Whiskey Barrel Russian Imperial Stout (aka Queen Jennie's Revenge)

As mentioned in my previous post, I recently acquired a 10 gallon oak whiskey barrel. I wanted to brew something that would be able to stand up to the strong flavors of a freshly emptied whiskey barrel. I decided a RIS would be a good candidate. I've been wanting to brew a RIS this past year,but was never able to fit it into my brew schedule. This is going to be a big beer and it would take me years to go through 10 gallons of it, so I asked a couple buddies of mine if they'd be interested in splitting a batch. Fortunately they said yes.

This recipe is based on the 2015 NHC gold medal winning recipe from William Steimle, Dylan Vaughan, and Craig Vilhauer. Our batch will be a 10 gallon batch and will have to be split into two separate mashes. We'll then recombine for a single boil. The recipe as we brewed it is:

16.0# Crisp Maris Otter
11.0 # Fawcett Pearl Malt

2.31 # Crisp Roasted Barley

1.50 # Briess Golden Light DME

1.44 # Simpsons Double Roasted Crystal

0.63 # Crisp Chocolate Malt

0.63 # Crisp Pale Chocolate Malt

71g Warrior (60 min)

85g US Golding (10 min)

85g US Golding (0 min)

Yeast Nutrient

Whirlfloc

3 packets US-05

Mash at 152F, 90 minute boil, ferment at 63F then raise to 68F over a few days. After primary is complete, cold-crash to ensure as much yeast has dropped out as possible, then rack to whiskey barrel for aging. I'll start pulling samples after about a month to check this beer's progress.

Update 10/2/2015
No real issues from this brew session other than we missed our target gravity by a bit. We were shooting for 1.100 and got 1.090. The plan was to collect about 6.25 gallons from each mash, but I turned my back for a minute during the first sparge, and we ended up collecting almost 8 gallons. So our wort was a bit more diluted than we intended. 1.090 is still pretty high gravity, so I'm not too conscerned. Everything else went well and we wrapped up the brew session in plenty of time before I headed out of town for GABF.  This one went into the barrel today, finishing out at 9% ABV.

Update 12/6/2015
I racked this into kegs today to force carb. This beer tastes amazing...malt, chocolate, vanilla, oak, roast, and of course whiskey. The barrel has done a bit of magic; I'd say this beer is ready to drink now and doesn't need to be aged to enjoy.

Update 1/10/2016
This beer was bottled yesterday. Most went into 12 ounce bottles, but my buddy Brandon was brave enough to do a bunch of bombers for his portion. I'm interested to see how it ages, but this beer is drinkable now.

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Barrel Time!

Fresh out of the shipping box

As I've indicated in a couple of my posts, I've been involved in a few barrel projects with my club. Our projects have involved full-size 55-ish gallon barrels, and while it's been a blast, I don't have enough room to store a 55 gallon barrel at my house...nor can I turn out a 55 gallon batch by myself. Well, I recently came across a sale on 10 gallon whiskey barrels from Farmhouse Brewing Supply. I decided to go ahead and pull the trigger on one.

The barrel came to Farmhouse from Old Sugar Distillery and had been used to age their sorghum whiskey, Queen Jennie. The plan is to use this barrel for a couple clean beers, then start doing some sour experiments in it as the barrel character heads toward neutral.

First up for this project was building a cradle for the barrel. Nothing too fancy here, it's just some 2x8 stock and other scrap I had in my garage. Joints were glued and screwed. Later on I'll make a dolly that the cradle will be mounted to, but I didn't have time to do that this past weekend.

With the cradle built, next I decided to wax the barrel. Depending on who you ask, this step may or may not be necessary. Smaller barrels like mine have thinner staves compared to full-size barrels. Also, the surface-to-volume ratio is higher than larger barrels. This raises two primary concerns. 

The first concern is oxidation, and this is where waxing comes into play. Because of the thinner staves and surface area, the amount of oxygen transfer is higher than a full-size barrel. Given enough time, this could result in oxidized beer. The theory is by waxing a portion of the barrel you're able to reduce the permeability of the barrel to that of a 55 gallon barrel. In the case of 10 gallon barrels, the recommendation is 75% of the staves waxed leaving the remainder of the staves and the heads un-waxed. 

The second concern is extraction rate. Because of the high surface-to-volume ratio, flavors tend to extract much faster in a smaller barrel. Long story short, it shouldn't take as long to extract oak and whiskey character from this barrel compared to a full-size barrel. The first beer in this barrel is going to be a Russian Imperial Stout and I'll probably start pulling samples after a month or so to see how things are coming along.

Fresh coat of wax before heat gun clean-up

The waxing process was pretty simple...but it was messy. If you don't want to catch grief from your significant other, do it in the garage and be sure to lay out some newspaper.

I picked up some paraffin wax from Walmart, melted it in an old tomato can immersed in simmering water, then used an old paint brush to paint it on the barrel. I used painters tape to mask off the staves that I didn't want waxed. For mine, I left the bottom 1/4 un-waxed. This process leaves a fairly thick coat of wax on the barrel, so I plan to go back over it with a heat gun to remove excess wax.

One word of caution, barrels like this contain explosive fumes from the residual distilled spirits. Use common sense. Unless you want to be picking splinters out of your spleen, I'd avoid any open flames around an empty barrel.

That's about it.  Stay tuned for updates as we run different beers through this barrel.

Update 9/9/2015

I had some time tonight so I took the heat gun to the barrel. It did a great job of removing excess wax from both the staves and the bands. Here's the barrel ready for some beer!

Post heat gun

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Petite Saison with Tart Cherries

I wanted to try out the Wyeast 3031-PC Saison-Brett Blend, so today I'm brewing a Petite Saison that will get around 7 pounds of my homegrown tart cherries in the secondary. I really enjoy Saisons and other Farmhouse Ales. Usually I make my Saisons fairly high gravity, but the goal with this one is to come in a bit more session-able. The addition of the tart cherries will probably also make it somewhat kriek-like. This beer won't get any lactobacillus or pediococcus, so the only souring will come from the tart cherries.

Wyeast describes 3031 as follows:

Beer Styles: Saison, Belgian Specialty Ales, American-style Sour & Wild Beer, Strong Golden Ale
Profile: A blend of Saison yeast and Brettanomyces creates a dry and complex ale. Classic earthy and spicy farmhouse character meets tropical and stone fruit esters; aging brings elevated Brett flavor. Expect high attenuation with this blend.

Alc. Tolerance          12% ABV
Flocculation              low
Attenuation               80-90%
Temp. Range             65-80°F (18-27°C)

Based on the ferm temp range, I'd guess this is the 3711 French Saison strain blended with one of Wyeast's Brett strains.

Here's the recipe I came up with. I want this beer to finish dry, but not too thin, so I'm going with a step mash. Also adding some Chit Malt for some starch so that the brett will have something to chew on for a while. Hops-wise I'm shooting for low bitterness with a touch of flavor and aroma. I've used the Golden Naked Oats in a Saison before, and I really liked the berry/nutty character it added.

5.5# German Pils

1.25# Chit Malt

1.0# Flaked Rye

0.5# Golden Naked Oats

7g CTZ - 30 min

14g Citra - 5 min

3031 PC Saison Brett Blend

Whirlfloc

Yeast Nutrient

7.0# Tart cherries in secondary

Target O.G. 1.053

Mash

Mash at 149F for 15 min, raise to 155F for remainder of mash. I added 2.5ml of phosphoric acid to bring the mash pH to 5.39.

Fermentation

Chill to 65F, then let free-rise to 80F.

Water 

Nothing too scientific this time. I used 6 gallons of carbon filtered tap water cuht with 3 gallons of RO water. 3 gallons in the mash, sparged to 6.5 gallons pre-boil volume.

Brewing Notes
No real issues, But I did forget to take my OG before pitching yeast. I was trying to hurry and wrap things up so I could go drop off my entries for the Beehive Brew-off and totally forgot. I also decided to skip O2...just an experiment to see what happens with the brett character (some have reported more funk when the yeast are stressed).

Update 8/13/2015
Primary fermentation seemed to have finished up, so I racked onto 7# of homegrown tart cherries yesterday. Cherries had been stored in the freezer then thawed and sanitized with 1/8 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite dissolved in 1/4 cup RO water. This sat overnight then beer was racked onto the cherries in the morning. I mashed the cherries as much as I could, but there were still some whole ones.

Update 8/26/2015
Pulled a sample today and I'm really liking this beer. The "Saison" character is really nice.  Esters are there and blend very well with the tart cherry character. There's a light spiciness that's noticeable, but subtle and very complimentary. Brett character is also there but very balanced. I'm interested to see how this changes over time. The tart cherries dropped the pH to 3.68 so it's a nice level of acidity especially since it doesn't have any lactic acid producing bacteria. I can't wait to get this in the bottle and carb'd up. This beer will definitely be in my regular rotation when I have tart cherries on hand.

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2015 American Imperial IPA

I have a whole bunch of hops in my freezer so it's time to use a bunch an brew an Imperial IPA. The hop schedule on this beer was inspired by my first attempt at brewing a sour IPA. It didn't sour up much but I really enjoyed the hop character and it took a silver medal at a comp last year. This one isn't exactly the same, but it's similar. One thing I've really liked in some of the more recent commercial IPAs is the lowering of IBU's. For a while there it seemed like everyone was doing everything they could to assault your palate with super high IBU IPAs. This IPA should have a firm bitterness, but it won't be too crazy.

This is the first time that I've ever tried using corn sugar in an IPA. The intent is to help dry the beer out, resulting in a more refreshing and drinkable beer. Also, I'm not using any crystal malts. Here's the recipe as I'm making it:

10.0 # Pearl Malt

2.0 # Crisp Dark Munich 20L

0.75# Dextrose

7.0g Magnum (60 min)

----

7.0g Columbus (20 min)

7.0g Mosaic (20 min)

7.0g Amarillo (20 min)

----

14g Columbus (1 min)

14g Mosaic (1 min)

7g Cascade (1 min)

----

28g Cascade (first hop stand, 165F for 30 min)

21g Amarillo (first hop stand, 165F for 30 min)

14g Citra (first hop stand, 165F for 30 min)

----

14g Mosaic (second hop stand, 140F for 30 min)

14g Citra (second hop stand, 140F for 30 min)

----

Whirlfloc

Yeast Nutrient

Vermont IPA Yeast (GY054)

----

28g Amarillo (Dry hop)

28g Citra (Dry hop)

28g Mosaic (Dry hop)

Mash at 148.5F for 60 min, 90 min boil, ferment at 68F, dry hop after primary fermentation.

Brewing Notes
Everything seemed to go well with this beer. I hit the anticipated OG exactly at 1.078.

Update 7/6/2015
Forgot to mention yesterday, I put the fermenter in my ferm chamber overnight and pitched the yeast this morning after aerating. It's starting to show signs of fermentation this evening.

Update 7/7/2015
Krausen is pushing up close to the airlock, so I hooked up a blow-off hose just in case.

Update 7/13/2015
Added the dry hops today.

Update 7/20/2015
I kegged this beer today with a bit of gelatin for fining. This beer smells amazing with tons of citrus, tropical fruit, pine and resin. Bitterness is there, but is not over the top. I can't wait for this beer to carb up so those tiny bubbles can release their hoppy goodness.

Update 7/26/2015
I pulled a sample off the tap today. It's really good, but I feel like a lot of the hop flavor and aroma dropped out. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have used gelatin for fining.  It has some great clarity, but It's definitely lost some hop character.    

Update 8/4/2015

So I'm definitely disappointed with the way this beer turned out. Way too much hop character dropped out. It's much closer to a boring version of an American pale ale than an IPA.  I'll prob try this again with a couple changes. First, reduce the corn sugar a bit. Second, increase IBUs a bit. Last, don't worry about haze and skip the gelatin. 

Update 8/7/2015
I took a growler of this to a Grace Potter concert at Deer Valley the other day. It was way more hoppy than when I last tried it. This beer is proving to be a bit of an enigma. I think I'll still try the changes I proposed on 8/4, but this beer is more drinkable than I originally thought.

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Watermelon Wheat 2015

Time for another brew session. Today I'm brewing what I consider to be a quintessential summertime beer, Watermelon Wheat. You do have to really like watermelon to enjoy this beer, and I do. The watermelon really comes through in this beer in both the flavor and aroma. I haven't been able to figure out why, but this beer tends to age fairly well and the fragrant watermelon almost takes on a floral perfume-like quality with age.

I haven't made this beer in a long time, but it's always been a crowd pleaser. Usually I wait to brew this beer until late summer when the Green River Melons folks have started showing up at the local Farmers Market. It's still a bit early for that, but Sam's Club had seedless melons for $4 so I decided to pick a couple up. These early season melons tend to be hit or miss, but fortunately the ones I picked up turned out to be really good.

To prepare the fruit, a few days before brewday, I diced up the meat and used a potato masher to puree the melon. This was then poured through a strainer with the juice going into one container and the pulp into another. Both containers went into the freezer. Freezing the pulp will help break down the cell walls allowing us to extract a bit more juice. Freezing the juice just keeps it from going bad before we use it in secondary. I'll also be treating the juice with some potassium metabisulfite before adding it to secondary. This helps ensure we don't get any unexpected critters into the secondary.

For those that have never made a watermelon beer before, don't expect this beer to turn out pink. The red part of the melon drops out with the yeast, so you'll be left with a straw colored wheat beer.

I changed up a couple things this time, primarily the hops. I've been wanting to try Huell Melon hops for a while and based on the description, I think they'll work well in this beer.

6 lbs 8.0 oz Fruit - Watermelon
6 lbs Rahr Pale 2-Row
4 lbs White Wheat Malt
8.5g Columbus (60 min)
28g Huell Melon Hops (5 min)
Rice hulls
1 Pkgs US-05

Don't forget the rice hulls in the mash (helps avoid a stuck sparge). Mash at 152F for 1 hour, 90 minute boil, ferment at 62F

Add fruit to secondary

Brewing Notes
No issues with the brew session. Fermenter is currently in the ferm chamber chilling.

Update 7/9/2015

I thawed out the watermelon juice/pulp overnight and put it into the secondary today. I also added 1/8 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite dissolved into 1/4 cup RO water. This should help kill off any wild bugs that could have made it into the juice. This will sit overnight with a 1 gallon paint strainer bag stretched over the mouth (keeps bugs out while letting the juice off-gas). I'll rack the beer into the juice tomorrow. Oh and I ended up with about 1.5 gallons of juice.

Update 7/10/2015

Racked to secondary this morning. Believe it or not this pink beer will end up straw colored.

Update 7/20/2015
I started cold crashing this beer over the weekend to get the yeast and watermelon to drop. So far it's clearing up nicely but it still has a touch of pink. I'll let it continue to chill throughout the week before racking to a keg.

Update 11/22/2015
So this keg has been sitting around. The beer is good but my taste in beer has definitely changed since the last time I made it. One of the guys in my brew club brought an accidental sour watermelon saison to a meeting not too long ago. It was delicious. The lactic acid really brightened up the watermelon character. I decided to intentionally sour this beer and see what happens. For the souring, I added the oak cubes from the CS Experiment beer.

Update 5/27/2016
Pulled a little sample tonight. It's subtly sour right now, definitely much improved over the last time I tasted it. I'm going to let it ride a little longer and see what happens. It definitely seems to be heading in the right direction. 

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