Thursday, April 9, 2020

Lakewood releases new Barrelworks blend, Rest in Peaches

Image courtesy of Lakewood Brewing Co.

Emerging from a sour beer wonderland set up in a small, nondescript South Garland warehouse, Lakewood Brewing Co. has released Rest in Peaches, the latest beer in the brewery's Barrelworks series.

"The cave," as founder Wim Bens calls it, is a room filled with an amazing aroma of sweet alcohol and wood. The walls are insulated up to a foot thick and are very cave-like indeed, with the air kept cool year-round at a constant temperature 64 degrees.

Barrels from all types of spirits, even absinthe, line the walls on racks in Lakewood's "sour room."

“Some of our barrels are three, four, and five years old," says Bens. "The beauty of our sour program is we have been building it slowly, and now we have a library of beers to blend.”

Sights from Lakewood's "sour room."

As for Rest in Peaches, Lakewood blended a variety of barrels and vintages of beers. The two base brews were an amber lager with peaches, aged four years in bourbon barrels, and a wheat wine aged three years in wine barrels.

Those were blended with more peaches and apricots prior to being packaged in 375ml champagne bottles. The bottles were then corked and capped and left to rest some more. After months and months of conditioning and refermentation, the result is a pleasantly tart beer with deep complexity.

“We don’t release many beers from our Barrelworks program,” says Bens. “This is a labor of love and time. The beer tells us when it’s done. So, that could be six months or five years.”

Rest in Peaches is currently only available to-go at the Lakewood Taproom Drive-Thru.

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