Yesterday I racked the amber to secondary, where it was greeted by a pile of toasted oak chips that had been soaking in bourbon for a week. The smell of the chips alone, while delightful in its own right, was a bit strong. Hopefully 5 gallons of beer sitting on top of them for two weeks will impart a nice toasted bourbon barrel flavor without the knockout volatility of the chips alone.
I’ll be interested to hear how it turns out. I just had a Goose Island Boubon County Stout. (courtesy of Bryan @ http://www.brewlounge.com)
http://www.gooseisland.com/beers/beers.asp
Wow, that was awesome. A little goes a long way though. Do you think yours will be a sipper too?
Is it time to keg it yet? It sounds tasty, let the carbonation begin.
I bottled my Barleywine a few days ago, it was supposed to be an Imperial Red, but at 10.8% ABV I had to re-evaluate the style.
I’ve determined that it is actually too cold in my house for bottle carbonation to take place. So I’m going to take all my homebrew to work and place it below the mash tun for a couple of weeks. I tested the theory with a bottle of my oatmeal stout a few weeks ago and it carbonated wonderfully.
One more week on the chips, then keg. You wanna run caustic through my kegs for me?
Holy Jebus! I misread the part about bottle-conditioning and though you were going to take a keg to work to get it to carbonate and was having a very difficult time understanding why. Probably a beer best bottled. I’ll trade you a bourbon for a red barleywine.
How did this come out? I’m think about doing something similar with a Belgian dubbel but instead of bourbon I’m thinking of soaking the chips in a pinot noir or something similar.