The Rare Barrel is a

brewery A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of be ...

and

brewpub Craft beer is a beer that has been made by craft breweries. They produce smaller amounts of beer, typically less than large breweries, and are often independently owned. Such breweries are generally perceived and marketed as having an emphasis o ...

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

, United States, that exclusively produces

sour beer Sour beer, also known as Sours, is beer which has an intentionally acidic, tart, or sour taste. Traditional sour beer styles include Belgian lambics, gueuze and Flanders red ale, and German gose and Berliner Weisse. Brewing Unlike modern brewing, ...

History

Founders Jay Goodwin and Alex Wallash met while attending

UCSB The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

. They started home-brewing in their apartment and decided that they would one day start a brewery together. Goodwin started working at

The Bruery The Bruery is an American brewing company based in Placentia, California, founded by Patrick Rue and named as a fusion between his family name and the word "brewery". It opened in 2008 and has produced an average of 2,500 barrels of beer annual ...

, where he worked his way from a production assistant to brewer, eventually becoming the head of their barrel aging program. The Rare Barrel brewed its first batch of beer in February 2013, and opened its tasting room on December 27, 2013. The Rare Barrel was named for "ph1" a barrel used to make the original batch of La Folie in 2000 by New Belgium Brewing based out of Fort Collins, Colorado. In homage of the original "Rare Barrel", every year the brewery along with its customers and peers select the best barrel of beer and name it "The Rare Barrel" for that year. The "ph1" barrel was gifted to The Rare Barrel by New Belgium in 2015 and as of 2016 is currently active, used to age dark sour beer.

Production

The Rare Barrel only makes sour beers which are aged for an extended period of time in

oak barrels Oak is used in winemaking to vary the color, flavor, tannin profile and texture of wine. It can be introduced in the form of a barrel during the fermentation or aging periods, or as free-floating chips or staves added to wine fermented in a v ...

; all of their sour beers will age on wood for anywhere from six to 36 months. Their beers are fermented with a combination of

Brettanomyces ''Brettanomyces'' is a non-spore forming genus of yeast in the family Saccharomycetaceae, and is often colloquially referred to as "Brett". The genus name ''Dekkera'' is used interchangeably with ''Brettanomyces'', as it describes the teleomorph ...

yeast and

Lactobacillus ''Lactobacillus'' is a genus of Gram-positive, aerotolerant anaerobes or microaerophilic, rod-shaped, non-spore-forming bacteria. Until 2020, the genus ''Lactobacillus'' comprised over 260 phylogenetically, ecologically, and metabolically diver ...

and/or

Pediococcus ''Pediococcus'' is a genus of gram-positive lactic acid bacteria, placed within the family of Lactobacillaceae. They usually occur in pairs or tetrads, and divide along two planes of symmetry, as do the other lactic acid cocci genera ''Aerococcu ...

bacteria. Lactobacillus and Pediococcus bacteria are both responsible for creating lactic acid and acetic acid, which make the beers acidic and taste sour. The Rare Barrel currently produces its brews in small-batch quantities, which can range anywhere from one to 10 oak barrels in volume. The brewery's on-site tasting room provides an outlet for showcasing the brewery's single barrel experiments. The Rare Barrel also maintains the ''Founder's Club'' program that provides members with exclusive access to some of the brewery's limited releases.

Awards

Several beers from The Rare Barrel have won gold and silver at the

Great American Beer Festival The Great American Beer Festival (GABF) is an annual beer festival hosted by the Brewers Association, held in Denver, Colorado. Typically held in late September or early October, the event is currently held at Denver's Colorado Convention Center. ...

and the

World Beer Cup The World Beer Cup is an international beer competition organized by the Brewers Association, a trade group representing America's small and independent craft brewers. It is the largest competition in the beer industry and has been described as " ...

History

Production

Awards

See also