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Have barrel, will fill

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Mmm, whiskey...

Used Whiskey Barrel from Farmhouse Brewing Supply

What to do when you have an empty whiskey barrel?  Recently I emptied my whiskey barrel that had a favorite Russian Imperial Stout recipe, Black Metal Stout, from my favorite local brewery, Jester King.   With the RIS out of the barrel I knew that I needed another beer to occupy the space fairly soon, lest my barrel turn sour or worse, start leaking.

To temporarily keep the barrel clean and leak-free, I’ve kept some vodka inside and rotate the barrel every few days.  But the real solution is to brew another beer.  In this case, I eventually decided that I should pursue another take on one of my favorite Strong Scotch Ales, Old Chub from Oscar Blues brewery.

Previously I had soaked oak spirals in Isle of Islay single malt scotch whiskey.  To continue that concept I decided that we’d age some Old Chub in the whiskey barrel.  This Friday I’ll be brewing up Old Chub, 11 gallons of it, and pitching a 4 Liter starter of White Labs Cali Ale (001) and then in about two weeks I’ll rack everything that fits into the whiskey barrel.

The first beer in the barrel stayed about three months and pulled a significant amount of whiskey flavor and aroma.  I decided that I wanted enough flavor and aroma to stick around for a while since I bottled half of the batch in 750ml containers for long term storage and natural carbonation.  It will be interesting to see how long it takes to get a nice whiskey aroma and flavor in the Old Chub; I’m guessing roughly the same time since Old Chub is less roasty than a RIS.

Recipe Details

Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV
11 gal 90 min 46.9 IBUs 23.1 SRM 1.079 1.017 8.2 %
Actuals 1.046 1.01 4.7 %

Style Details

Name Cat. OG Range FG Range IBU SRM Carb ABV
Strong Scotch Ale 9 E 1.07 - 1.13 1.018 - 1.03 17 - 35 14 - 25 1.6 - 2.4 6.5 - 10 %

Fermentables

Name Amount %
Brewer's Malt, 2-Row, Premium (Great Western) 28.224 lbs 83.11
Crystal Dark - 77L (Crisp) 2.344 lbs 6.9
Munich Malt 1.554 lbs 4.58
Special B Malt 12.73 oz 2.34
Smoked Malt (Weyermann) 9.28 oz 1.71
Chocolate Malt (Thomas Fawcett) 7.37 oz 1.36

Hops

Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha %
Nugget 1.8 oz 60 min Boil Pellet 13

Yeast

Name Lab Attenuation Temperature
American Ale (1056) Wyeast Labs 75% 60°F - 72°F

Mash

Step Temperature Time
Mash In 152°F 60 min

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Needs more sour…

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Sour-mashing 12 gallons of work in a Blichmann 20G kettle. Heat-belts and temp controller to keep temp between 115 and 120F.

I brewed my first sour-mashed Berliner Weisse back in January this year on my dreaded double-brew day which involved doing a quick 30 minute boil and chill while trying to mash a Flanders Red. Patience grasshopper. I aged the first Berline Weisse, MomoSuppai on 10 pounds of frozen peaches resulting in a very nice, light, peachy beer. The only real criticism was that it needed more sour to it. The original had about 48 hours of time with a pure Lactobacillus culture at 120F degrees. In my notes, I said next I’d let it sour longer.

That time as come. In addition to the desire for more tartness, I also wanted more volume. The first 5 gallons went way too fast, so the only thing to do was to bump up the volume. The challenge was how to sour mash the larger volume. The sour mash process I follow has the mashed wort held at close to 120F for as many days as you like after pitching a pure culture of Lactobacillus. The pure culture helps ensure that many of the off-flavors that can come from other bacteria don’t make it into the beer versus the traditional method of pitching in uncrushed grain which carries tons of bacteria.

I picked up some additional heat belts which I’ve used before to ensure proper temp control for the sour mash and they worked very well… almost too well as this time around I ended up pushing the temp up to 130F, not on purpose. I ended up toss in two handfuls of some uncrushed grain just in case the higher temp killed of the lab lacto. The result after 5 days was an intensely sour wort, hitting 3.2 pH.

On the offical brewday, the wort was boiled for about 30 minutes with a tiny addition of cascade, chilled to pitching temp and that’s it. The next challenge for this beer was getting fermentation going. I originally pitched one package of S-05 dry yeast. I had seen in many places that dry-yeast packets tend to have significantly more yeast cells than liquid yeast. The yeast pitching rate calculator indicated that I needed just over 250 billion yeast for 12 gallons of 1.031 S.G wort. Surely one packet would be enough. After two days though there was no sign of fermentation.

While I wasn’t panicking, I was worried. Looking around, I saw some more discussion about making sure you pitched heavily in an acidic environment so I promptly pitched another 3 packets of dry-yeast. A day later, I was rewarded with a nice krausen on the surface.

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Thin krausen forming after pitching 5 packets of S05 dry-yeast.

After a week of fermentation, the beer is down to 1.010 S.G, so a little more to go. After terminal gravity, I’ll split the batch and age on BlackBerry and Apricot puree to try out some new fruit flavors in the beer.

The recipe is just a scaled-up version of the original.

Recipe Details

Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV
10 gal 30 min 4.0 IBUs 2.7 SRM 1.029 1.006 3.0 %
Actuals 1.03 1.01 2.6 %

Style Details

Name Cat. OG Range FG Range IBU SRM Carb ABV
Berliner Weiss 17 A 1.028 - 1.032 1.003 - 1.006 3 - 8 2 - 3 2.4 - 2.9 2.8 - 3.8 %

Fermentables

Name Amount %
Brewer's Malt, 2-Row, Premium (Great Western) 6.667 lbs 57.14
White Wheat Malt 5 lbs 42.86

Hops

Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha %
Cascade 0.57 oz 30 min Boil Pellet 5.9

Miscs

Name Amount Time Use Type
Calcium Chloride 8.10 g 60 min Mash Water Agent
Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) 8.10 g 60 min Mash Water Agent
Epsom Salt (MgSO4) 0.70 g 60 min Mash Water Agent

Mash

Step Temperature Time
Saccharification 148°F 90 min
Mash Out 168°F 10 min

Notes

DO NOT BOIL

V2:
Pitched 2 vials of WLP Lacto into 12+ gallons of 1.031 wort. Low on C02 so blanket wasn't as good as I'd like. Initial temp was 105F, in 12 hours was at 124F. Heavily wrapped with bottom heater and two layers on the side.

Checked temp again after unwrapping blankets, and temp was up to 125. I opened up the top and stirred, temp rose to 130F as the heat got distributed.

Sanitized two ice bottles and left in for 2 hours to bring temp down to 113F. Plugged all 3 controllers back in and set temp for 117F.

Wednesday morning (48 hours) ph is 3.77 @ 28C. Taste is slightly acidic, very light, not enough punch. New batch of co2 used to blanket it and also added two handfuls of 2-row grain uncrushed hoping to kick up some more bacterial activity.

Friday Morning, ph is 3.28 @ 23C. Taste is decidedly sour. on it's way to being quite potent. Nose is lactic with some buteryc funk... probably from tossing the the 2-row. Hoping to push the tar over the top by 6PM tonight.

Saturday, ph is 3.29 @ 23C. No ferm activity. Pitched second packet of yeast.

Sunday, ph is 3.29 @ 23C. No ferm activity. Gravity shows some movement, 1.035 -> 1.031. Two packages is still under pitched according to new yeast calculators, so picked up 3 more packets (5 * 11.5 grams in total). Pitched the rest, stirred up fermentor to resuspend the yeast.

Monday, very thing, but bubbly krausen on surface of wort.

2013-07-11, Krausen thining out, gravity check: 1.008 @ 71.9F -> 1.010 S.G. Nose is lacto and some heavy funk, like stinky feet. Aroma fades to simple lacto, wheat, sour. Taste is very very nice. A bit think mouth feel, slightly carbed, excellently sour, peachy, wheat. appearence is nearly 2 or 3 SRM, quite cloudy, no yeast flavors. Carbonation and fruit will go very well. Hoping the funky feet aroma moves on or is over powered by fruit additions. No hop flavor or aroma.



V1:

- Mash normally
- Drain to Kettle
- Raise temp to 176 for 15 minutes
- Chill to 120F
- pitch a pure culture of lacto and let ferment for approx. 2 days, no more than 3, retain 120F.
- transfer the sour wort to the boil kettle
- do my boil as per usual
- chill to 70F
- pitch my yeast culture.
- After ferm complete, pitch peach puree

48 hour @ 120F after pitching lacto. Measured pH of 4.0.

Boiled for 30+ minutes, to hit target volume (6.5 post-boil/pre-chill). Got 6G in carboy.
Low on ice, so only chilled to about 80F, put in fridge to chill and pitched two packets of 1056 around 10PM.

Racked into 13G plastic fermentor and pitched 10# of peach pureee. After 2 weeks, a new lacto pelical formed. Racking the puree was difficult, lost about 1 gallon of volume. Next time need to use some sort of bag or figure out a better separator for the fruit.

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Bottling Day at Jester King

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One of my friends asked me to come down for a bottling day at Jester King Brewery in Austin, Texas this past week. He’s been a few times and knew the ropes and all of the hard work the volunteers put in to help out a favorite local brewery. I’m a huge fan of Jester King, the beers they make and the hand-crafted nature of their approach to making beer.  This appreciation provided a huge boost of enthusiasm to help cope with the over 100F degree temperature encountered during the 8+ hour work day.

With the help of probably 10 or so volunteers and some brewery employees we packaged 200+ cases of Funk Metal, a barrel-aged sour stout beer. Funk Metal has a special place in my cellar; it has displayed New Belgium’s La Folie as my favorite sour beer that I’ve tasted.

The work day began with assembling all of those boxes with inserts, followed by marking the boxes and placing inventory labels on each box in the 5-high stacks. We watched as the brewers readied the beer for bottling by recirculating the beer in the tank with sugar and healty pitch of Brett. Drie yeast for bottle conditioning. The light smell of tart, lactic, sour beer flooded the air, along with all of the crazy awesome Funk music blasting out the brewery speakers.

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176 bottles per layer, 14 rows of 7 and 13 rows of 6. 7 layers per pallet combine to make over 1200 bottles. Yeah, lots of bottles.

Close to noon, the bottling line was taking form. I was placed at the bottle prep station where we unpacked pallets of belgian brown glass bottles, over 1200 per pallet. Each bottle was placed into a cleaning station where sanitizer was used to prepare the bottle for filling. As the filler pulled from the rack, we replaced a new bottle and then opened the valve to clean another set of bottles. This line ran continuously for 6 hours. As we used the bottles, we opened up the next layer (7 layers total) and eventually replaced the pallet with another one.

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After the bottles were filled, the next station used a co2-driven capper and passed the bottle to a group wiping the bottles down and checking the fill level. Once the bottles dried a bit, the label station applied the amazing artwork labels Jester King beers are known for and the UPC and batch label. All of the bottles were then boxed and stacked on a pallet. Full pallets were moved back into cold storage for conditioning for a few months before being released into the market.

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Jester King Salt Lick Smoked Saison — in a word? Amazing!

One of the great perks of working at the brewery is sampling of the great beer. All throughout the day the team sampled a few of the beers on tap. My favorite for the day was the Salt Lick smoked saison which is a blend of a young saison with some old aged sour beer yielding a very smooth, slightly smokey but tart, crisp finishing beer. It was a huge thirst quencher.

When we weren’t sampling the great beer at Jester King we were drinking some flavorful bottled rainwater. It’s amazing how much better that water tasted than the normally sterile store bottled water.

Heading home in the evening I was exhausted, hot, sweating, tired, but laden with beer-sweat-equity; some bottles of Funk Metal that didn’t make the cut.

At the end of the day, my friend asked me if it was worth all of the hard work, and all I could say was that even without the beer I would definitely do it again.

Thanks Jester King!

Something old and Something New – Taa Dow

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If you give me 10 hops then I use all 10!

Double IPAs are just fabulous. I just can’t get enough of them. I’m a huge fan of the Stone Enjoy-by series. As far as I’m concerned it’s a win-win-win situation. Stone makes an incredible hoppy, fresh beer that needs to be distributed, served and drunk in the span of months. I’ve never tasted a fresher IPA than one I’ve brewed myself.

On that path, even though I just brewed an Imperial IPA, ff3k, there’s nothing wrong with following up with another one.  This recipe caught my eye after appearing on a list of beers that *must* be tried passed to me by a friend.  The first beer, Heady Topper caught my eye as I didn’t know it was an Imperial IPA and I had seen a huge thread on homebrewtalk.com  where many homebrewers had been working to clone the beer.

One can never be completely sure if the recipe isn’t shared from the brewery; and even if it is, the differences in equipment and process can definitely affect the final beer.  That means it’s a bit of a gamble if you’ll actually clone the beer.

None of that concerns me though as I know a good IPA recipe when I see one.  Thanks to a dedicated group on homebrewtalk.com and Signpost Craft Brewing, we’ve got something close to Heady Topper.

Here’s my take, note I couldn’t find the Pearl malt in large enough quantities, so I’m using Marris Otter.

Recipe Details

Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV
6 gal 90 min 188.2 IBUs 7.3 SRM 1.077 1.013 8.5 %
Actuals 1.073 1.01 8.3 %

Style Details

Name Cat. OG Range FG Range IBU SRM Carb ABV
Imperial IPA 14 C 1.07 - 1.09 1.01 - 1.02 60 - 120 8 - 15 2.2 - 2.7 7.5 - 10 %

Fermentables

Name Amount %
Maris Otter (Thomas Fawcett) 15.022 lbs 88
White Wheat Malt 15.57 oz 5.7
CaraMalt 8.19 oz 3
Turbinado 9.01 oz 3.3

Hops

Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha %
Hopshot 12.02 oz 90 min Boil Pellet 3.5
Columbus (Tomahawk) 1.2 oz 5 min Boil Pellet 14.7
Apollo 0.6 oz 5 min Boil Pellet 18
Columbus (Tomahawk) 2.4 oz 0 min Boil Pellet 14
Columbus (Tomahawk) 1.2 oz 30 min Aroma Pellet 14
Simcoe 1.2 oz 0 min Boil Pellet 13
Simcoe 1.2 oz 30 min Aroma Pellet 13
Amarillo Gold 0.9 oz 30 min Aroma Pellet 8.5
Apollo 0.6 oz 30 min Aroma Pellet 12.5
Centennial 0.6 oz 30 min Aroma Pellet 10.5
Simcoe 2.4 oz 8 days Dry Hop Pellet 13
Columbus (Tomahawk) 1.8 oz 8 days Dry Hop Pellet 14
Amarillo Gold 1.2 oz 8 days Dry Hop Pellet 8.5
Centennial 1.2 oz 8 days Dry Hop Pellet 10.5
Apollo 0.6 oz 8 days Dry Hop Pellet 17

Yeast

Name Lab Attenuation Temperature
American Ale (1056) Wyeast Labs 75% 60°F - 72°F

Mash

Step Temperature Time
Mash In 150°F 60 min

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The Sour Pipeline

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This past Friday, I brewed the next beer in the sour pipeline.  I’ve been alternating back to a Flanders Red this time, and one of my all-time favorite beers and sours.  New Belgium‘s La Folie.

I fell in love with La Folie in 2008 and in early 2009 the Texas market was flush with the newly introduced Lips of Faith series along with hand-bottled batches of La Folie.  I scavenged the Austin market and obtain nearly 2 cases of this amazing beer and I still have 4 or 5 of these sours aging.

Handbottled La Folie, number 491, bottled in January 2009.

Handbottled La Folie, number 491, bottled in January 2009.

This brewnight was also the 6 month date from the first sour beer I brewed with the Roeselares yeast with some help from some of my favorite local sour beers from Jester King and it was time to make room in the sour pipeline.

As I brewed the La Folie recipe found in an older BYO article, I transferred the original Flanders Red, in Rubicundiusque or Ruby as it’s now called, into a keg for serving.  The beer had matured wonderfully.  In the last month it had been resting on a couple ounces of Pinot Noir oak cubes providing some wine-barrel like flavors and aromas.

All of these great aromatics and tastes were present in the samples.  The sour aspect wasn’t nearly as potent as La Folie, but Ruby is definitively sour and strikes a great balance on the pallete for an unblended sour.

After moving Ruby out of the carboy with oak cubes it was time to transfer in the second sour in the pipe line: 5 gallons of Fancy Lad.  Early sampling of this beer showed great things happening but the lighter gravity left the mouthfeel a bit thin.  I decided that I would  bolster this with some malto-dextrin.  I settled on 4 ounces in the  5 gallons.  I mixed the malto-dextrin with 16 oz of water and boiled for 5 minutes before adding it to the bottom of the carboy to help mix it in when racking from the source carboy into the target.

Once the brew session was complete, the La Folie wort went into a carboy with the Roeselares/Jester King dregs yeast cake.

After primary fermentation is complete in a few weeks I plan to enjoy a very aged and tasty 2009 La Folie and pour the dregs of this great beer into my La Folie.  I can only hope this will impart at least some of La Folie’s greatness into my beer.

Here’s the recipe

Recipe Details

Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV
5 gal 60 min 20.3 IBUs 11.8 SRM 1.062 1.014 6.3 %
Actuals 1.046 1.01 4.7 %

Style Details

Name Cat. OG Range FG Range IBU SRM Carb ABV
Flanders Red Ale 17 B 1.048 - 1.057 1.002 - 1.012 10 - 25 10 - 16 2.2 - 2.7 4.6 - 6.5 %

Fermentables

Name Amount %
Brewer's Malt, 2-Row, Premium (Great Western) 9.75 lbs 75.03
Crystal, Medium (Simpsons) 1.31 lbs 10.08
Munich Malt 1.31 lbs 10.08
Wheat, Flaked 10 oz 4.81

Hops

Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha %
Liberty 1.06 oz 60 min Boil Pellet 3.9

Miscs

Name Amount Time Use Type
Calcium Chloride 5.00 g 60 min Mash Water Agent
Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) 2.70 g 60 min Mash Water Agent
Epsom Salt (MgSO4) 0.50 g 60 min Mash Water Agent
Whirlfloc Tablet 1.00 Items 15 min Boil Fining
Yeast Nutrient 1.00 tsp 5 min Boil Other

Yeast

Name Lab Attenuation Temperature
American Ale (1056) Wyeast Labs 75% 60°F - 72°F
Belgian Lambic Blend (3278) Wyeast Labs 70% 63°F - 75°F

Mash

Step Temperature Time
Saccharification 152°F 75 min
Mash Out 168°F 10 min

Notes

Mash at 154 °F (68 °C). Boil for 60 minutes. Ferment with neutral ale yeast at 75 °F (24 °C), then rack to barrel and add sour blend. Aging time is totally up to the barrel. This is where years of tasting and blending come in handy. If you want to blend, try ~ 20% of a sweeter (younger) barrel, ~30% of a nice mild sour barrel and ~50% of a well established “tour gripper” with nice oak notes (cherries, horse blanket, etc). (Young usually means ~ 1 year, mid range ~2 years and grippers are 3+ years.) But there are no rules here. Do whatever works for you.

Don’t have the budget (or room) for a barrel? Try this “poor man’s” method of emulating some of the aspects of barrel aging. Conduct your primary fermentation in a bucket or ferment the beer with ale yeast, then rack it to a bucket — adding any “bugs” that may be called for. Buckets are more permeable to oxygen than barrels are, so let the beer condition in the bucket for only about 3 months, then rack it to a carboy for the remaining conditioning time. Two weeks before racking, take 3.0 oz. (85 g) of oak cubes (French oak, medium toast) and soak them in wine. Use Chardonnay for the Temptation clone, Pinot Noir for La Roja, Cabernet Sauvignon for Darth Porter and Burgundy or Meritage for Grand Cru and La Folie. Change wine every 3 days to lessen the intensity of the new oak. Add cubes when beer is racked to carboy.

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