In our third instalment of discussions from the 2022 edition of FyneFest, we’re talking barrel aged beers, and more importantly: who’s buying them? Our panel featuring Toby McKenzie of RedWillow, Dave McHardy of Fierce Beer, and Lee Grabham of Brew York discuss their barrel ageing aspirations with host Matthew Curtis.
Over the past couple of decades barrel aged beers have become increasingly popular among craft beer enthusiasts. From intensely flavourful spirit barrel aged strong stouts, to more nuanced and complex sour and wild ales matured in former wine casks, the range of barrel aged beers is as breathtaking as some of the beers which eventually emerge from the barrels themselves.
But as the market has become saturated with these often costly beers, and the post-pandemic, cost of living crisis driven drinker looks towards simpler, less wallet-intensive beverages, what does the future look like for this subgenre within the beer category? Who’s actually buying them? And perhaps more importantly: how are breweries making any profit from a project that takes an immense amount of time and space to produce, and is largely driven by passion?
For this panel we put together a group of brewers making (in our opinion) some of the best barrel aged beers in the UK: Toby McKenzie of Macclesfield’s RedWillow Brewery, Dave McHardy of Fierce Beer in Aberdeen, and Lee Grabham of York’s appropriately named Brew York. The trio discuss everything from the processes behind their barrel aged beers, to what they think the future of the market looks like for them.