The Conundrum of Cask-Aged Beers

From a press release received this week, about a beer that has been aged in a Scotch whisky cask: "Please Note: Because the beer has been matured in a whisky cask HM Revenue class the beer as a spirit rather than a beer and insist that we sell the beer at the spirit duty rate rather than as a beer. Neither are we allowed any sediment allowance as the beer is re-classed as a spirit"

I love the plush texture and multi-dimensional flavours that cask-ageing gives to a beer, be it whisky, rum or brandy. In the UK, ageing beers in a wooden barrel that has previously contained spirits is something that is gaining in popularity. There are many reasons that you might want to do such a thing, but most brewers do it in order to give another flavour dimension to the beer. In the same way that malt whisky takes on the character of the sherry that was in the cask before it was re-used, so too does beer take on the character of whatever was last in the cask.

The problem is, in the UK, ageing beers in a wooden barrel that has previously contained spirits is also technically illegal. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (the people who enforce legislation relating to border protection, taxes and excise duty) have a strict law that prohibits grogging. But there are two problems is that this piece of legislation.

The first problem is that it refers to a practice that is solely concerned with extracting spirit from barrels, usually by adding water. The concern for HMRC is simply that people are extracting spirits without paying duty on them. Put simply, if you put a gallon of water in an old whisky cask and leave it, after a few months, you'll get dilute spirit out - usually about 10%abv.

The second problem is that this legislation is applied inconsistently. Currently in the UK, there are plenty of people ageing beer in old spirit casks, but they are all being treated differently from an excise duty point of view. The taxation can be anything from straight beer duty (with appropriate reduction under Progressive Beer Duty, if the brewer is small enough), to duty taxation at a full spirits rate, to a flat refusal to allow the brewer to pay tax on the cask-aged beer.

The first problem is pretty straightforward. The legislation needs to be reviewed, and clearly any beers that have their %abv bumped up by a bit of casual grogging should be taxed simply as beers. The beers that undergo such treatment are a tiny fraction of a percent of the beers produced in the UK today. It won't create a wholesale resurgence in grogging, it will just allow brewers another option to add flavour and texture to their beers. Perhaps a percentage increase in %abv might be permitted.

The solution to the second problem follows on from the first. Review of the law will ensure that there is no longer any ambiguity, and so the application of the unambiguous law will not vary between local HMRC officers, as is the case currently in the UK

FOOTNOTE: The brewery in which I took the featured picture has no issue with HMRC, although they did have a long struggle getting their cask-aged beers to market

Fuller's Brewer's Reserve: Numbers 2 to 4

I was at Fuller's earlier last month, and the ever erudite John Keeling gave me a great tour. He's a passionate, knowledgeable and garrulous chap, with an interesting take on the nature of brewing, the history of Fuller's, and how one goes about making great beer. If time allows, I'll write a post about him and his take on brewing, but that's for another time. This post is about Fuller's Brewer's Reserve.

I wrote about the current release of Brewer's Reserve here, and the observant among you will notice that this beer is referred to as Number 1. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Fuller's have a series of them lined up for release, although they are very much still works in progress. They are works in progress not in the sense that Fuller's are going to release anything that they aren't 100% happy with, but in the sense that they are still being aged in cask - they're not quite ready yet, but the release schedule is more or less mapped out.


Walking round the brewery, it's impossible not to notice all the wooden barrels littering the place. John Keeling said that they'd filled every nook and cranny with barrels; nook and cranny my earhole, they've filled the damn brewery with them. Every corridor, every spare bit of space, has a spirit barrel filled with Golden Pride shoved into it, or more often than not, a pile or a line of them. They're moving towards creating a special room for the barrel ageing, but until then, it's all endearingly makeshift.

The next releases, Brewer's Reserves 2, 3 and 4, will be Golden Pride that has been aged in Courvoisier, Auchentoshan and armagnac barrels respectively (I didn't get the name of the armagnac producer). Having tried barrel samples, which will be indicative (but not totally predictive) of the finished beers, I can say that No. 2 is softly rounded, with a fairly dry finish. No. 3 has a big spirit character, with a lot of smooth sherry notes, and a lot of the underlying beer hidden under the influence of the sherried character of Auchentoshan (which has a heavy sherry-cask finish itself). No. 4 has only had a few weeks in barrel, so it's hard to tell what will emerge - rum and vanilla is quite prevalent at this stage.

As if that wasn't enough, John and colleague Derek Prentice also wheeled out some experimental samples. Some of these I wrote about here - for example, the Golden Pride in bourbon barrel, which was incredibly smooth and rich, really rounded, but starting to show a bit of brettanomyces stinkiness. Perhaps it was at it's peak, but alas, we'll never know - this was the last bottle of that particular beta test of the concept. The example aged in a Glenmorangie cask was much wilder, a little tarter, but with a lot of depth and complexity. A sample aged in a Bowmore cask had a characteristic Islay note of ozone and beach at low tide - complex and enjoyable, but in a slightly threatening, elemental way.

It's hard to summarise what Fuller's are doing with these beers. On one hand, they are so complex, so interesting and so different that all I can do is urge you to seek them out and try them. Conversely, these beers are produced in such limited numbers, and are only available from the brewery shop, that they are only ever going to be the preserve of the curious and the dedicated. What I will say is that these beers really are worth seeking out, and if that means making the journey to the Chiswick brewery, then so be it. It will be good practice for when they release their next project - that really is going to raise a few eyebrows.....