something very interesting and delicious with a complexity of flavor and aroma. Next, the alcohol content by volume ranged from 6% at the lowest all the way up to 13% for the strongest, with the median being around 9%. On top of that, add the diversity of barrels used to age the beer: bourbon barrels from a variety of makers, wine barrels from various styles of wine, brandy barrels, neutral barrels, and toasted oak barrels. Finally, each beer was aged for different amounts of time with the shortest for 2 months and the longest for 2½ years.
With 65 very interesting beers available, it was difficult to figure out what to try so after my first beer I talked to one of the servers and I also ran into the future owners of 510 Brewing Company and Peter from BetterBeerBlog, all of whom had some great suggestions. The following are some brief notes about the beers that I tried at the event. Continue reading
