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Author Topic: First Bourbon Barrel experience  (Read 1865 times)

Offline ppbrewclub

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First Bourbon Barrel experience
« on: March 07, 2014, 12:04:16 pm »
A few home brewers got together and we made 12 batches of NB imperial stout to put into a 56 gallon Wild Turkey bourbon barrel.  We let it ferment in primary carboys, placed into a secondary for 4 weeks and then transferred it into the bourbon barrel on Oct 1st. 

Well, tomorrow we are pulling it out to bottle and keg (corny).  I am a little worried about the bottling, as there won't be much, if any, yeast left over to carbonate.  My plan is to buy the same wyeast and put it into the bottling bucket with the priming sugar.  Is that a good plan, or should I do something else?  How about CBC-1 yeast?

Thanks for replies.  I will try and post some pix of all this for you to see.  We are really excited to finally get into that barrel!
« Last Edit: March 07, 2014, 12:58:19 pm by ppbrewclub »
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Offline ppbrewclub

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« Last Edit: March 07, 2014, 01:35:44 pm by ppbrewclub »
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Offline morticaixavier

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Re: First Bourbon Barrel experience
« Reply #2 on: March 07, 2014, 01:18:11 pm »
it would be a good idea to add some extra yeast. It might not be totally necessary but it's cheap insurance and will for sure speed up the carbonation process.

I would recommend using dry wine or champagne yeast or you could try the bottling/cask yeast you mentioned. You want to avoid using a yeast that is significantly more attenuative in beer wort than your primary yeast was so that it doesn't start working on some longer chain sugars that the primary yeast left behind and result in over carbed bottles.
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Offline cycleak

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Re: First Bourbon Barrel experience
« Reply #3 on: March 07, 2014, 05:56:03 pm »
Aloha! I brewed a Brown Ale and let it age in a Rye Whiskey Barrel for 30 days.  I then kegged it (Cornelius) and let it sit in the refrigerator for 3 days before putting it on 30 psi. of CO2 for 48 hours.  After 48 hours I took the pressure down to 7 and the beer poured fantastic with a Caramel Colored Head and tasted amazing.  I never bottled it so I can't really give you too much input there but good luck! I would however recommend letting it age for a little while if you don't really like a lot of whiskey flavor.  It did mellow over time. Hope this helps! Happy Brewing!
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Offline reverseapachemaster

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Re: First Bourbon Barrel experience
« Reply #4 on: March 09, 2014, 10:14:06 am »
I like to add yeast at bottling for anything that has aged for a long period of time. It's good insurance that you will get fast and predictable carbonation.

KV-1116 wine yeast is what I use for sour beers (along with a number of breweries). Not deterred by acidity but it is a killer strain to other sacc strains. If you are concerned about the killer strain aspect you could look at champagne yeast although I find champagne yeast will add a slight flavor contribution (biscuit-like) and it's sort of unpleasantly rough for about a month.
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Offline ppbrewclub

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Re: First Bourbon Barrel experience
« Reply #5 on: March 10, 2014, 07:19:21 am »
Thanks for the replies guys.  We added CBC-1 on the recomendation from the guy at NB.  For each 5 gallons we put into the bottling bucket we used about 1/10th of the packet of yeast (amounted to about a tsp with 500 ml of water.  HEated it up and added it to the beer with the priming sugar. 

WOW, was that stuff good.  We all had a great time getting it into our corny's and even bottling.

FG was 1.047 which was a little surprising. 
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