Russian Imperial Stout with Bourbon Soaked Oak - Take IV - Tasting Notes

This is my fourth attempt at brewing a Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout Clone.  I am using a recipe from the brewery - the same one I've used before.  It is a challenging beer to make as the grain bill is more than my mash tun can take and I end up doing 2 mashes on it and then boil for 4 hrs to get down to 6 gal-ish of beer

It started at 1.128 and I had to pitch a second round of super high gravity yeast to get it close to my target of 1.038 (I ended up at 1.042 - although in my bottling I measured it a bit higher than that).  It aged on a large amount of oak that I toasted and then aged with ever clear to attempt to simulate the character of freshly drained bourbon barrel (I didn't think the oak had soaked up as much bourbon as I would have liked so I added some of my extra spirit to try to compensate (perhaps this was a mistake)

I aged the beer up in my attic for more than 3 years before bottling a couple months ago.  The beer hasn't carbonated in that time.

Anyhow, as you'll see, the beer didn't turn out as I'd hoped and is probably a regression from version III.  "You don't learn anything being right" is what I tell myself when drinking this beer.  I'll do a head to head comparison of all my beer to confirm this assessment.  Still I'm happy to drink it as it is not a bad beer even if a bit off the mark

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Chocolate, coffee, and a bit of boozy character and toasted oak which very much blends with the other characters I think - it doesn't smell that much of bourbon.  It is a very aromatic beer though and smells nice.
• Appearance:
• Dark brown - can't see light through it when held up to a lamp.  It pours with just a thin layer of fizz around the edge of the glass that is then gone pretty quickly
• Flavor:
• Chocolate and toasted and roasted flavors up front (once again, for how much oak is in this, some of that toast and roast flavor must be the oak).  Get a hint of booze character in there as well.  Quite sweet on the finish.  It has a bit of bitterness which balances the sweet a bit.  There is a fruitiness in there too and maybe other yeast character  I just don't get much that I would associate with bourbon in this one
• Mouthfeel:
• Full bodied and very sticky on the palate
• Overall:
• This is a rich and flavorful stout.  The boldness of it and the sweetness are lovely but, as a beer intended to imitate BCBS, it is way off the mark.  The other flavors are overpowering any bourbon character it might have and I suspect even if it were more muted there isn't that much of the bourbon character to taste.  I am going to need to think about what when wrong here before my next attempt

English Barleywine (2025 Version) - Tasting Notes

This is my 12th version of an English Barley wine.  It was brewed on Memorial day 2025 and bottled it about 2 months ago now.

This was based on a historical recipe from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog: 1879 William Younger No. 1.  It is all base malt (Pilsner, Golden Promise, and Munich) and is fairly heavilly hopped and then was dry hopped in a 5 month secondary.  Also, I cultured brett dregs from Orval and pitched these in secondary - this is a very interesting fruity Brett which I was thinking could go well in an English Barleywine.

Lets see how I did

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Fruity ester character is pretty prominent (apple maybe).  Get some toasty and caramel malt character as well.  Some booze.  Maybe get some hop character in there as well.  It's fairly bold in aroma
• Appearance:
• Pours with only a thin wisp of carbonation.  Dark gold in color and very clear
• Flavor:
• Very fruity up front (a bit of an odd character - this is the contribution of the Brett harvested from Orval).  Caramel and toasty malt come next.  The finish has a fairly firm bitterness.  It's lightly sweet.  The slightly funky fruitiness lingers in the finish along with the hop bitterness.  Get some alcohol character.  Not picking up much in the way of hop flavor but it's complex beer with quite a bit going on that could overshadow the hop flavor on a beer that is already 9 months old
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium bodied and only slightly sticky on the palate.  Drinks pretty smooth
• Overall:
• It's an interesting beer with it's fruit forward character - I think the Brett delivers a character very much in line with what you might expect from an English Barleywine.  The malt is nice but is pretty much overshadowed.  I like the level of bitterness in it.  I think it's a reasonably complex beer and it's pretty light and easy drinking for a ~10% ABV beer - hides the alcohol well and is a bit dryer than many I've made in the past.  Also, appearance is the least concern but I think the color is very nice on this beer - I don't think I got the priming sugar evenly distributed when bottling this batch so this one had little carbonation and I may have some surprises opening the later ones 

French Baguette

This is an attempt to make something resembling a classic French Baguette in my home.  These are fairly simple in terms of ingredients and technique I think but figuring out the right way to cook them to get the lovely crisp and chewy crust is a real challenge. 

I have tried making these a few times now and they've come out pretty well so far - I will likely continue to tweak the process and use this post as a record of what I've done.

Attempt #1:

I have chosen to start out with the recipe from King Author - Classic Baguettes.  With some minor adjustments.

This is a 70% hydration dough which is pretty easy to work with (hydration level is the ratio of water to flour) such that the shaping steps are pretty fun

Recipe Details:

• Preferment:
• 120 g of All Purpose Flour
• 120 g of room temperature Spring Water
• 1/8 g of Dry Instant Yeast
• Main dough:
• 420 g of Flour
• 255 g of room temperature Spring Water
• 1.5 tsp of Dry Instant Yeast
• 2 tsp of Table Salt

Process Details:

• Day 1:
• I mixed up the preferment and left it covered to ferment for 16 hours or so.  This is intended ot give the dough some extra fermented flavor as the main dough is a fairly short fermentation with a large amount of yeast

• Day 2:
• Added the main dough ingredients into the preferment and mixed until all the flour is wetted
• Covered and let the dough sit for 15 min before doing stretch and folds of the dough.  With this you pull up a side of the dough and fold it over on itself.  I did 4 of these.  It's all mixed in the container - it is best done with wet hands to minimize sticking.  It starts out pretty shaggy and then gets smoother over time

• Let it ferment for an hour and did another stretch and fold.  The dough becomes stretchier over time which you can tell from doing the stretch and fold.  The working of the dough is intended to make it stronger (although I'm not really sure that it does)
• I fermented it in the container until it had roughly doubled in size which was a few hours maybe (the temperature of the room will play a big part so I think this is a case by case variable)

• I turned the dough out onto a floured work surface and split it into 4 roughly equal pieces.  These make a loaf of the size I would consider to be the "classic" size.  Dividing into 6 equal pieces would make a "sandwich" sized loaf.  On another attempt I divided it up into 2 pieces and that was good too (although the crust to crumb ratio is better with the 4 loaves I think.
• I pre-shaped these by stretching and folding the dough balls into the middle in attempt to give the loaves some initial tension internally (plus gives an excuse to play with the nice dough a bit - it requires little flour and isn't very sticky at all).  I cover this with a towel and let relax and rise a bit while I prepare the oven.  I think you have quite a bit of flexibility at this stage where you can let them rest longer or shorter depending on when you want to bake

• I pre-heated the oven to 475 F and put in a pan of water to create a moist and steamy backing environment.  I believe this is an important step to get the nice chewy crust
• I did batches of two on each baking run.  I did the final shape on two of the loaves which involves folding them in half lengthwise and then rolling them in your hands until you get a long cylindrical piece
• Move the shaped loaves to a cookie sheet and let them do yet another rise for 30 min or so covered by another pan.  The proofing level you want can be tested by pushing a finger into the dough and then watching how the hole pushes back out.  You want it to fill back but do so "slowly"

• Once proofed I sliced the loaves to create the weak point for it to break during the rise

This is it after the 30 min rise - I considered this "proofed"

• I then put them into the oven for 10 min before opening it to turn the sheet (and let out a big wave of steam).  I gave it another 10 min before the color looked good.  I thought the bottom looked a little light so I flipped the loaves and gave them a couple more min

• Let them cool down to room temp before slicing into them

• They are chewy and crusty with a very good flavor.  I feel like I can do better with the crust though.  I plan to refine my process further and will post an Attempt #2 if/when I feel like I've improved on this writeup