Barrel Questions

Where is @GUNSLINGER

 

"Some other things I've been wondering, should I ferment in primary first and then transfer to the barrel?"

That is how beers like Goose Island BCBS is produced; the finished beer is added to the bourbon barrels for aging.

I assume this is what you are looking for with your stout.

I do not know what scale you brew at but if your brew 5 gallon batches you will need to produce three beer batches for your barrel.

Cheers!

 

wondering if the wood chips & rocky hard pieces came from the brewery. It would make sense to me if this barrel was used multiple times and they were looking to up the oak flavors. I think that the boiling water & bourbon should provide a fairly clean slate for your yeast.
Barrel fermentations are not uncommon. The problem with barrel fermentations though is you've got the yeast cake in the barrel and you can't really long term age in the barrel....but from my experience in the wine world, barrel fermentation provide a much smoother, well rounded oak flavor compared to oak aging. You could fill 7 gallons on first brew day, let ferment, then fill again next brew day. Headspace wouldn't be a problem unless you're waiting like a month...i'd say 2 weeks would be my max wait time between. If you can hit it with CO2 every couple days, then it would help let it go longer.

 

So could one place oak in a primary fermenter then rack off to a secondary,if that works with barrels?
I'm making a IRS today and never heard of oak I. The primary. Have you done this???

 

Yeah...if you add like a bourbon soaked stave to the fermenter. I have done it with an oz of cubes in a stout...to be honest I couldn't even taste the oak...
But i had samples of both red & white wines that were barrel aged vs. barrel fermented in both french & american oaks and there was pretty noticeable differences between the aged vs fermented (same with french vs. american oak barrels).

 

Thanks, I guess not for me I like the oak taste.

 

Is this true for brewing beer? I've never heard of this.

 

@OldSock you out there?

 

Firestone Walker is probably the most famous of the breweries doing barrel fermentations, but Jester King is another one...obviously there are lots using oak foeders these days that breweries are doing primary fermentations in.
So this barrel that the OP has is going to provide some oak character...but i'm guessing it's definitely going to be muted compared to the first re-use of the barrel. The oak character from a barrel fermentation is definitely there...but just different than oak aging from my wine experience. It was more well rounded of a flavor...i definitely preferred both the barrel fermented wines vs. barrel aged wines. My biggest worry for the OP is that he can't really age in the barrel...but maybe that won't be an issue.

 

Wow, I'm amazed, that seems like a big mess, literally, as beer would be flooding out the top and onto the floor ~ unless they're only using half filled barrels I'd guess.

And then there's the issue of aging against wood, that you've called... aging a finished beer in wood would certainly be different, you can't just leave a first-ferment beer in a barrel, you've got to move it, so you're losing time against the oak.

In my experience I've used "second use" Bourbon barrels by filling them with boiling water and letting them sit overnight, and then dumping them and racking fairly carbed, almost completely fermented beers on top of them. The purpose was to pick up the flavor of the wood. I'd then let them sit for a few weeks or more at room temperature before moving them to a cold box to sit and settle until ready for racking. I'm guessing this is more of what Jake is looking towards. And, yes, you shoud have some chunks of charred wood fall out, that's normal.

 

I wouldn't count on the beer being "clean" with saison yeast. Even though you filled it with boiling water, there's bound to be yeast still in the barrel. If they used French Saison yeast in particular, that is a diasticus subspecies and it will dry out the beer the rest of the way. Some level of cross contamination will occur.

Charred bits are completely normal when you rinse that way. I would ferment 15 gallons and fill the barrel with all 15 gallons at the same time. Or, really, what I would do with a barrel that had saison yeast in it is to brew some type of brett beer and use the barrel as a primary fermenter. You can take the head off the barrel if you want to and fill it with 10 gallons and use it as an open fermenter.

 

I would also use the barrel in that manner as a fermenter until it falls apart and is no longer usable... You'll build up a lot of microorganisms in there and you could eventually end up with something really special.

 

http://towntootoughtodie.blogspot.com/2017/03/barrel-society-update-and-upcoming-beers.html

Here is blog post of mine from a couple months ago, maybe you'll get some ideas about things you'd like to try from it. FTR, this is not intended to be self promotion... The barrel society in question has closed its window for membership signups.

 

You can still brew it and see what happens, plus you're only out $10 on the barrel right?