Tailspin, Akasha, Bourbon Barrel Foods collaborate on special festival beer

Bourbon Barrel Foods and Akasha Brewing teamed up with Tailspin Ale Fest for a beer that is going to be big. (Photo courtesy of Bourbon Barrel Foods.)

Hello: Tailspin Ale Fest

@tailspinalefest_official

For the first time in its seven years, Tailspin Ale Fest will have an official beer.

Well, sort of. A homebrew contest is held each year with the winner taking a place in the festival, and that will happen this year as well. But another beer, a collaboration with Akasha Brewing and Bourbon Barrel Foods, will get the imperial treatment.

Akasha’s head brewer Spencer Guy brewed the beer this week with some special ingredients provided by Bourbon Barrel Foods founder Matt Jamie and his team. The beer will be a milk stout with black raspberry jam and smoked cacao nibs, and Guy suggests the beer will come in well above 8.0% alcohol by volume. (It’s a winter warmer fest, after all.)

The resulting beer will be a creamy stout, with bold flavors of baker’s chocolate, balanced with slight acidity and the flavor of black raspberry, along with a touch of bourbon barrel smoke. 

Spencer Guy brewing the official Tailspin collaboration beer.

The beer will be tapped at a pair of release events on Feb. 28, one at Akasha and one at Eat Your Bourbon, the BBF’s storefront at 2710 Frankfort Ave. Both will be held 5-7 p.m., and the beer isn’t expected to last long. More of the beer will then be tapped at the festival, which is March 7.

Tisha Gainey, co-founder of Tailspin, said the collaboration was borne part through a new partnership with Bourbon Barrel Foods and partly through simple organic brainstorming. Aging beer in bourbon barrels has been practiced for decades.

A tie-in between Jamie’s business and the beer festival is that Jamie began fermenting his signature soy sauce in his home as a hobby – much like a home brewer would do.

“I find that fascinating,” Gainey told Hello Louisville. “It’s inspiring.”

Marrying the two seemed natural. Gainey said the plan next year is to incorporate Bourbon Barrel Foods products into the homebrew contest, much like in a cooking show, by requiring that one ingredient come from the company.

“Creating a beer is something we have never done before,” Jamie said in a news release, “and we are excited to see Akasha bring our products into a whole new light with the official Tailspin beer."

Bourbon Barrel Foods began local but is now a company with international reach. It recently won awards at the Good Food Awards in San Francisco for its bourbon barrel sorghum and for its double fermented soy sauce.