Bourbon County Clone?

You think that's enough roasted barley and black patent? it seems a little low for the amount of chocolate and crystal your using. If it were me I might step that up a just a little, but I like where your going, this should be a great beer, good luck! (you'll need it with that OG )

 

I would also up the amount of chocolate and black patent by at least a pound each if not more. Also, I would consider using WL099 (super yeast) I have used it once and it went crazy. Just make sure you mash higher if you use that yeast.

 

I actually like where your head is at with the roasted malts, I've used that much in an RIS that I think is plenty roasty. HOWEVER, mine was 1# roast barley, 8oz pale chocolate, 4oz chocolate, and 4oz black patent, and it also used 8oz of CaraAroma (weyermann's version of special B) and a pound of D-180 syrup in it, so it was getting some dark flavors elsewhere as well.

So would say split your crystal between the 60L and something in the 120-160L range, use roasted barley as the predominate roasted grain, and work in some dark candi syrup. The syrup will also help you attain a lower FG if it's subbed out for some base malt.

 

Also, mash low, you're gonna have plenty of body with that OG, regardless of how fermentable your wort is. Might as well give the yeast a fighting chance.

 

I recently brewed my second batch of Kate The Great. Mashed at 149. OG 1.105, pitched on a yeast cake and one week later it's down to 1.025. Looking forward to this next year.

 

Die myth die! Champagne yeast won't dry a beer out as it can only ferment simple sugars. Champagne yeast is great for bottling higher grav beers as it can ferment priming sugar under adverse conditions, but it won't do anything with with the maltose, maltotriose, or possible dextrins that a beer yeast didn't ferment.

Goose Island lists the ingredients on their website, quite possibly by order of amount used, so you'll need to make some recipe changes if you really want to clone it.

What sort of efficiency do you get? It could very well be higher than mine, but on a big beer I do well to hit the high 60%s, which would give around 1.121, which would have to get down to 1.011ish for 14.5% abv, which I'm guessing is lower than BCBS finishes.

Hope this helps your effort and good luck.

 

I would give it more O2 at 12 and 18 hours, but that is just me. If you see signs of fermentation, more O2 may not be a good thing.

 

Almost all the same, they use debittered black and you've got black patent. I really like castle debittered black malt. I'm jealous of your friends system. Being able to do a double brew to fill a barrel by myself would be a dangerous and fantastic.

 

As I was just in the situation, I was wondering when does it become bad to hit a big beer with O2. There are probably multiple variables including the gravity of the beer.

 

Do not mash at 150. I know it sounds overly-simple, but what we learned when first brewing does hold true. Mashing that low will, in the end, create a thinner beer with less chew and an out of balance booze. You also want to compensate for the barrel. You want an extra sweet beer because of that, even as sweet as bourbon is. Mash at 155 F.

 

Congrats on your medal. I meant "2014" for my brew and not necessarily 12 months. I think these brews benefit with at least 6 months of age.

 

I am no expert when it comes to RIS, I have brewed three so far. I followed Todd's (Brewer of Kate The Great)
instructions concerning a Kate Clone. You can read about it here:http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/official-kate-great-russian-imperial-stout-clone-217674/

 

I'll second this. My first attempt at a massive barleywine was mashed at 148 for 90 minutes, and despite using a good chunk of crystal malt (10% of the grain bill) and medium attenuating yeast (Fermented at 62 F before a d-rest), it finished wayyy to dry and boozy. Subsequent attempts solely upping the mash temp to 158 F for 60 min have resulted in fuller bodied beers that held up well to the barrel and were spot on in terms of mouthfeel and flavor (not overly sweet).