Scottish oak-aged beer gets an Irish twist
Added: Wednesday, March 14th 2012
Innis & Gunn, the Edinburgh-based company that kick-started the trend to age beer in whisky casks, has launched a new beer in time for St Patrick’s Day – a stout matured in casks obtained from an Irish whiskey maker.
The new beer marks the remarkable success of a company launched in 2003 that now sells its beers world-wide and doubled its workforce in 2011 with the creation of 13 new jobs to cope with demand. Eighty per cent of sales are the result of exports to Canada, the United States and Scandinavia.
The company is run by Dougal Sharp (pictured), the former head brewer at Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh. He worked alongside his father Russell Sharp who had previously worked for Chivas Regal in the Scottish whisky industry where he made a close study of wood ageing.
Father and son were intrigued when whisky distiller William Grant approached Caledonian for beer for a new Ale Cask whisky. Grant’s planned to dispose of the beer when the maturation period was over but the whisky maker phoned the Sharps and said its employees were delighted with the taste of the beer and had drank it rather than pouring it away.
As a result, Dougal Sharp decided to develop his own oak-aged beer and he left Caledonian to launch Innis & Gunn: the company’s name comes from the middle names of Dougal and his brother. The success of Oak Aged Beer (6.6%) is due to the use of lightly-toasted American oak casks bought from Bourbon makers. The beer enjoys a 77-day maturation, 10 times the average for ale. This includes a 30-day rest in American white oak casks. The beer then continues to age in a “marrying tun” where the flavours infuse and mellow, and natural carbonation takes place.
As a result of the success of Oak-Aged Beer, Dougal Sharp has added new beers to the range, including Blonde, Highland Cask matured in 18 year-old single malt whisky casks, Rum Finish, and Canada Day for the Canadian market.
To taste and watch the oak-ageing process, I went with Dougal Sharp to William Grant’s vast distillery at Girvan on the Ayrshire coast, close to the famous Turnberry golf course. Grant’s is best known for its best-selling Glenfiddich single malt whisky but, in common with all Scotch makers, it also produces large volumes of blended whisky. Girvan is a vast, sprawling site where gin as well as whisky is made.
In the corner of one enormous store house we found a batch of oak casks where Irish Whiskey Cask was maturing. The casks came originally from Jim Beam’s Bourbon distillery in Kentucky and were then used by an unnamed Irish whiskey maker. American law decrees that casks used to make Bourbon can be used only once. The casks are then broken down into staves and sold to whisky makers in both Scotland and Ireland.
A Grant’s employee tapped one of the casks and handed us small tasting glasses of the beer, which is a Scottish-brewed stout infused with the aromas and flavours of Irish whiskey. A young beer was amazingly complex, with herbal, spicy hop notes, roasted grain, espresso coffee, oak, smoke, bitter chocolate and vanilla on nose and palate and a warming hint of whiskey. A beer that had matured for longer had more oak on the nose, with greater hop bitterness and a burnt fruit note with a solid backbone of rich whiskey. The 7.4% beer is matured in cask for 60 days. It’s brewed with lager malt, 10% wheat, crystal and chocolate malts, and roasted barley. The only hop used is the English Fuggle.
From Girvan we travelled to Glasgow and another large production site – Tennent’s lager brewery, where Innis & Gunn beers are brewed. The Glasgow brewery accounts for 60% of all the beer made and sold in Scotland with its lager brands but it can also brew ale as well. The Innis & Gunn beers are brewed in 600-barrel batches three to four times a week.
Original is brewed with ale malt, a small percentage of roast barley for colour and hopped with Super Styrians. It has a big oak and vanilla aroma with peppery hops, sultana fruit and honeyed whisky. The palate is packed with wood and vanilla, with peppery hops, honey and rich fruit while the finish has malt, oak, vanilla, honeyed whisky and peppery hops.
Rum Finish is brewed with Scottish lager malt, crystal malt and roast barley and is hopped with Styrians. It has a woody, rum, burnt fruit and spicy hops nose, while rum dominates the palate along with roasted grain, oak and bitter hops. The bittersweet finish has oak, rum, roast, burnt fruit and spicy hops.
Blonde is brewed with lager malt and Goldings hops. It has oak, vanilla, juicy malt and tangy hop reins on the nose, with peppery hops, juicy malt, vanilla and oak on the palate and finish.
Innis & Gunn’s turnover is increasing 20% year-on-year and Dougal Sharp is confident he will hit a target of one million cases of beer by 2013. His Irish Whiskey Cask Stout is available from Utobeer and Last Try Wines. See www.innisandgunn.com.
*In 2010 Innis & Gunn was given the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade. It won three consecutive Monde Selection Gold medals for Original and two Golds for Rum Finish.
