We’re kicking off our 2024 cycle of barrel-aged stouts with a blend composed primarily of 1 year-old beers that are all blooming fast. In general, we don’t really start tasting beers from the wood cellar until they’ve spent 9-12 months in cask, and it’s around this point in time in their maturation cycle that some casks start to really pop. Just as frequently, there are some casks in these cohorts that remain too young, green, closed, or aggressive. Sometimes it happens with casks from the same distiller with the same pedigree, re-filled by us with the same beer and then stored-by-side for months on end. How do those differences come to be? It’s the mystery of barrel-aging.