Ozark Beer’s best-known beer—the bourbon barrel–aged double cream stout known as BDCS—might also be the business manager’s biggest headache.
“It’s a terrifying process,” says Lacie Bray, Ozark’s cofounder, about the barrel-aging. “Because when you do it that way, it doesn’t taste good for a very long time. So, you get to a point where you’re just like, ‘Oh gosh, shouldn’t it be tasting good by now?’”
“From my point of view, on the business side, there are so many questions when we do this,” she says. “It is a work in process. Most years, it does not taste super-great until we just about release it—and then, all of a sudden, it just magically shifts, and it’s beautiful and wonderful. But leading up to that, it’s really stressful.