I have been writing about oak-aged beer a fair bit lately. That is because certain brewers we know and love have started releasing their own wood-y versions to supplement the growing list of oak-soaked imports available in the west. With the latest influx of creative oak beer from Mikkeller hitting Alberta, I thought it might be time to offer a bit of a primer on oak-aged beer for Vue Weekly. It ran last week.

After offering a short intro to wood and its effects on beer, I quickly shift into highlighting a few good examples. I start, naturally, with Innis & Gunn – not necessarily because it is the best example, but because it is both the most widely drank and the most accessible. It is the wooden gateway so to speak. I then move to the Glen Sherbrooke series as a good local example.

But whiskey is not the only option for wood-aging, so I bring up Hitachino Next XH (aged in Shocyu – distilled sake – barrels), and Mikkeller It’s Alive White Wine Barrel (do I really need to say what it was aged in?) to give a sense of what other barrels might do. I finish with what is my favourite oak-aged beer – Ola Dubh. For the column, I sampled the 30-year-old, but all in this series are marvelous, rich, complex beer.

For those of you who are beer aficionados, the column may seem pedestrian. But consider for a moment that 99% of beer drinkers have not experienced oak-aged beer beyond I&G. If this opens their minds and their palates to experimenting with other versions – mission accomplished!

Read the oak-aged column here.