Hello everyone! I'm planning to prepare my own vermouth at home and then age it in an oak barrel (around 10L). WAIT, I know this is a Beer forum. I've been home brewing beer for several years now. I'm thinking AFTER I drink all that vermouth, I wanted to brew beer and then use that barell to age it. I'm asking for advice to my fellow brewers. - I've heard that as vermouth has lots of herbs, the beer would change its taste too much. In fact I've been trying to find online a vermouth barrel aged beer with poor luck. Is it a bad idea? What do you think? - What stile of beer would match with the barrel flavour? I'm thinking a porter or a Belgian Ale, but belgian Ales are already sweet... I'd be glad if anyone with experience threw me some advice.
I think whatever flavor is imparted from the barrel will be up to you to decide if you like it. However, we can offer some opinions of the resulting flavor my imagining what it might taste like, but first it would be helpful if you'd tell us whether the vermouth that you would make is dry or sweet.
Hello! At the moment I'm researching vermouth recipes, so I'm still not sure. Probably i'll make it on the dry side, because I wouldn't want the aged beer too sweet...
My personal preference would be to use a sweet vermouth barrel for any dark beer style (except a black IPA or anything hoppy) and a light beer style with the dry vermouth barrel. So the style of beer that you want to age might be the factor that determines which vermouth to make. But that's all personal taste preference based on what I think those vermouth flavors might be, so you need to choose what you want. That's just my two cents.
Following along @Mothergoose03's advice, you could look into brewing a big, hoppy stout that would stand up to the sweetness from the vermouth, probably go quite nicely with it. I don't know anything about making vermouth, or much about barrel aging, so really just throwing ideas out there.
Dryhopped strong saison with hop varieties that would compliment the botanicals used in your vermouth. Orange peel and juniper? Cascade or centennial.
Strong blonde(ish) Scotch ale, think 11% abv beer fermented w/ Scottish ale yeast, mostly Golden Promise and a touch of caramel or amber malt. Gruit-style Strong Scottish ale, can cut it 50% barrel aged, 50% non-barrel aged.
