Russian Imperial Stout with Bourbon Soaked Oak - Take IV

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:

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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. 

I will be brewing the same recipe at the previous versions.  The difference this time is how I choose to address the lessons learned above.  I ran a 12 sample experiment on the toast and char level which can be read about here.  This has guided me on how much I should toast and char my oak in order to get a flavor that is primary vanilla with hints of caramel (a balance like Bourbon).

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)

Toasted - A bit of variability to the toast levels here

• Charred the oak with a propane torch until black (3 pass char)

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

• 1/11/26 - Bottled today using a pack of rehydrated Premier Cuvee Champagne yeast and 5 oz of sugar.  Today I measured the gravity as about 1.048 (it's probably close to 40 degrees F in the attic where I've been keeping it so maybe that's why).  It has a rich and malty flavor with a pretty nice boozy bourbon element although I think I'm still quite a ways away from the level of bourbon in the real BCBS.  I have about 6 gal of beer which got me 45 17 oz BCBS bottles
• 3/31/26 - Tasting Notes - 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

Rye Pale Ale with Cascade Hops - Tasting Notes

This is Pale Ale I made back in late August using Rye Malt and a large amount of home grown Cascade Hops.  I planned this as a low alcohol (less than 4% ABV) and easy drinking beer such that I could have a few a night.  After drinking it for a few weeks I can say mission accomplished.

I hadn't intended this to be a hazy beer but it's turned out to be pretty cloudy.  I suspect the flaked rye as being the cause for this.  I think it looks good but it doesn't impact the flavor of course.

This beer is going quickly so it is time to make some official tasting notes before it's gone.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Hop aroma most prominent (citrus, grassy, and herbal tea-like).  Some fruity yeast ester.   A bit of sweet malt.
• Appearance:
• Pours with a 2 finger head that slowly fades and leaves lacing on the glass.  Straw yellow in color and cloudy.
• Flavor:
• A bit of sweetness up front along with some fruity ester character.  Get a fair amount of hoppy flavor up front as well - grassy, herbal and citrus.  The finish has medium bitterness and is balanced somewhat by a malt sweetness.  Bitter is in the lead in the finish.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium light bodied and just a little bit sticky.  Easy drinking and smooth
• Overall:
• This is a nice easy drinking and flavorful hoppy beer.  The hop flavor is nice and it pairs well with the English yeast ester.  It definitely has the flavor of an American Beer rather than English with fruity yeast.  It has a nice balance between malt and hops and the bitterness is firm but tasteful.

Historical English Brown Ale

I'll be brewing an English Brown Ale to fill one of my empty kegs. I decided to use another historical recipe from the Shut Up about Barclay Perkins Blog: 1928 Barclay Perkins Doctor Brown.  It has been a while since I made a Brown Ale and this is my first attempt at an English Brown Ale.  These historical recipes always seem to turn out nicely so I'm excited to give it a try.  A brown ale is, of course, a malty beer with some toasty and caramel like flavors rather than the roast flavors you get from a Stout.

This, like most of the Historical English Beers, has some interesting ingredient choices.  It uses a pretty small amount of Pale Malt, good amount of Caramel 60L (1 lb) and then adds in over a pound of Corn.  It then uses Brown sugar and Invert #3 to account for quite a bit of the OG.  Finally, it uses a small amount of Brewers Caramel for Color.  As with previous beers I'm making my own invert and brewers caramel for this batch which is easy and saves quite a bit of money.

Brewers Caramel

I am fermenting the beer with the Whitbread Strain (Wyeast 1099) which the recipe calls for.  I really like the ester from this compared with S04 which is supposed to be the same strain.

Finally, the recipe has this as a fairly lightly hopped beer and called for small amounts of Cluster, Fuggle, and Golding English hops all in the boil.  Rather than purchase these in small amounts I decided to use Willamette and home grown Cascades which have a somewhat English Character (similar to Goldings).

I am going to give this beer  couple weeks in the fermentor and then a couple more weeks in the Keg to carbonate before drinking.

Recipe Details:

• Grain/Adjunct
• 5.5 lb 2 Row
• 1 lb CaraMunich III (Crystal 60 L)
• 1.25 lb Flaked Maze
• 1 lb Brown Sugar
• 0.75 Invert #3
• 2.4 oz Caramel
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 1 oz Willamette (Leaf, 5.7% AA) at 60 min
• 1 oz Cascade (Leaf Unknown AA) at 30 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1099 - Whitbread Ale Yeast (2nd Pitch)
• Water:
• 15 gal Spring Water
• 2 tsp CaCl (one in mash and one in boil)
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 153 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 80 min (Target 60 min)
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 65 F
• Primary Duration:
• 2 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 2 Week in Keg

Results:

• OG:
• 1.046 (Target 1.046)
• Efficiency:
• 71% (Target 71%)
• FG:
• 1.012 (Target 1.014)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 73% (Target 69%)
• ABV:
• 4.5% (Target 4.2%)

Brewing Notes:

• 9/17/22 - Built a yeast starter using 100 g DME and 1 L of water.  Set this up on a stir plate to propagate.  The starter showed good activity by the evening
• 9/18/22 - Brewday - from 1:30 PM to 6:00 PM- Including setup and cleanup
• Prepared the brewers caramel/dry caramel
• Started cooking the Invert #3 syrup (0.75 lbs of Sugar in the Raw and Light Brown sugar, 1/4 tsp of citric acid and 1 cup of spring water.  Let this simmer on low.
• Heated 7 gal of spring water up to 185 F
• Milled my grain.  Added the CaCl and Gypsum to the milled grain so I wouldn't forget
• Added 5 gal of spring water to the mash tun and cycled through the RIMS to get down to 163 F
• Halted the cycle through the RIMS and added the grain and stirred well to eliminate doughballs.  Let this sit for 10 min for everything to settle.
• Cycled the RIMS for 50 more min at 153 F

• Heated 6 gal of sparge water to 185 F
• Fly sparged until 8.5 gal had been collected.  Started heating the kettle after collected 4 gal.  Had it to a boil shortly after the end of the sparge
• Added the bittering hops when the wort was just about at a boil

• Added the brewers caramel - did this by adding boiling wort to the pan to dissolve it.  Went through many cycles of this to dissolve it all 
• Added the 30 min hops
• The invert is cooked to approximately #3 level so I took it off the heat and added some boiling water to keep it in a liquid and pourable state
• Added Irish moss with 15 min left in the boil
• Added the Invert#3 and Sugar to the kettle with 15 min left

• Added an extra helping of CaCl to the kettle for this beer
• Found that volume wasn't down to target so I extended the boil by 20 min
• Added the wort chiller with 5 min left to sanitize
• Chilled the beer down to about 85  F which was as far as the ground water would take me
• Drained the wort into the fermentor - let it fall a couple feet to aerate

• Collected 6 gal and measured the gravity as 1.046 - right on target.
• Chilled the beer down to 64 F in my chest freezer
• Pitched the yeast once cooled to target
• 9/19/22 - Fermentation was well underway by this afternoon
• 10/1/22 - Kegged the beer today.  Measured the gravity as 1.012.  It hasn't dropped clear yet a couple weeks in the keg should probably do the job

• 11/29/22 - Tasting Notes - This beer provides some bold flavors and is pretty complex.  I like the ester character but would have preferred it to be a little more restrained - I think its balance it a little further towards ester than I think an English Beer ought to. 

Rye Pale Ale with Cascade Hops

It has been several months since I brewed up a hoppy beer and I've had to resort to buying commercial which sucks.  Time to brew a new hoppy beer I guess.  This will be another Pale Ale which will use a small grain bill to get an ABV of around 4% for easy drinking and a generous amount of late flavoring hops.

I have a lot (several lbs) of home grown Cascade hops from a friend of mine which I plan to use for this batch.  These are a bit more on the herbal/tea-like side of things than citrus and they have pretty bold aroma.  I'm going to bitter with some high AA Columbus, use a combination of Centennial and Cascade for flavoring (via a large 0 min hop) and then go very agressive in the dry hop with the Cascade (6 oz).  These amounts have made for a very hoppy beer previously.

6 oz Dry Hop

To try to get at least a little balance to the beer I'm using a lot of flaked malt in this beer (4 lbs with most being Rye) and will mash at 160 F.  I'm hoping the beer will stop fermenting at 1.013 or higher.  I'm adding a small amount of light crystal for color as well.

Finally, for yeast I've decided to use the English Whitbread strain which produces a good amount of fruity ester character - this is a second pitch from my recent English Barleywine (which makes the yeast "free" for this batch which I always like).  I am going to give the beer 2 weeks of primary fermentation.

So, this beer, with English yeast and hops that have a somewhat English-like character, may straddle the line between and American and an English Pale ale.  That is fine for me though since I very much enjoy both American and English pale ale.  I can't wait to get it into the keg.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 6 lb Pale Ale
• 3 lb and 6 oz Flaked Rye
• 10 oz Flake Wheat
• 6 oz Crystal 10
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 2 oz Columbus (Leaf, 14.6% AA) at 60 min
• 2.3 oz Centennial (Leaf, 10.1% AA) at 0 min
• 2 oz Cascade (Leaf, Unknown AA) at 0 min
• 6 oz Cascade (Leaf, Unknown AA) at Dry Hop
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1099 - Whitbread Ale Yeast (2nd Pitch)
• Water:
• 14 gal spring water
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Gypsum

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 160 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 80 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 65 F
• Primary Duration:
• 2 weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 2 weeks in keg

Results:

• OG:
• 1.046 (Target 1.043)
• Efficiency:
• 73% (Target 68%)
• FG:
• 1.020 (Target 1.013)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 56% (Target 69%)
• ABV:
• 3.4% (Target 3.9%)

Brewing Notes:

• 8/20/22 - Built a yeast starter with 100g of DME and 1 L of water
• 8/21/22 - Brew Day - 3 PM to 7:30 PM- Including Setup and Cleanup
• Heated 6.5 gal to 185 F for strike water
• Milled my grain.  Added CaCl and gypsum to the mix so I didn't forget

• Moved 5 gal to the mash tun and cycled through RIMS and Grant until the system was at a stable 170 F
• Added the grain.  Stirred in well to eliminate dough balls.  Let this sit for 10 min to settle
• Cycled the RIMS for 50 min

• Heated 6 gal sparge water up to 185 F
• Fly sparged until 8 gal was collected.  Added some extra unheated spring water to the sparge to finish up

• Started heating the boil kettle after collecting 4 gal.  Had the wort to a boil after collecting about 6 gal.  Added the bittering hops during the heat up
• Boiled for about 8 min to get down to 6 gal (forgot to add the irish moss this time)
• Added the wort chiller to sanitize
• At the end of the boil I cool the wort down to 180 F with the flame still on and added the flameout hops.  Let this steep for 20 min.  Temperature held at about 180 F the whole time

• Chilled the wort down to 90 F
• Transferred this into the fermentor - let the wort fall a foot to aerate
• Collected 6 gal and measured the gravity as 1.046
• Moved the fermentor to my fermentation chamber and chilled down to 66 F over night
• 8/22/22 - Pitched the yeast
• 8/23/22 - Fermentation is underway
• 8/29/22 - Added the 6 oz of dry hops
• 9/5/22 - Kegged today.  Measured the gravity as 1.020.  The beer is pretty bitter with a bit of grassy hop and fruity yeast character.
• 9/30/22 - Tasting Notes - This is a nice easy drinking and flavorful hoppy beer.  The hop flavor is nice and it pairs well with the English yeast ester.  It definitely has the flavor of an American Beer rather than English with fruity yeast.  It has a nice balance between malt and hops and the bitterness is firm but tasteful.

Oak Preparation Experiment

I have been attempting to recreate the Bourbon character achieved by Goose Island in their Bourbon County Brand Stout through their use of recently emptied, second use, bourbon barrels, by seasoning, toasting, and then charring my own White Oak prior to soaking it in barrel strength spirit.  My most recent attempt at doing this (which was the first attempt that I used something close to enough oak) turned out to have a very rich oaky character but missed the mark quite a bit on the oak character of bourbon (or BCBS).  I believe my treatment of the oak is the reason for this failure.  This post will be used to document some experimentation with different oak treatments

In my previous batches I have toasted my oak in the oven and then charred the oak with a propane burner or torch (see a post on my previous oak preparation here).  In retrospect, after tasting the beer made with the oak, I suspect that these levels of toast and char (or some combination of each) was too high as my whiskey has a flavor profile much more slanted to caramel than vanilla (while bourbon is more vanilla than caramel to my palate).  I'd like to test different levels of toast and char and how these impact the flavor of the spirit.  Unfortunately, I find my notes are also a little too vague and that the process used was a bit cavalier so that replication of exactly what I did isn't possible.  I need to find a way to do some testing in a more repeatable way as part of this experiment as well

Some thoughts:

• Barrel makers toast their barrels in front of an open flame for relatively short amounts of time (I understand something on the order of 30 minutes although this seems to be treated as a somewhat closely guarded trade secret).  I would expect this would lead to a varying degrees of toast within the oak and the exposure of spirit to oak cooked at different levels.  The oven doesn't seem like a great tool to replicate this as the oak most likely toasts more slowly at oven temperatures and then you have to leave it heated longer that creates a more even toast in the internal parts of the oak.  Based on this, I've decided to try to toast the oak via a cast iron pan.  This will apply greater toast to the outside of the oak than the inside and, although the temperature levels aren't as measurable as they are in the oven, we can get a repeatable set of results using the various heat levels of the range
• For charring the oak I have been thinking mostly about the look of the charred piece of wood (getting an 'alligator char' for example).  Thinking about it in terms of the number of quick passes of the flame over the wood seems like a better way to get varying degrees of char and to do it in a more repeatable way

Based on this, I have decided to test how oak prepared with 4 different levels of toasting and 3 different levels of charring does in recreating the bourbon oak character in a spirit

• Variable #1:
• Low Toast (toasted for 5 min per side on the range's low temperature)

• Low +1 Toast (toasted for 5 min per side on 1/3 of the way between Low and Medium)

• Low +2 Toast (toasted for 5 min per side on 2/3 of the way between Low and Medium)

• Med Toast (on the rage's medium temperature)

• Variable #2:
• 1 Pass Flame (1 pass per side)

• 2 Pass Flame (2nd pass over all sides)

• 3 Pass Flame (3rd pass over all sides - effect similar to alligator char)

Experiment Notes:

• 7/9/22
• Cut white oak that seasoned outside for a year and a half into 1 inch x 1 inch x 1.5 inch pieces.  This size was chosen to roughly match the ratio of oak to spirit used in a bourbon barrel given that I'll be use 16 oz mason jars to do this aging
• Toasted 3 pieces of wood at each of the toast levels specified above
• Charred the 3 pieces of each of the 4 toasting samples at the various levels of char from variable 2
• Mixed the 95% ABV Everclear with Spring Water to get a 62% spirit and put this in my 12 mason jars (used 10.5 oz Everclear to 5.5 oz Spring Water for this)

• Added one piece of oak to each of the jars and labled the lids

• Moved these to my attic where they will experience nightly temperature swings which will speed up the aging process
• 7/23/22 - Color extraction has varied quite a bit after the first two weeks of aging:
• Low Toast:

Left to Right:  1 Pass, 2 Pass, and 3 Pass Char

• Low +1 Toast:

Left to Right:  1 Pass, 2 Pass, and 3 Pass Char

• Low +2 Toast:

Left to Right:  1 Pass, 2 Pass, and 3 Pass Char

• Medium Toast:

Left to Right:  1 Pass, 2 Pass, and 3 Pass Char

• 1 Pass Char:

Left to Right:  Low, Low+1, Low+2, and Medium

• 9/3/22 - It has been almost 2 months since I started aging this oak in my hot attic.  Color seems to be pretty much done changing over the last month.  So, I'm thinking it is time for a taste and aroma evaluation:
• I have decided to do the evaluation against a barrel strength bourbon and selected the Maker's Mark Cask Strength Bourbon for this purpose.  This is a 56% ABV product while my spirit is 62-63%.  These strength differences will impact the Taste test so I will water down my sample slightly to try to match the makers mark (1/8 tsp of spring water to 1 tsp of my whiskey should do the trick)
• I am going to evaluate the color, aroma, and flavor of my samples with this test.  The goal here will be to find which oak treatment produces a flavor most like a real bourbon (which comes down to the right balance between vanilla and caramel flavors).  I'm going to use a school letter grading scheme for these.  I will consider a lack of vanilla to be a defect and an excessively high degree of caramel, roast, or smoke to be a larger defect in my scoring.
• This is going to be a bit of an endurance test to drink 56% spirit but hopefully I'll be able to assess these with just tiny sips
• Here is my scoring:

• To summarize the findings:
• The Low+2 Toast and 3 Pass Flame sample creates a flavor profile that is very similar to the makers mark (thus, an A-).  It has a very good balance between vanilla and caramel flavors which are just slightly less bold than the real thing.  I think this sample is close enough to allow me to proceed with aging more oak using this preparation method.  My assessment of the next Bourbon County Stout clone with this Oak Preparation Method will tell me if I need to expend more energy improving the A- to an A with more experiments
• The medium toast produced quite a bit of acrid and charred flavors in all cases.  Toasting to a point where the wood is smoking is a mistake to be avoided.  These were all a fair bit darker than the real thing as well.
• The low toast didn't produce much flavor at all regardless of the level of char.  I believe this confirms the importance of the toast to getting the good flavors.
• Low toast +1 produced some good flavors but they were less bold than the higher toast.  Toast levels are definitely a variable to be considered carefully
• The Low+2 Toast samples with more char were better than the 1 pass flame ones in color, aroma, and flavor so char is clearly also a very critical component to the whiskey
• 2 months in the attic seemed to be enough time for the flavors to be extracted nicely at this scale.  I will do another sample in a month or two to see if more time does any good

Goose Island BCBS vs My Clone Attempts (2022)

Brewing a clone of the famous Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout has become an obsession of mine.  The is a strong stout which is aged in second use Bourbon Barrels, and which boasts a very strong, very delightful, boozy character.  Goose Island provides the recipe for the beer as if to dare the home brewer to attempt to copy them.  Would that it were so simple.  Between the big, sweet, beer and the effects of spirit and oak, this is a very difficult beer to even get a passible clone for (read about my previous vertical tasting).

I've made 3 attempts at this beer so far:

• Attempt #1 (2018):  Hit my OG target (1.130) but was a little high on my FG (1.046 vs 1.040 target).  Aged this beer with 4 1x6 sticks (4 oz) of oak that I toasted at 450 F, then charred, then soaked in Makers Mark Whiskey for several months.  This beer didn't have the whiskey kick of BCBS
• Attempt #2 (2019):  Was a bit high on the OG (1.136) and ended quite a bit high for OG at 1.055.  I didn't think this would make as big a difference as it did (the beer is noticeably sweeter).  To try to get more alcohol character than last time I switched to using Everclear watered down to 60% Alcohol (barrel strength) and aged toasted and charred oak on this before putting (~4 ounces again) it with the beer.  This beer also lacked the whiskey kick of BCBS.
• Attempt #3 (2020):  Was a little high on OG (1.135) but hit the FG number (had to add some high gravity yeast in order to do this).  This time I decided to do some assessment of the surface area of a barrel to determine the amount of oaking and settled on 56 sqin/gal of oak surface are is need to match a large barrel - this is 3-4x oak compared with what I used previously.  I toasted this oak at around 375 F, aggressively charred it (alligator char), and then let it soak on the barrel strength Everclear for a year in the hot attic.  Everclear is pretty expensive, and I didn't want to buy enough to make 5-6 gal of barrel strength booze, so I used something like a 4x higher concentration of oak to alcohol ratio than is used in a real whiskey barrel to make as much oak as I needed.  This produced a much more oaky booze than a commercial bourbon

This will be a post evaluating the taste profiles of my 3 Bourbon County Brand Stouts against a bottle of the 2021 BCBS Vintage

Attempt #1 (2018) Comparison:

• Aroma:
• Boozy with chocolate and coffee.  Maybe a bit of fruit
• Appearance:
• Black (or very dark brown) and opaque.  Pours with a thin layer of head that quickly fades to nothing
• Flavor:
• Dark Chocolate and coffee.  Booze hits next with a bit of sweetness.  The finish is a balance of the sweet chocolate flavor, a bit of bitterness, and some booze
• Mouthfeel:
• Full bodied and fairly sweet - leaves the palate sticky.  The alcohol has a warming effect
• Overall:
• Richly flavored with a pretty good level of complexity with the chocolate and coffee flavors.  Tasted in issolation, it seems to have a fairly firm booze character.
• BCBS Comparison:
• BCBS is much stronger bourbon/booze character on the nose.  Mine is very malty in comparison.  Same story with the flavor, BCBS is much stronger up front with bourbon while the other flavors are complimentary while the balance of my beer is towards malt with booze as the secondary flavor

Attempt #2 (2019) Comparison:

• Aroma:
• Boozy with dark chocolate and maybe a bit of fruit character
• Appearance:
• Pours with practically no foam.  Dark brown/black in color and opaque
• Flavor:
• Sweet chocolate flavor with maybe a bit of coffee.  Very rich flavor.  There is a hint of booze on the finish that is balanced by sweet malt and a light bitterness.  The beer has a slight fruity character as well
• Mouthfeel:
• Full bodied and sticky sweet on the palate pretty smooth.  A fair bit of warming from the alcohol on the back of the throat
• Overall:
• This is a sweet, rich, and decadent beer.  Bold flavors here but bourbon isn't really one of them
• BCBS Comparison:
• Not even close for this one.  BCBS feels very light on the palate by comparison and is nowhere near this sweet

Attempt #3 (2020) Comparison:

• Aroma:
• Boozy with chocolate, oak character, and a caramel-like aroma
• Appearance:
• Black and opaque.  Poured with almost no foam
• Flavor:
• Boozy with a chocolate and caramel flavor.  The booze lingers on the palate through the finish.  The finish is sweet chocolate, booze, and a bit of hop bitterness.  Definitely get a fair amount of oak flavor in there too.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium-full bodied and fairly sweet.  Good amount of alcohol warming
• Overall:
• Very bold flavors in this one and pretty complex between the sweet malt and boozy/oaky flavors
• BCBS Comparison:
• On the nose the BCBS is slightly more boozy but it is very close.  The caramel of the aroma is a bit richer in mine - caramel in both cases but mine is more of a dark caramel (or maybe a maple syrup).  For flavor, they are also very close in terms of booze levels with mine being slightly less bold.  BCBS tastes very much like bourbon and mine, although boozy and oaky, doesn't have the same bourbon flavor

So, based on these tastings, I would say my level of oaking on Attempt #3 was a move in the right direction but the flavors I was able to extract from the oak weren't right.  I think the toasting and charring I used here (which weren't all that well documented) were likely at fault.  I think a more careful assessment of oak preparation which best replicates the bourbon flavor would be helpful to guide my next attempt.

Raspberry Wine (2022 Version)

It is time to make my 4th version of a Raspberry Wine (read about the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd).  I have large Raspberry patch which provides 90-100 lbs of fruit per year.  This is more fruit than I need for my beers so making wine out of it has been a nice, productive, use for them.

I've increased the amount of fruit used each year.  This year I'm up to 58 lbs (used 54 last year).  Raspberries aren't sweet enough to make a wine strength product so sugar is typically added - this year I'm going with 12 lbs of sugar which should get me around 12-13% ABV.  In previous years I had dissolved the sugar in spring water which dilutes the wine slightly - this year I'll add the sugar dry so that pretty much the only liquid will be from the Raspberries themselves - we'll see if that creates a more intensely flavored product.

Like with my previous batches I will let this wine age for about a year in secondary.  This time I'm going to age with Port Soaked Oak.  These wines end up very tart so some back sweetening is beneficial for the flavor profile - I'll do that again this time.  So far, all my batches have been shelf stable which has been nice - I use Campden tables on these wines which likely helps with that as does the fact that they have a high alcohol concentration which would make additional bottle fermentation unlikely

Recipe Details:

• 58 lbs of raspberry
• 12 lbs of table sugar
• 6 tsp Pectic Enzyme
• 2 packets of Red Star Premier Rouge Yeast
• 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient
• 10 campden tablet
• Extras:
• 4 sticks of, 375 F toasted, Port Soaked Oak

Results:

• OG:
• 1.10 (25 Brix)
• Post Fermentation FG:
• 1.002
• Back Sweetened FG:
• 1.025
• ABV:
• 13%

Brewing Notes:

• 6/12/22:
• Moved 58 lbs of frozen raspberries to 2 buckets (this was about as much fruit as would fit in the buckets

• Added Pectic Enzyme, campden tablets, and sugar

• 6/13/22 - It was still thawing out the next day

• 6/14/22 - Pitched two packets of rehydrated wine yeast (one for each bucket
• 6/15/22 - Fermentation is underway

• 6/25/22 - Skimmed the solids off the top of the wine.  It seems to still be fermenting a bit so I'm going to give it another week or so before considering a transfer to secondary.

• 8/14/22 - Transferred to a glass carboy with 3 campden tablets.  Added 4 sticks of port soaked oak to this.  Got about 5 gal of wine.  I'm going to let this age for 6-8 months.
• 6/23/23 - Transferred the wine to a bottling bucket with 3 lbs of invert #3 to back-sweeten.  Added 3 campden tablets as well to make sure fermentation doesn't pick back up.  I'm going to let this sit for a few weeks before bottling.  Measured the pre-back sweetened gravity as 1.002 - this is 11.9% Alcohol
• 1/20/24 - Finally bottling this.  Measured the back-sweetened gravity as 1.025.  Have about 5 gal which got me 51 12 oz bottles
• 12/31/25 - Tasting Notes - It is a boldly flavored wine with some nice complexity.  The tart and bitter flavors are quite a bit more pronounced than the sweetness on this one so I think it's a bit less drinkable than otherwise - a glass is nice but I can't see reaching for a second in a night