Brewers roll out barrel-aged beer with tequila flavors

If you go by the journalistic cliche, three makes a trend — which means there’s no doubt that tequila barrelaged beers are a trend.

Over the past few years, a range of prominent breweries, from Deschutes Brewery to Avery Brewing Co. to Almanac Beer Co., have rolled out tequila barrel-aged beers. And that’s not to mention the creative oneoffs you’ll often find at a decent brewpub or an event such as the annual Festival of Wood and Barrel Aged Beer (which takes place Nov.16-17 in Chicago this year).

That experimentation makes sense given tequila barrels offer brewers a simple way to put a new twist on a vast array of beer styles.

“I love how they give a beer spicy, earthy, oak flavors,” says Adam Martinez, director of media and marketing at Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey, which has produced a couple of tequila barrel-aged beers over the past few years.

But simply aging a beer in tequila barrels doesn’t guarantee success, he says, noting: “We’ve made a few good beers with them, but we want to make a great one.”

The next tequila barrelaged beer Lost Abbey plans to release — it will hit shelves this year or early next year — will be a riff on a paloma, the simple cocktail that combines tequila, lime juice and grapefruit soda.

One reason tequila barrels offer a fresh toy is that they can add vegetal, spicy notes. Those elements can work well with a range of beers. Deschutes, last year released a tequila barrel-aged variant of The Abyss, its heavy imperial stout, and those attributes melded well with the beer’s trademark licorice, molasses and vanilla notes.

While you can pick out the tequila barrel’s influence, those elements are relatively subtle, which is one of the interesting quirks of using the barrels to craft a beer, says Ryan Schmiege, Deschutes’ assistant brewmaster, who is in charge of the brewery’s barrel program.

Even so, Deschutes has only a small amount of beer currently aging in tequila barrels. And it isn’t sure when or how it will release the lambic-style beer.

The reason is simple. Tequila barrels are hard to get because, unlike bourbonmakers, which are prohibited from using their barrels more than once by law, tequila producers often use their barrels for years. As a result, the supply is limited and the barrels that are available are often less than pristine, says Andy Parker, the brewer who oversees Avery’s barrel-aged beers.

When Avery released two tequila barrel-aged beers last year, it had to recooper the barrels to ensure they would work. But once the barrels were repaired, they helped the brewery create complex, interesting beers. While Avery doesn’t plan to release a tequila barrel-aged beer this year, it will likely release one next year.