For Kane Brewing in Ocean, New Jersey, the bourbon barrel–aged imperial stout A Night to End All Dawns has become A Beer to Win All Medals. Its gold in 2020 was the beer’s third medal at the Great American Beer Festival; it also won gold in 2014 and silver in 2018, plus a World Beer Cup gold medal in 2016. Those accolades speak volumes—this is a beer and a brewery highly respected by peers. Here, founder Michael Kane goes into detail about their barrel-aging program.
On Brewing Specifically for Barrel-Aging
We brew specific recipes for our barrel-aged beers, rather than splitting off a portion of a batch for oak. This approach allows us to build a recipe that is intended for aging—with higher residual sugars and longer boils to concentrate the gravity—to extract flavors that come with time.
Coming off fermentation, the beers destined for barrels generally are out of balance and in need of time—bitterness needs to mellow, sweetness needs oak tannin to balance, and alcohols need time to mellow and esterify. We usually look for a more chocolate-forward profile in our finished barrels. To achieve this, we’ll use a relatively large portion of British chocolate-level roast malts. We generally increase the percentage of these malts as the residual sugar of the recipe increases. These higher levels of roast malts generally don’t work quite as well in a beer without time in barrel.