At Schlafly Beer in St. Louis, Missouri, Lead Brewer Jared Williamson shares some of the thought process behind the barrels and beers they joined together for the brewery’s Ibex Cellar Series.
“We decide on the beer style first and then the kind of barrel that we think will work best. Then we source what we need. It’s a collective process where we bat around a lot of ideas, but usually it’s finding flavors that will work with each other.
“For our pumpkin ale, a beer we’ve been making for a really long time and that does really well for us, we wanted to do something special when we used a barrel. Because of the flavors of the beer and the sweetness, we decided on rum barrels. We could have used bourbon barrels, but we just figured that the booze would run all over the beer, and we wanted something complementary.