Bourbon Barrel Oatmeal Brown Ale

The combination of beer and whiskey is a winning one.  My first exposure to this was a rye wine aged in bourbon barrels by Four Peaks brewing company in Tempe AZ.  It was a really great tasting beer.  I have since had quite a few other (most notably Goose Island's Bourbon County Brand Stout and Barleywines) that really impressed me.

I've been wanting to try one of these for quite some time but hadn't figured out how to get a barrel or how to fill it if I could find one.  I was delighted to find out that my LHBS (Weak Knee Homebrew) was organizing a group barrel fill so I jumped on board.  This will be the second use for the barrel (first beer aged in it was a Porter) so the recipe chosen (I had no part in this process) is lighter to, I assume, let the remaining whiskey/oak character come through.  The tentative plan is to age the beer in the barrel for about 2 months.

The recipe is a pretty simple brown ale with some oats and wheat for a bit of body.  Relatively light hopping on it.  I'll be using White Labs 013 London Ale yeast which I have not brewed with before (although it should be similar to the 1028 I used for my brown porter) - the web page states that it imparts some oak like esters which sounds interesting.  It seems like it should make a pretty nice beer that should stand up well to some whiskey and oak flavor but not provide anything that would clash with it.  I've been directed to bring it in around 1.068 OG and to mash at 153 or 154 F (probably expect it to finish in the low teens).  I have had to up the base malt a bit to account for the ~70% efficiency I typically see on my system (8.5 lbs of base malt was the suggestion but I'll need 11 lbs to hit that OG number).  No guidance on fermentation temperature - I plan on keeping it down in the 61-63 F basement without any temperature control which should allow it to rise up to the optimal fermentation temperature.

I'm starting a bit earlier than the other brewers (kickoff is planned for mid February) so I should have plenty of time to do my normal 4 week primary.  Brewing a big batch of beer like this there is a real concern about an infection (one bad batch can spoil the whole barrel) so it was stressed that we need to place special attention on sanitation.  I will be extra vigilant with sanitation for this batch (not that I've had any sanitation related problems so far).  I think my head start should give plenty of time to ensure that there are no unwanted critters working in the beer post-primary fermentation.

Really excited to take part in this group brew.  Apparently there are plans to get some more whiskey barrels and some wine barrels so if I enjoy this process I could potentially participate in some more of these events.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 11 lbs 2 Row
• 12 oz Crystal 60 L
• 8 oz Chocolate malt
• 4 oz Roasted Barley
• 12 oz Flaked Oats
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 1 oz Fuggle (Pellet, 3.8% AA) at 60 min
• 1 oz Willamette (Pellet, 5.2% AA) at 30 min
• Yeast:
• White Labs 013 London Ale Yeast
• Water:
• 12 gal spring water
• 1 tsp Calcium Chloride
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 20 min
• Extras:
• 2nd use Bourbon Barrel

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 5.25 gal
• Mash:
• 154 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 100 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Ambient Basement Temps (60 to 63 F)
• Primary Duration:
• 7 weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 1 day
• Barrel Aging Duration:
• TBD (Estimated 2 Months)

Results:

• OG:
• 1.068 (Target 1.068)
• Efficiency:
• 74% (Target 70%)
• FG:
• 1.012 (Target 1.012)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 82% (Target 82%)
• ABV:
• 7.35% (Target 7.35%)

Brewing Notes:

• 1/24/15 - Put together a yeast starter of 1.6 L of tap water and 7 oz of DME.  Added 1/8 tsp of yeast nutrient and boiled.  Chilled it outside in the snow prior to putting it onto the stir plate and pitching.

• 1/25/15 Brew day - 12:45 PM to 5:30 PM including setup and cleanup
• Heated 7 gal of strike water to 190 F - took 25 min
• Added CaCl and gypsum to the HLT
• Added 20 qt of strike water to the mash tun and let settle for a few min - ended up at 175 F
• Added the grain and stirred vigorously to eliminate dough balls - ended up at 157 F to 158 F
• Stirred in 1 qt of cool spring water which got the mash down to the target of 153 to 154 F
• Stirred the mash after 30 min - was still 153 to 154 F

• Brought 5 gal of batch sparge water up to 185 F - took 15 min
• Stirred again at 45 min - mash was down to 151 to 152 F
• Stirred, vorlaufed, and drained mash tun after 60 min.  Drained slowly at first and then ramped up to having the valve fully open

• Added half the batch sparge water, stirred, vorlaufed, and drained (slow at first and then ramped to fully open)
• Repeated with the other half for the second batch sparge
• Collected 8.5 gal
• Brought to a boil - took 25 min

• Added 60 min hops when the volume had reduced down to 7 gal
• Took a gravity sample at about 7 gal and chilled in the now.  Measured gravity at that point as 1.056.  This looked to be higher than my planned efficiency of 70% (75 to 80%)

• Brought an extra gallon of spring water up to a boil in the HLT to top off at the end
• Added the 30 min hops once I got down to 6 gal
• Added the irish moss at 5.5 gal
• Chilled down to 60 - took 10 min
• Gravity was found to be 1.072 so I added 1 qt of boiled spring water to get to 1.068
• Transferred 5.25 gal to the fermentor (poured in the hops and cold break as well)
• Poured back and forth between bottling bucked and fermentor to aerate
• Pitched the entire yeast starter and left without temp control in the basement which was 61 F
• 1/26/15 - No bubbling yet but the fermentor is building up pressure.  Temperature is still at 61 F
• 1/27/15 - Beer was bubbling slowly this morning.  Per the temperature strip on the side of the bucket the beer was up to 64 F
• 1/28/15 - It had stopped bubbling by this morning.  That was much quicker than expected.  I pitched the yeast at pretty close to high krausen which I had never done before - I wonder if that played a role in the quick fermentation.  Never got above 64 F - was back down to 62 F this morning.  I'm tempted to check the gravity but I'm sure there's a bit more fermentation going on at this point.  I will give this my normal 4 weeks before moving it to secondary for transport.
• 1/31/15 - I decided to check the gravity to ensure that it wasn't stuck (not sure what I would do if it was) - measured 1.014.  Looks like the beer fermented most of the way out in just 1 day which is very interesting for such a large beer.  It has a pretty clean flavor - no fusels.
• 2/26/15 - Moved to the fermentation chamber at 38 F to cold crash and clear.  The beer will be transferred to the barrel this weekend.  
• 3/8/15 - Barrel transfer ended up being postponed due to issues swelling it with the very cold temperatures we've been having here in PA.  May not be until next week that we can do the transfer.  This beer is still sitting in the fermentation chamber.
• 3/11/15 - Added 2 tsp of gelatin dissolved in hot water for fining
• 3/13/15 - Transferred the beer into the bottling bucket for easy transfer into the barrel
• 3/14/15 - Measured the Final Gravity as 1.012.  The beer is pretty boozy but it's a clean alcohol flavor.  It has a nice malt character to it as well though.  I think it will stand up to the whiskey and oak reasonably well.
• 3/15/15 - Transferred the beer over to the barrel today

• 11/2/15 - Bottled this beer with 6 others from the group.  For my 5 gal contribution I got 24 22 oz bottles.  The beer has a really wonderful fruity/floral aroma with just a touch of bourbon.  The flavor is relatively subdued compared with the aroma with only a light bourbon flavor.  Some of the guys detected a sourness to the beer and apparently there was a light pellicle over the top of the beer.  Not sure I picked up on that really.  We bottled the 50 gal of beer in about 2 hrs using a neat 3 tap bottling structure.

• 1/2/16 - Tasting Notes - Reasonably complex beer with some very nice flavors.  Unfortunately the beer is a bit too light and, as a result, is ultimately somewhat unsatisfying as a whiskey barrel beer - lacks the bold flavors you'd expect from a beer aged 7 months in a barrel.

Lessons Learned:

1. I viewed this as a situation where I had to hit the specified numbers.  I was very happy that I accomplished that.  The check of gravity during the boil allowed me to make an adjustment to do a reasonable correction at the end.
2. I end up collecting so much wort that I have to do these really long boils that serve to extend the brew day.  I am hoping that moving to RIMS/Fly Sparge setup will allow me to get a better handle on when I'm done collecting wort.  A refractometer would help with this regardless of the sparging process.