[morticaixavier]

So with all this talk about fast turnaround on beers (nice article by the way Drew) It got me thinking. I have a 1.100 barley wine heading into it's second week in primary. It is destined for a 20 litre rum barrel which is currently sitting in my spare shower. I have been soaking the outside of the barrel with water every couple of days in hope of preventing too much drying and was planning on going three weeks (given a finished beer in that time) before introducing the two. But now I wonder. Given that I did everything right with the BW (Except pure O2), Yeat nutrient, lots of shaking and a whole big, fresh eyast cake from a 5 gallon batch of bitter, can I get away with moving the beer to the barrel after two weeks (given a finished beer)?

And more importantly can I actually produce as good a beer as if I had left it for three weeks?

It appears to be more or less done fermenting, the krausen has dropped and the temp has dropped to ambient. Havn't taken a gravity reading yet though.

Trying to balance letting the yeast have plenty of time and not ruining a really nice barrel with lack of filler.

on a side note do I need to be sure to have 20 litres in the 20 litre barrel or if there is only 17-19 will that be okay?
Thoughts?

[a10t2]

As long as it has a few days after active fermentation ends, I don't think there's any harm in moving it. Schedule permitting, I generally move beers about three days after they reach FG. If you're doing an extended conditioning stage then the small amount of yeast you transfer over will continue to do some work too, although with a proper pitch and healthy fermentation I doubt it'll be needed. By that point you're mostly looking for aging rather than yeast metabolism.

I'd try to keep the barrel as full as possible. A little oxidation is part of the character of a barrel-aged beer, but having a lot of head space probably isn't a good idea. You'll lose some beer to the "angels' share" too.

[denny]

You'll lose some beer to the "angels' share" too.

Yep.  Every barrel aged beer I've ever done we've had extra beer in a keg ready to top off the barrel as it evaporates.

[morticaixavier]

Cool, thanks y'all!