What's next for Rhinegeist

UPDATE: Rhinegeist will hold a pre-release party and meet the brewer night for its sherry barrel-aged Ink Imperial Stout at 6 p.m. Thursday. Tickets are $50 and include two reserved bottles (they retail at $18) and a barrel-aged sampler flight. Brewer Luke Cole will also be on hand to talk about the barrel-aged series.

A public launch for the beer will be offered on Saturday. Doors open at noon, with bottles for sale while they last.

The story below originally appeared Oct. 1.

Rhinegeist was the only local brewery to bring home hardware from last week’s Great American Beer Festival in Denver.

Sherry Ink, the Over-the-Rhine brewery’s Ink imperial stout aged in sherry barrels, took the silver medal in the “Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Stout” category. It was one of 128 entries in that class.

This was the first GABF win for the Rhinegeist, which came away from the competition empty-handed during its first two years in business. The event, which took place Sept. 24–26 and was presented by the Brewers Association, is the world’s largest commercial beer competition.

“It was just an amazing honor and achievement for all that we do,” Rhinegeist co-owner Bryant Goulding said of the win. “You have to believe in your beer day in and day out, but it’s really nice to win recognition and bring home some hardware.”

And the timing couldn’t have been better.

“It was a really cool way to strike a chord with the new barrel-aged program that we have coming out,” Goulding said.

Sherry Ink will be the first of those beers to be packaged in 22-ounce bottles with a “visually arresting” label, as Goulding puts it. Aged for three months in sherry barrels from Meier’s Wine Cellars in Silverton, it will be available in a limited quantity, only in the tap room. A release party date is to be announced, but it will be before the end of October, Goulding said.

During the next couple of months, more Rhinegeist beers currently aging in barrels will be ready to bottle. Some of those will be wider releases, available at bottle shops and select beer bars.

Goulding said the brewery has collected bourbon and rye barrels from a dozen different producers, including Pappy Van Winkle, Four Roses, Heaven Hill and George Remus. Brewers are learning the attributes of each barrel (whether it imparts toasted or vanilla flavors, for example) and how that interplay works with Rhinegeist’s beers. One of the lead brewers, Luke Cole, is working on the barrel-aged program almost full-time now, and Pat Mulroy, who returned to Cincinnati after brewing at Destihl in Illinois, is also involved.

“We have to wait months and months to get feedback,” Goulding said, noting that the beers age from three to 12 months. “It’s more like wine than it is like beer.”

Beers currently barrel aging include Ink, Gramps (American barleywine ale), Mastodon (Belgian strong ale, some of which is aging in sherry barrels) and Pandemonium, a blend of most of Rhinegeist’s dark beers (Panther, Panda, Ink, Bertha).

About 100 barrels of sour beers, which age six to 24 months, are also cellaring in the brewery’s basement, Goulding said.