To nail a style or recipe time and time again is a sublime act for a brewer, but there’s also the excitement that comes with forging a new path when it comes to beer. The desire to innovate runs deep among brewers, and for Keigan Knee of Modist Brewing Co. (Minneapolis, Minnesota), it was about 4 years ago that he started thinking about a new style of beer.
“I wanted to explore how close you could get a beer to a spirit without actually distilling and staying within the legal parameters of our brewing license,” he says. So, his mind drifted to cocktails, specifically the Old Fashioned, the bourbon-based bar staple made by muddling sugar with bitters, then adding bourbon and a twist of citrus rind.
As it happens, there’s a cocktail bar down the street from the brewery, Parlor Bar, which is celebrated for its bar program and especially its Old Fashioned. Knee reached out and started a dialogue and soon discovered that the bar could get its hands on some barrels from Kentucky-based Knob Creek, specifically some 11- to 14-year-old select barrels.