About Me

Hello, my name is Brian Peterson, and I live in the greater Portland, Oregon area. My journey into this craft began back in 2014 when I started homebrewing beer. Not long after moving into a new neighborhood, I met a neighbor who also brewed his own beer. He invited me to join him during one of his brewing sessions, and I was immediately hooked.

I began with extract brewing and quickly transitioned to all-grain brewing after just a few batches. Around that time, I developed a strong interest in sour beers. One of my favorite local breweries was Cascade Brewing, which sadly has since closed. They specialized in barrel-aged, fruited sour beers—a style I was eager to replicate at home.

Back then, the only practical way to age beer with oak at home was by using a small amount of oak chips or spirals. However, I found it difficult to control the oak character, as the high surface area of the chips would quickly over-oak the beer. The other option was to use a 5-gallon oak barrel, but even then, the surface area-to-liquid ratio was much higher than the large barrels used by professional breweries, wineries, and distilleries.

Fast forward to around 2018—I was at one of my local homebrew shops picking up supplies when I came across a stainless steel container with an oak head pressed into it. It resembled the barrels I now use, although this one was a bit crude, with bolts instead of a spigot and bung. The oak exterior was rough and unfinished. Even so, I immediately recognized its potential as a solution to the challenges I faced with oak chips. Unfortunately, the price was out of reach at the time, so I didn't purchase one, but the idea stayed with me.

A couple of years later, my uncle began distilling brandy using fruit from his backyard. Each year around Christmas, he would share his creations with the family. Our conversations eventually turned to whiskey, and the following year, he brought some for us to try. He had been using spiral-cut oak pieces but wasn’t achieving the depth and complexity that a proper barrel provides. That conversation reminded me of those crude barrels I had seen at the homebrew shop, and I decided to build one myself.

What started as a personal solution has since evolved into Fusion Barrel Works.