This is an 8 gallon Woodenville Whiskey barrel that are readily available online direct from the distillery in the Seattle, WA area. My buddy at ZooBrew and I decided to get one of these and age some big beers in that will have a quicker turn around. We decided for our first attempt that we'd do a big RIS. We liked the RIS we created for the big Red Wine Barrel so much that we decided that it would be a good comparison to do the same beer and age it in this Rye Whiskey barrel. The beer that we brewed both had final gravities in the 1.025 -1.035 range so this should be a big thick 9% Barrel aged RIS that will only need to be aged in this barrel for about two months. Next Up, Rye Wyne!
This RIS recipe tastes and smells like beautiful chocolate. Absolutely amazing nose on this!
Specific Gravity: 1.090 OG (average between two 4 gallons batch's)
Final Gravity: 1.027 FG (average between two 4 gallons batch's)
This DIPA is essentially a re-brew of a beer that I made almost two years ago that my friends absolutely freaked out about. In my mind it is a combination between Bell's Hopslam and Pliney the Elder. I lowered the IBU's on this because I wanted this to taste less bitter and more like juicy hop candy and the result is amazing. It's more on the same page as Lagunitas Sucks actually. It's a very tasty beer, and I also did a partigyle which is something I've been doing lately with all of my big beer. For the 3 gallons of Pale ale I got out of the second runnings I used the hops from the DIPA to hop stand this pale ale while it was chilling. The DIPA got 3rd place on our Lagunitas Mpls/St.Paul Homebrew comp, that we did within my homebrew club and got dinged for it's clarity (it was very hazy) and then some non experienced tasters give it very low flavor rating which was just crazy. Either way, the winner was a Black IPA that apparently was the clear winner.
Here is a quick review of the Wee Heavy that our club did for the Red Wine Barrel. I sampled this a month in and it is beautiful. Caramel, sweet, slight Oak. This will probably remain in the barrel for 6-9 months!
The clubs recipe was very simple...
Golden Promise
Half pound of chocolate malt.
Then take 2 gallons of the first runnings and boil that down to one quart to get a nice caramelization.
I accidentely bought the ingredients for the recipe below. I did do the kettle caramelization as well, and figured it wouldn't be a huge deal.
Terroir- loosely translates to"a sense of place". Yes this is a french word (so stick your nose up when you say it) and a word that is typically associated to wine, cheese, coffee, tea, but most times with wine. You see, grapes are grown all around the world, and since wine is simply fermenting grape juice, you get distinctly different wines based on the land that you've planted your grapes. Even from one hill to the other on a given vineyard will produce very different characteristics in a grape and ultimately the wine. The climate, the geography, the soil composition, the amount of rain you receive in a given year. These all effect the end product of how your wine is going to end up.
You see, in brewing today, you don't really have terroir. The grains we brewers get are typically from MN, ND, WI, Canada , Belgium, Germany, or England. The hops we use are from the West Coast (Willamette Valley), or overseas. The yeast are typically sourced from other breweries and then sold through White Labs or Wyeast. These are the products that all US brewers and brewers worldwide use to make their unique beers. The only real aspect that is different amongst brewers is the water supply. And for that very fact you have your historic beers that were brewed in certain regions because those beers work well with the water supply of that specific region.
There ARE a few things that I've done to incorporate some terroir into my brewing. I don't do anything to my water other then use camden tablets to kill the chlorine. I try to use Rahr or Breiss malt which is mid-west grown. In the past, I've tried to utilize my own homegrown hops albeit with little success. In my cider this year I let it undergo "native" fermentation utilize the local yeast that was present on the skins of the apples. I also used local "hand picked" tart cherries in my Kriek. It's not easy expressing the terroir, but these are some ways that I've tried to do that. Whenever I'm at the farmers market I buy local honey for my IPA's and DIPA's. I also plan on using other locally grown fruits in my sour beers.
The idea of using local "wild" yeast is something that a select few homebrewers have tried, and even a more select crew have had success with. You can read about homebrewers taming wild yeast and about some of these experiments HERE and HERE and HERE.
Now, on to what brought me to this point....The idea of utilizing old wine barrels is a pretty cool thing to me. Not only to you get out of it what you put into it, but you also get the additional flavors and terroir of the residents that are in the barrel from it's previous owner. In my homebrew clubs case, we have french oak red wine barrels from Lodi, CA. The winery that we recieved the barrels from practice native fermentation so we will hopefully be getting some california terroir out of these barrels, hoping that some of that local yeast has remained alive with in the wood of the barrel. Surely some of the wine produced by that yeast, and juice from the grapes are going to come through in the finished beer as well! In addition to the terroir from the Wine barrels I also took it a step further for this beer. I had saved the yeast from my cider that underwent "native" fermentation. In one of the 5 gallons of Flanders Red I pitched this slurry of local cider yeast. Now, there were some definite differences from this cider trub as opposed to what you see from brewers yeast trub. It was more compact, and a dark yellow color. I can't say if it can or will ferment any sugars, but it did kick up fermentation faster then my other batch of Flanders that was sitting right next too it. Either way, we will have some local terroir in these barrels and hopefully it has a positive effect on the resulting package beer!
Here is the recipe that I brewed for the Flanders Barrel project. 13 of us are brewing 5 gallon batch's to be put into the barrel in a few weeks. I actually brewed 1O gallons although this is a 5 gallon recipe below. I fermented mine with ECY20. ECY02, and a portion with local cider yeast!
Flanders Red Ale to be Aged in French Oak Red Wine Barrel
