Home of the BrewNosers

Anyone doing barrel aging on the homebrew scale? I've done a few beers with oak chips and/or wine but I'm very seriously considering buying a new 23 litre barrel. It's a bit of an investment at about $230 all in but it's something I've been wanting to do for a while. I would be brewing almost exclusively pale beers in the saison/mixed fermentation realm. I'll link below to what I'm looking at. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone with experience with this!

https://bochart.ca/catalogue/

I haven't made the jump yet...but have been doing alot of reading about this. From everything i've come across...barrel aging on this scale shouldn't be done for a really long period of time because of the high surface area to volume ratio. Check out milk the funk link below...there's great info in there. Also do a search through the facebook page as well.

http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Barrel

I think that’s who I bought from, I got the 40L . Quite the coincidence since I’m just about to bottle my cab/sav blend I did in it, I just today brewed my dunkelbock that I’m harvesting yeast from to do my raspberry sour triplebock in the barrel, and I just kegged 5 gallons of Flanders red aged on cherrys.

After buying the barrel it took a very long time to condition with steam.

I did a cab sav/merlot blend first to mellow the oak. About a month I think.

Next I did a Belgian triple for two months

Then I committed it to sour with two packs of rosselaire blend and did a Flanders red. After 6 months I took out half and began a bit of a solera, aged the half I took out on cherries and topped up the barrel with fresh beer.

Right now I’m fermenting the dunkelsbock for the garrison comp and I’m going to harvest all the yeast from that and lager 12 gallons of a tripplebock. When it’s finished I’ll add it to the barrel and haul out the entire solera and age half on some berries and keep half natural.

So I’ve gotten some THP in my Flanders red which is TetraHydopyridine. I am super sensitive to it unfortunately and I taste it in many commercial sours. Something I’m working on.

A very enjoyable experience it has been and the barrel takes on more meaning as does it’s contents as the months trudge onward.





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Very cool! Sounds a like a whole new layer of fun. So you started with wine to get the barrel ready/ add that wine character before moving on to using it for beer? I was considering the same thing but with white wine because my favourite beers tend to be aged in white wine barrels. Weirdly I'd much prefer to actually drink red but what are you gonna do?

Let me know if you make any headway with the THP. I’ve got it 2 if 3 batches of sour beer that I fermented in glass. I seem to get it after I bottle the beer.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

CartoonCod wrote:Let me know if you make any headway with the THP. I’ve got it 2 if 3 batches of sour beer that I fermented in glass. I seem to get it after I bottle the beer.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yup I noticed it more after transferring it out of the barrel, I don’t know if it gets roused out or if a little bit of oxygen brings it forward or sudden temp change. Who knows?

I don’t know if I mentioned above but people often use wine yeast for bottle conditioning and have noticed it helped clear it up.

If anyone is at the meet tonight I’ll have a growler of my Flanders that has a little bit on the finish. It doesn’t ruin my experience of a beer but I wonder how much greater it could be without it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

MikeMorrison wrote:Very cool! Sounds a like a whole new layer of fun. So you started with wine to get the barrel ready/ add that wine character before moving on to using it for beer? I was considering the same thing but with white wine because my favourite beers tend to be aged in white wine barrels. Weirdly I'd much prefer to actually drink red but what are you gonna do?

Yes the wine is to extract most of the flavor from the barrel so that the resulting beer isn’t extremely over oaked. I would love to try a Baltic porter or RIS in a virgin barrel but I doubt you would even get past a month before it would be overpowering. The wine can take it.

I can see a white wine barrel imparting less of that tannin flavor and less color obviously. It seemed that my triple which was my first beer to go through it after the red wine was overly phenolic which I’m sure was emphasized by the wine and the oak, I used big spruces pin cherry/wlp530 blend so that’s a variable as well.

Am I wrong to say white wines are rarely barrel aged (wine in general isn’t anymore) Chardonnay perhaps?



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I haven’t heard of wine yeast clearing up THP, I’ll be sure to try it next time I bottle!
I’m going to try and make it to the meeting tonight. I’ll bring a turbid mash sour.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk