Bourbon Barrels

Believe it or not I picked up a 5 gallon oak barrel from amazon.com, just showed up recently so I haven't had a chance to try it out. The problem in matching the bourbon barrel aged, as opposed to the barrel aged stuff is that they use barrels that were previously used for bourbon. I'm guessing I'm going to have to age something else in there first in order to get a better approximation of the flavor.

 

I have bought used barrels from a small distillery that uses 3, 5 and 10 gallon barrels. I know some breweries around here get them from A. Smith Bowman Distillery (VA Gentleman).

 

If I understand your post correctly, you have a never-before-used oak barrel, so I'll recommend that you sanitize it before using it for aging your beer. One way to sanitize it is to put some inexpensive bourbon into it and rotate it around the inside over a few days to try to kill any bugs that might reside in there. The more bourbon that you can afford to put in there then the easier this task will be. You could get enough bourbon flavor into your beer from this process, but you might want to consider dumping the sterilizing bourbon once it has done its work, and then add a little fresh bourbon of a better quality and leave it there when you add your beer.

Also, set the barrel in some water on both ends alternately to properly swell the wood so that you don't get any leaks around the ends of your barrel.

 

Got mine here 15 Gallons
http://www.keystonehomebrew.com/shop/15-gal-rye-whiskey-barrel-dad-s-hat.html
Have an 11.5% Barley wine in one and a 10% Stout in the other.
Cheers

 

I received mine and promptly put beer in them, they have had whiskey in them for a year or more and dumped and had the bung put back in them and shipped, I personally don't see any reason to put any thing in them they are pretty sterile.
I do however after the initial use I run boiling water thru them, drain and let them sit, then before the next use I put about a one half to one fifth in it and swish it around for a few days before I put more beer in them.
Cheers

 

Not true the barrel breathes anyway and takes on oxygen (not all oxygen is bad) I have 10G of imperial stout in an 15G barrel for 4 months now and it taste awesome, couple more months to go, should get even better.

 

I just bought my second Whisky barrel from these guys: http://www.homebrewing.com/equipment/whiskey-barrel.php I love them!

 

Thanks for the advice! I was planning on filling the barrel with spirits of some sort (not completely set on bourbon at this point). The directions for my barrel said to fill it with warm water and let it sit for a day or two until it stops leaking, but I do really like the idea of sticking the outside ends in water as well, I figure that can't hurt.

 

If you haven't already looked at this link, or if you didn't get much in the way of barrel prep instructions from your supplier, then check out the link from LakesideBrewing's post above. (http://www.homebrewing.com/equipment/whiskey-barrel.php) It has a pdf file about barrel usage that looks to be very helpful.

 

How about this: get a new (or used) smaller barrel (like the one in the above link) and put your own bourbon in it for 6 months to a year. Boom, your very own fresh bourbon barrel.

 

....and you have a supply of bourbon for 30 years. (Which ain't all bad.)

 

Not at all. Maybe you transfer it to a new barrel and continue the cycle? Eventually you will lose some to evaporation and absorption, but at least you have fresh bourbon barrels to make MORE BEER!!!! Mmmmmm

 

When doing that, do you also include the bourbon that you used to soak the chips? If so, how much bourbon would you add to a 5gal batch (of say, RIS)? If your answer is 'no', or 'yes' with a smaller suggested amount, what would 5oz of 120 proof bourbon do, will it need blending?

I have a batch aging now with 5 oz of bourbon, 2 oz of bourbon barrel chips, and 2 vanilla beans which stewed together for about 5 weeks before being added to the RIS for a 10month rest. I also would like to do something similar in the future as well.

 

I don't think there is a right way and a wrong way to do this faux BBA, and I don't think enough of us have tried multiple methods to be able to compare and provide feedback on the best results.

I personally soak Jack Daniels BBQ wood chips in about 10 oz. of bourbon for 4-6 weeks, and then I add just the liquid into the bucket at the time of bottling. It gets me a flavor that I enjoy, but it's not the same bourbon characteristic as found in a BCBS or KBS by any means. I've done this to a brown ale and a Scotch ale so far. I don't purposely age them either, so after the bottled beers are carbonated I'll start drinking them. They do taste slightly more mellow when I get down towards the end of all of the the bottles that I filled, so aging probably would have a nice effect. I just don't have the patience to wait that long.

 

fair enough, thanks for the feedback, if anyone else has tried this please weigh in.

i used 5oz knob creek single barrel 9 year old bourbon (120 proof) and soaked 2oz of bourbon barrel chips (from morebeer) and 2 vanilla beans cut in half and sliced long-ways for about 5 weeks then put the whole thing into the RIS for a secondary that will last from early february until december when i'll bottle (or keg if i'm doing that by then). by batch aging i'm hoping it gets really mellow.

the RIS was an og of 1.095 and an fg of 1.026. the (extract with steeping grain) recipe gave a target of 1.085 and 1.022 respectively, i'm not quite sure where an extra 10 points of OG came from but starting high and after every trick in the book to get me down from 1.038 to 1.026 i figured that was as low as it was getting.

i've only been homebrewing for about 6 months, 3 when i brewed this (on new year's), so i'm hoping that i already have a clean enough process for it to last an entire year without any issues.

 

Craft beer and brewing magazine has a good write up bridging the gaps between commercial brewers aging their beers in barrels (including a nice interview with Adam Avery) and homebrewers using them (including some good looking recipes and pointers). Also included was a list of websites to source barrels from. Good reading.