• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Advertise
  • About Craft Brewing Business

Craft Brewing Business

Professional Insight, Unfiltered

Craft Brewing Business Craft Brewing Business
  • News
  • Business & Marketing
  • Packaging & Distribution
  • Equipment & Systems
  • Ingredients & Supplies
  • Webinars & White Papers
  • News
  • Business & Marketing
  • Ingredients & Supplies
  • Packaging & Distribution
  • Equipment
  • Webinars & White Papers
  • COVID-19

Barrel-aging alternative for craft brewers: Innovative Oak’s new Spiritized Spirals

May 24, 2018Chris Crowell

innovative oak spiritized spirals
A new oak alternative to used whiskey barrels.

In response to a growing need for used whiskey barrels by craft beer producers, St. Cloud-based Innovative Oak recently announced Spiritized Spirals, a new oak alternative that uses whiskey barrels for infusing that spirit flavor and aroma into craft beer.

A proprietary process created by Innovative Oak, these process soaks a spirit, such as bourbon, into the popular spiral-shaped oak alternative, Oak Infusion Spiral made by The Barrel Mill of Avon, Minn. The toasted and saturated Spiritized Spirals are immediately packaged and sealed to retain freshness and arrive ready to submerge and integrate into the beverage. Spiritized Spirals make the crafting of barrel-aged beer easier, faster, safer and more economical than filling used, drained Bourbon barrels with beer.

How do I use it?

innovative oak beer barrel

Introduced in Nashville at Brew Expo America, Spiritized Spirals come as a 4-ft long “Tank Pack” size, which treats a volume of 10 to 20 bbls of beer and creates whiskey barrel-like results without the space required of used barrels. The spiral-cut barrel alternative product is available in five different woods, four different toasts and one char level. With a wide variety of spirit options, such as bourbon, rye, scotch, cognac, brandy — even tequila — the number of wood-spirit combinations is virtually unlimited.

“Until now, beer and wine producers who wanted the unique flavors and aromas of a used whiskey barrel in their beverage would have to locate a supplier of used whiskey barrels – -which has become increasingly difficult — and then wait up to a year for their beer to age in barrel and blend with the whiskey-stained oak of the barrel,” said Richard Hobbs, president of Innovative Oak. “Our Spiritized Spirals eliminate the search for barrels and greatly reduce the integration time frame.”

blue_ridge_ spiritized barrel

“We had outstanding results using Oak Spirals pre-soaked in bourbon on our IPA #2,” said Charles Aaron, co-owner and brewer at Jersey Girl Brewing in Hackettstown, N.J. “In order to get the same aromatics and flavors from used Bourbon barrels it would have cost us way more in time, effort and money, not to mention taking the risk of getting funk from bad barrels or oxidation of beer while in barrel.”

Spiritized Spirals are also available as a Barrel Pack, applicable to 1 to 2 bbls of beer. Spiritized Spirals need just a few weeks of contact time with beer to fully extract. For accelerated integration, re-circulating beer through the wood spirals can reduce time to just days in some cases.

honeycomb-barrel-giveaway
Honeycomb Credit, Barrels Direct launch $5,000 barrel giveaway
dragons-milk-solera
New Holland uses cool solera aging method for this ever-changing Dragon’s Milk
New Belgium illegal beer
This New Belgium beer was actually illegal until 2017
Barrel chips
Know your barrel options: Four alternatives beyond barrels to impart wood-aged flavor

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

Latest News

  • Crooked Hammock combines curling and stouts for cool mini fest
  • Sin, Repent and Repeat on Fat Tuesday and more beers to know this week
  • Fort Point Beer debuts cider line, explains why ciders instead of seltzers
  • NBWA releases January Beer Purchasers’ Index, craft demand sinks low

Sign up for our newsletter

unsubscribe from list

Most Popular Today

Recent Features

  • fort point both-ciders-3Fort Point Beer debuts cider line, explains why ciders instead of seltzers
    January 31, 2023
  • Watch a drone release insects over hop yards for sustainable pest control in this Yakima Chief Hops video series
    January 30, 2023
  • Distro update: Connecticut’s Two Roads Brewing goes to Colorado + news from Surreal, New Sarum and more
    January 30, 2023
  • Cadaverine: When your beer smells like dead human
    January 26, 2023
  • beer taps brain distribution cbb cropUnfiltered: There are weevils in my grain – what do I do?
    January 26, 2023
  • People news: Industry icon John Mallett steps down from Bell’s + moves from Craft ‘Ohana, BrewDog USA and more
    January 25, 2023

Footer

  • Email Newsletter Sign Up
  • About Craft Brewing Business
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise on Craft Brewing Business
  • Media Kit Download
  • Privacy and Terms

© 2023 · CBB Media LLC