Long before the stainless-steel fermenters, there was the wooden barrel. A brewer's best-friend, the wooden barrel was often used to age recently brewed ales or lagers. But it was also the means for transportation and delivery of said ales and lagers, at pubs, inn, and taverns throughout the world. Nowadays, wooden barrels remain primarily associated with creating spontaneous, wild, or secondary fermented beers. If you need further proof, just walk the aisles of your nearby grocery store or specialty bottle shop, to see beers with names like Lambic, Foedere, or, yeah, barrel-aged. These beers, at one point, were conceived, brewed, aged in a fermenter or aged in a barrel, aided by yeast, possibly adjuncts (like fruit, herbs or spices), and possibly in a barrel-previously used to make spirits or wine. Now if all of this is a novelty and you’ve heard of wine barrel-aged this, or bourbon barrel-aged that, then when was the last time you heard about a beer, which was aged in wooden barrels, previously used to make an even stronger beer? If you’ve not heard of this, then you’ve not heard of Utopias barrel-aged World Wide Stout, made by the dedicated brewers of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Delaware. Oh, you’ve not heard of Utopias?
...