Primary in Wood

My only experience with this is watching it being done by Pilsner Urquell in the Beer Hunter Series. Jackson was hoping they wouldn't change over to stainless steel.

 

I don't have any experience with fementing in wood, but my guess is that you probably can't count on your house strain to be so dominant that all other bugs will be excluded. Open tanks and wood pores sound to me like a recipe for a wild bug zoo over time.

 

Bells has 3 wooden fermenters from Strohs, that will be used in a clean room. I heard that those will be lined with pitch, or the modern equivalent product.

So it has been done, and was standard at one time. As far as sanitation, Brett is smaller than brewers yeast, and can go far into the wood's pores. Wine barrels are often retired when they start to go Bretty.

 

My understanding was that most wine/spirit barrels could only be used a couple times before being retired due to regulation. I'm sure brett would indeed be a much larger concern for wineries rather than distillers.

 

In the begining if your fermenter is in a clean room you should only have to rinse. If you get bugs it's time for new wood. I had a couple infected plastic buckets that I poured boiling water in 2 times and still did not kill the bugs.(Whatever they were! )

 

Bourbon has to be made in fresh barrels by law, an afterwards those barrels go to Scotch makers and other spirits. Those barrels are used until they add little to the spirits. Anyone know how long? The wineries will use barrels until they go off, from what I understand. Wine Barrels are also re-coopered.

If you want to use those for Brett - perfect. There is some maintenance, as you will eventually need to remove beerstone.

 

OP, you certainly can ferment in open, fresh oak vessels.

You just need to be aware that there is potential for infection and tannin extraction from the fresh oak.

The infection risk is two-fold: risk of infection via an open fermentation and risk of infection from the fresh wood. A boiling water rinse is absolutely no guarantee that you will kill the ‘bugs’ that exist within the wood.

American oak contains plenty of tannins that can ‘leach’ into the beer. Back in the old days, American brewers would line their oak vessels with something like brewer’s pitch to not permit the beer to have contact with the wood. British brewers started lining their wooden vessels sometime in the 20’s (1920’s). British brewers would utilize wooden vessels that were made from oak from Northern Europe; this type of oak provided less tannin extraction. Needless to say but it was not unusual for British beers to have some impact from Brett that existed in the wood.

Good luck with your open fermented in fresh oak beer.

Cheers!

 

That sounds pretty cool to me, where are you going to get these tanks?

 

Firestone Walker has their Union system that uses barrels, 30 in total. To help minimize the infection potential, they put a new barrel in every day, and the oldest comes out.

 

I wouldn't think it's as much regulation as they've got something else in mind. Bret, or wild yeast might be a concern, but I think that the flavors start to leech from year to year and this would be undesirable. I'll have to ask some of my wine friends.

 

“Bourbon has to be made in fresh barrels by law, an afterwards those barrels go to Scotch makers and other spirits. Those barrels are used until they add little to the spirits. Anyone know how long?”

Jeff, I am uncertain what length of time you are specifically asking about.

I have spoken to John Laffler (used to be in charge of barrel aging at Goose Island) and Dave Walker (of Firestone Walker) about bourbon barrel aging beer. Both Goose Island and Firestone Walker buy 14 year old barrels from Heaven Hills. I suspect at 14 years there is much of the tannin extracted from the oak but needless to say a flavor reminiscent of bourbon exists in those barrels (which is desired for beers like BCBS). I would imagine that the spirits (e.g., Scotch) folks would do something to the barrels (char them?) to eliminate (or mitigate) the bourbon flavors in the barrel.

John Laffler informed me that they age BCBS for two ‘seasons’ (i.e., a warm period and a cold period) with the notion to permit the beer to expand & seep into the barrel during the warm period and contract out of the barrel during the cool season. This way the beer extracts the bourbon flavors that exist within the wood.

Cheers!

Edit: John Laffler informed me that they only use the barrels once for their bourbon aged beers. Maybe Jeff was asking how many times the spirits folks use a bourbon barrel? If so, I do not know the answer to that specific question.

 

For bourbon, you need >50% corn, aged on new white (Kentucky) charred oak, for no particular duration of time. I think it's expected that it sits in the oak for at least 2 years.

Scotch whisk(e)y must be aged in barrels for at least 3 years. I had to lean on wiki for that one, and I'm sure I will get scolded for dodging how to spell whisk(e)y depending on where it's made.

 

I was under the impression that the Scotch makers would reuse barrels, and blend barrels that were first use with older, could be wrong on that one.

Wine makers will stop using a barrel once it is infected or has all the oak flavor leached out. They can re-cooper the barrel - disassemble, shave the toasted oak off, retoast, assemble.

Rodanbachs Foeders are disassembled and shaved aboiut 1/32 to remove beerstone. In that case they are wanting O2 permeability, which beerstone limits.

 

“I was under the impression that the Scotch makers would reuse barrels…” I suspect that is the case for those Scotch makers who do not desire ‘carry over’ of the former spirits flavors (or wood flavors). I am not a big Scotch drinker but I have had Scotch that was aged in Spiced Rum and Sherry barrels; those Scotch makers wanted some ‘carry over’ of the Spiced Rum and Sherry flavors. I would guess those barrels are only used once since there will be diminished ‘carry over’ with subsequent use.

Cheers!

 

All of Traquair House's ales are primary fermented in bare semi open wood vats, they steam clean them between batches.

 

[quote="JackHorzempa, post: 1976168, member: 55094I would imagine that the spirits (e.g., Scotch) folks would do something to the barrels (char them?) to eliminate (or mitigate) the bourbon flavors in the barrel.

[/quote]
When American oak (bourbon) barrels are shipped to Scottish distilleries, the staves are numbered and the barrel heads marked to show how they are assembled, and then broken down and bundled up as a bunch of staves and two heads. Much easier to ship on a trans-Atlantic freighter this way. Therefore, there is no bourbon still sloshing around in the barrel when they arrive, like when someone buys a just dumped barrel here. Once it arrives at the distillery, the coopers reassemble the barrel and fill it with hot water to rehydrate it and ensure a liquid-tight seal. This will also remove some character. Some bourbon flavors are desired, taste the difference in a normal Macallan 12yr (sherry butt) and a 12yr fine oak (bourbon barrel).

 

This thread reminded me of the cool time-lapse video of Sierra Nevada open fermenting a batch of Bigfoot. The vessels are stainless steel though: