This is my fourth attempt at making a clone of the famous Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout (read about First, Second, and Third attempts). This is a big Russian Imperial Stout (14-15% ABV) which is aged in freshly emptied Bourbon Barrels. Bourbon Barrel aged RIS are pretty common these days but BCBS is the most Bourbon forward version that I've tried - it is really awesome.
The first three attempts made tasty beers but they all fell short of the mark as clones (read about my most recent vertical tasting here). I have taken a few key lessons from these beers:
- This beer finishes at around 1.038 which is a challenge to hit. Coming in much higher than this is going to result in a beer that doesn't match the balance of the real thing
- Aging with a ratio of oak to beer which matches the oak surface area to beer ratio in a 53 gal bourbon barrel (56 sqin per gal) is necessary to match to potency of the booze character
- Preparation of the oak is a critical factor in order to get the bourbon flavor of BCBS. I am aging with Everclear diluted down to Barrel Strength spirit (~63%). The toast and char levels are the key factor in determining the flavor of the spirit. Bourbon is a mix of Vanilla and Caramel flavors and getting the correct balance of the two seems to primarily be a function of how much the oak is toasted.
Like with previous beers, I will be doing a primary fermentation to get down to FG and then will age the beer on my bourbon soaked oak for about a year in a non-climate controlled attic. This will allow for better exchange between beer and oak.
This is a challenging beer to make in all regards (lots of work to create such a sugary wort, challenging fermentation to get such a high ABV, and difficult to approximate the character of a freshly drained bourbon barrel) but I still love making the attempt. I look forward to taking more lessons from this latest version.
Recipe Details:
- Grain:
- 22 lbs Pale Ale
- 8 lb Light Munich
- 2 lb Crystal 60L
- 1.5 lb Chocolate Malt
- 1.5 lb Roasted Barley
- 12 oz Black Patent
- 4 oz Acid Malt
- Hops:
- 3 oz Chinook (Leaf, 12.2% AA) at 60 min
- Yeast:
- Wyeast 1099 - Whitbread Ale Yeast (3nd Pitch)
- White Labs 099 - Super High Gravity Yeast (2nd Pitch)
- While Labs 090 - San Diego Super Yeast
- Water:
- 20 gal Spring Water
- 2 tsp CaCl
- 2 tsp Gypsum
- 1 tsp Irish Moss
Process Details:
- Batch Size:
- 6.5 (Target 6.5 gal)
- Mash:
- 152 F for 60 min
- Boil:
- 4.5 hrs (Target 4 hrs)
- Fermentation Temp:
- 68 F (Ambient Basement Temps)
- Primary Duration:
- 4 weeks
- Secondary Duration:
- 8 to 12 months
Results:
- OG:
- 1.128 (Target 1.128)
- Efficiency:
- 66% (Target 66%)
- FG:
- 1.042 (Target 1.038)
- Apparent Attenuation:
- TBD (Target 68%)
- ABV:
- TBD (Target 12.1%)
Brewing Notes:
- 9/4/22 - Oak Preparation:
- Cut 12 1x1x6 inch pieces of oak which I had seasoned outside for a couple years
- Toasted these on a cast iron pan on 2/3 above low temperature (Low +2)
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| Toasted - A bit of variability to the toast levels here |
- Charred the oak with a propane torch until black (3 pass char)
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| L to R - 3 Pass Char, 2 Pass Char, and 1 Pass Char |
- The oak weighs:
- Made a barrel strength spirit using 95% alcohol Everclear and spring water. This is about 62% ABV. Prepared 4 half gal jars
- Put three sticks in each jar
- Moved the jars up to the hot attic to extract the flavors
- 10/1/22 - Brewday - 12:30 PM to 9:00 PM- Including Setup and Cleanup
- Heated 12 gal of spring water up to 185F
- Milled half my grain. Added half the CaCl and Gypsum to the grain
- Added 7 gal of strike water to the mash tun. Cycled through the grant and RIMS until the system stabilized at 162 F
- Mixed in the grain - stirred well to eliminate doughballs. Let the mash sit for 10 min to settle out then cycled through the RIMS at 152 F for 50 min
- Fly sparged the mash until 7 gal of wort was collected in the mash tun. Started the heat after collecting 4 gal of wort. Started the 2 hr boil
- Collected a few more gal of wort from the mash tun to use as strike water in the next mash and set this aside before cleaning out the mash tun
- Heated 10 more gal of strike water, for the second mash, to 185 F
- Milled the other half of the grain and added other half of Gypsum and CaCl to the grain
- Added remaining previous mash water and strike water to the mash tun to get 7 gal. Cycled this through the RIMS until the temperature reached 162 F
- Stirred in the remaining grain and made sure there were no doughballs. Let this sit for 10 min and then cycled the rims for 60 min
- At the end of the 2 hr boil I had about 3 gal of wort
- Fly sparged the second mash until 10 gal of wort had been collected. Continued the boil while doing this collection
- Boiled the beer for 2 more hours
- Added bittering hops at 60 min
- With 15 min I added the Irish Moss
- Added the wort chiller with 5 min left to sanitize
- Chilled the beer down to about 80 F
- Transferred to a fermenter - let the beer fall a foot or so to aerate
- Moved the fermenter to my chest freezer to chill down to 68 F
- Collected about 5.9 gal of wort which measured in gravity as 1.142. This is just about on target for efficiency but I over reduced. Added spring water to get to 6.5 gal
- 10/2/22 - Split the beer across 2 fermenters and pitched my yeast. Left them at ambient basement temps to ferment
- 10/17/22 - Gravity is down to 1.052 after 2 weeks of fermentation. Transferred the beer into one fermentor and pitched my White Labs 099 - Super High Gravity yeast to try to get down to 1.038. I still have about 6.5 gal
- 10/30/22 - The gravity is measuring 1.054 today - it hasn't dropped at all in 2 weeks. I am going to get some more High Gravity yeast to finish this up
- 11/3/22 - Pitched a starter of WLP 090 (San Diego Super Ale Yeast) built with a fresh pack. Hopefully this will drop it another 15 points - fingers crossed
- 11/12/22 - Measured gravity again - it is now down to 1.052. I stirred up the yeast cake and put some heating pads next to the fermenter to try to kick fermentation back up
- 11/20/22 - Moved the beer up to the main house in front of a heating vent. Started seeing some bubbling soon after this. The the beer is now down to 1.047 so I'm encouraged. I gave it a stir with the auto-siphon as well.
- 11/27/22 - The gravity is now down to 1.045
- 12/18/22 - The gravity is now down to 1.042. It doesn't taste overly sweet to me. I'm 4 points higher than target but I think this is going to be close enough. Transferring the beer onto the oak for secondary now
- Measured the weight of the oak post aging on spirit. It had been 2 lbs and 2.7 oz. Now it is 3 lb 5.7 oz. This is an increase of 19 oz by weight and 20 oz of spirit. This is about 1.6 oz of spirit per stick of absorption. A fair bit lower than the 2.5 oz per stick I had received last time (the attic, where these had been sitting, has gotten down to the 30 F range so maybe that's why the wood isn't currently holding as much spirit as before). Adding 10 oz of the spirit to the fermentor as well to compensate for this
- Transferred the beer onto the oak in a large bucket fermenter. Got about 6 gal of beer at this stage. Moved the beer up to my attic to age for the next 10 months
