"Odell Brewing" news and stories

I must make a confession: I'm wild for wood.

More specifically, I adore barrel-aged beers. By socking away stouts in bourbon-drenched barrels and aging sour ales in chardonnay casks, brewers are imparting novel flavor profiles. It's one of craft brewing's tastiest trends, fully embraced by Fort Collins, Colo.'s Odell Brewing.

In 2007, the brewery embarked on its ambitious Woodcut program, a series of special-release beers aged in virgin-oak casks from Kentucky's Canton Cooperage. Since the first three Woodcuts were all ale variants, the brewers decided to go out on a stylistic limb for No. 4, namely the märzen. "We were looking at a style that we hadn't done," says Odell brewer Joe Mohrfeld. "It offered us a new opportunity to see what we could do."

Before the advent of refrigeration, märzens -- German for March -- were brewed in that early spring month (hot weather creates serious fermentation snafus). These stronger, fuller-bodied beers were then lagered in cool caves or cellars untill fall, when they were broken out for Oktoberfest.

Dance majors may end the semester with a recital. Architecture students may finish up the year with a nice model for their coffee table. But when you take coursework in beer, your final project is a kegger -- almost literally.

This past Thursday, Brewing Science and Technology students from Colorado State University celebrated the release of their class project, Hoppy Days IPA, at -- where else -- a tap room. The course has been offered at CSU for the past four years and Hoppy Days IPA is the third beer brewed in conjunction with the local Odell Brewing Company which is where the celebrations went down.

Brewing coursework used to be relatively rare (only UC Davis comes to mind) but growth in the beer sector has caused brewing classes to become more common. The University of Wisconsin was one of the latest schools to announce they're adding a beer brewing offering for students. Maybe we're moving towards the day when the traditional college beer bash is passe if you didn't brew the beverages yourself.

[via BeerAdvocate]