Barrel Fermented Woxford’s Revenge

Dat Glycol Loop!

Jester King uses shipping containers to bottle condition upcoming beer.

Now that the Battle Shed is up, it’s time to brew a beer and ferment it within with only ambient temperate to control it. I’ve had three beers age in one of my 5 gallon Balcones Whiskey barrel and have been waiting to have the shed ready to bottle the previous batch (Quad Damage) and then brew and prepare a Boxer’s Revenge inspired clone.

I brewed a test-batch earlier this year and the Boxer’s clone came out very nice. Slightly under carbed due to testing out new bottling method (pre-packaging yeast in gelatin caps) which worked well but needed a bit more sugar to get the right level. The taste and aroma were spot on. The only real concern was that it needed quite a bit more oak to make it more like Boxer’s. For this batch I’ll ferment it and again it entirely in the oak barrel.

Nothing special in the recipe besides using the Jester King mixed culture. Note: Mash @ 150F for 75 minutes. Enjoy!

Recipe Details

Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV
6 gal 90 min 22.4 IBUs 7.5 SRM 1.089 SG 1.009 SG 10.7 %

Style Details

Name Cat. OG Range FG Range IBU SRM Carb ABV
Wild Specialty Beer 28 C 1.02 - 1.09 1 - 1.016 5 - 50 2 - 50 2 - 3 2 - 10 %

Fermentables

Name Amount %
Pilsen (BestMälz) 16 lbs 71.11
Wheat Malt, Ger 5 lbs 22.22
Pale Moon (Blacklands) 1 lbs 4.44
Caramunich Malt 0.5 lbs 2.22

Hops

Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha %
Styrian Goldings 2.12 oz 60 min Boil Pellet 3
Cascade 1 oz 7 days Dry Hop Pellet 5.9
Centennial 1 oz 7 days Dry Hop Pellet 11.4

Yeast

Name Lab Attenuation Temperature
Jester King Culture (0001) Jester King 86% 50°F - 90°F

The Battle Shed

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A lot of time has passed since I last posted and instead of brewing beer, I’ve been brewing up a shed. I’ve wanted to transition to using a conical for some time, but I didn’t want to purchase an upright freezer for each one one, which is the typical way to ensure that you can control the temperate at the homebrew level. One could go get a jacketed conical, or use some of the new immersion coil setups, but finding something that works well at a reasonable price at the homebrew size is quite a challenge.

IMG_20150402_170320Instead of cooling on the conical I had looked at cooling the entire shed. The previous shed-cum-rat-shack was just not salvageable since it was rotting from the bottom up. I had a new shed installed and then wired with 60A service which was plenty of electricity for cooling with room to run large appliances as well as potentially running an all electric brewing setup.

I looked at using spray foam for its speed and R-factor, but the price was just too high, over 4 times the cost versus simple R-13 batts. In short order, several friends and I had insulated the walls and ceiling. What took considerable more time was putting in the OSB walls. I no longer have my truck so I needed a way to get 14 or so OSB 8’x4′ sheets and ended up having Lowe’s deliver.PANO_20150605_162835

After that we started planning and cutting sheets to fit. We spent about two weeks using the evening hours to put it together. It can be said a carpenter or handyman, I am not. But it’s functional. Painting went quite a bit quicker, a coat of latex primer and then a latex top coat to keep things from getting wet.

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The key to ensuring the shed stays cold enough to ferment and age beer is the use of a CoolBot (insulation helps keep it that way). The Coolbot is a really neat and simple device. It has several temperate probes to get readings on the AC fins and the rooms and also a heat probe, to trick the AC itself to keep running which allows the Coolbot to control how long it runs.

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I plugged it in and it worked right off the bat. A quick test showed it cooled a carboy of water down from 80F to 65F in just a few hours. Over the next few days, I filled up the shed with homebrew and commercial beer.

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Under heavy stress, the Coolbot ended up freezing the coils. This wasn’t as bad as it sounds since Coolbot has a nice troubleshooting guide to help you tune things. After changing where I placed the fin temperate probe, I was back up and running.

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I’m highly impressed with the device. I’ve got a few more things to get the interior the way I’d like but for now, it’s completely operational which means it’s time to brew some more beer!

Here’s some more photos from the project.

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