Fruiting A Sour

I don't have much experience with fruiting my sour beers. The only one I have fruited was a 1 gallon test batch with blueberries where I used 1lb/gal. That was enough to get great color but very little flavor.

I have a batch of golden sour in a 10 gallon barrel that had reached 1.000 but was only very lightly tart. I wanted a little more out of the beer so I decided to fruit it. This will give it a little more sugar to keep fermenting and hopefully some nice fruit character as well.

I decided to use what was on sale this time of year and that happened to be nectarines and plums at my local grocery store. I purchased enough to use 2lb/gal. Obviously I'm splitting the 10 gallon batch into two 5 gallons batches, one for each fruit.

I set the fruit out on my table for a week to ripen. I tasted each fruit and neither were so delicious I couldn't stay out of them, so it may be a mistake using them, but I already bought 20 lbs of fruit so onward we go.

It's been about a month since I cut up the fruit and siphoned the beer on top of them. There's been very little fermentation activity. The fruit is floating and any parts exposed to air are rotting. I swirl the carboys to cover them in acidic beer, I don't know if this is helping or not. Hopefully it keeps the fruit from molding and I don't lose 10 gallons of beer :(

I thought a pellicle was forming but it turned out to be slight fermentation activity, hopefully were gaining a little more tartness.

The beer has quite a bit of fruit pectin haze now where it was perfectly clear when I first fruited it so I think the fruit is breaking down. Another month and I should be able to cold crash and bottle. Waiting is the hardest part!

Homebrewing Big Beers

Our homebrew club recently used club dues to buy a 30 gallon used whiskey barrel. We talked about the purchase as a club and also the brews that would go in the barrel. We decided the first brew would be a nice big, heavy and dark beer that could handle the strong whiskey flavor that's likely to come from a freshly used barrel.

We discussed putting a second clean beer through the barrel, an option I was in favor of, but some of our more experienced members have had bad experiences trying to use a barrel more than once for cleans beers so we're going to use the barrel for sours after this initial batch. If you've had success using a barrel multiple times for clean beers I'd be interested in hearing about the experience in the comments.

Our club president loves his big, rich, club you over the head with a hammer imperial stouts so he provided the recipe for this brew. We served the same beer in Baltimore on club night at this years Homebrewcon only it wasn't barrel aged. I personally thought it was the best beer on tap but it didn't win the popular vote.

We had 4 club members get together and brew their portions together yesterday and three others who are brewing at home and bringing the beer in for transfer. All together we had 7 members at the brew session to help with handling of such a large beer which brings me to the gist of this post.

Big Beer Gotchas and Tips

Cost - Brewing a 5 gallon batch of Russian Imperial Stout can be a surprisingly expensive undertaking. Instead of 10-15 lbs of grain you're likely buying around 30 lbs of grain. Even if you make yeast starters you're likely looking at $50-$75 for all the ingredients. This beer cost $59 with the 15% discount  we get at our LHBS. That means we spent $420 to fill the 30 gallon barrel.

Equipment - You can pretty much figure on needing two of everything when you're brewing a 12% beer. 2 Yeast Starters, 2 mash tuns, 2 buckets for milled grain and two brewers ;-). The yeast starters are a must. A beer this big (1.126) needs a lot of happy yeast so you need two 1.5 liter starters. You might be able to get away with 1 mash tun if you have at least a 12 gallon tun and keep your water to grain ratio at 1 qt / 1 lb of grain. This is a pretty thick mash but it will convert. I brewed an 8.5 gallon batch this time around with a 17.5 gallon tun and at 1 qt / 1 lb grain it was overflowing when I tried to stir. Tip: with a thick mash like this I found it helps efficiency to stir every 15 minutes. 

Helpers - You probably can brew a big beer by yourself but having help makes the day much more pleasant. Lifting, mashing in, boil over watching and being able to grab a bite to eat are all good reasons to have some help. If you are brewing alone a pump is the next best option!

Efficiency - Maybe this is just me but this is my second RIS and it's the second time I came nowhere close to hitting my preboil estimate. If you normally have 72% effciency you might be able to count on 60% efficiency but 55% is more likely in my experience. The first one was way off and I needed to add 3 lbs dme to hit my numbers. This time around wasn't that bad I was only off by about 9 GU but it was still around 14% off my normal efficiency. If you don't know how to adjust your gravity based on your preboil SG measurement, byo has a good article here.

Time - A longer mash and sparge are not required but help a little with hitting your numbers. You also get the most bang for your buck if you take a second runnings and produce another beer after the Imperial. I do this with any beer over 1.070 because it really only takes an extra hour to get another 5 gallons of beer if you plan the day out.

Fermentation - Big beers bring big fermentation. This means blow off tubes, blow off tubes, blow off tubes! Don't use a standard airlock, you'll regret it.

I'm sure there's more and if I think of anything I'll do a follow up post. If you have any advice I'd love to hear it in the comments.

The Barrel Program Begins...

While we had a beautiful day (in February in Western N.Y.!) this past Sunday I used the opportunity to build some 10 gallon barrel rails. It was a pretty simple procedure since I doubt I will ever go beyond two levels and more than 50 gallons of sour beer.

I currently only have two barrels (one of which isn't even mine) and it looks a little sparse but I will build on it as time and money permit. The spacing isn't perfect but I can make then up with different size blocks for the second tier. I used scrap wood, screws and cinder blocks I had laying around so I don't have any extra investment in the racking system.

Milk Stout Plus Roeselare and Belgian Sour Mix 1

Last week in Western N.Y. was a cold one. I had planned to brew on Saturday but when I woke up it was -10 degrees Fahrenheit according to my trusty kitchen window thermometer.

Being a completely obsessed brewer with a heat source in the Horse Barn Brewer I gave it the good ole college try but it just wasn't meant to be. I ruined a potable hose that provides water to the Horse Barn Brewery from the house. Then the hose spigot was frozen up and I nearly gave myself frost bite trying to thaw it with a propane torch. I went to change the tank and started cross threading the nozzle, when I backed it off gases leak onto and through my gloved hands. I followed the recommend procedures and saved my pinky finger! :)

So I decided to make up for an entire weekends loss of brewing by brewing triple the amount this weekend. I needed something to top off the Bourbon County Stout sitting in my basement. There's far too much head-space in that barrel and the barrel's not mine. I also wanted to start fermenting two new sours to fill a new barrel I was getting third hand for free.

I received a new 15 gallon kettle for my Christmas 2015 and a new 70qt converted cooler mash tun for my birthday 2016 so I had enough equipment to brew the beers side by side. As it turns out this didn't save me any time over pipe-lining the brews, mostly because I forgot to put the bazooka screen in the new mash tun, Doh!

I also found out that I was low on roasted barley and a few other ingredients for my milk stout so had to make some last minute substitutions. I'm far to over confident in my memory which I know isn't great.

All things considered the brew day was a success. I have 12 gallons of sour wort fermenting away and 7 gallons of Milk Stout all of which hit their numbers.

Here are a few photos of this "epic" brew day.

Bourbon County Stout Clone - Barrel Time!

Around the second week of December 2015 a couple of the brew club members and myself got together and brewed a Bourbon County Stout Clone. You can view the recipe here.

This was a mammoth brew day. We ran into all sorts of problems from not enough room in two 10 gallon mash tuns, not enough room in a 15 gallon kettle to not being able to get the barrel to seal. All in all I was in the brew room for about 9 hours.

The O.G. ended up being 1.129 after adding 3lbs of dry malt extract to the boil kettle. It was obvious we weren't going to hit our numbers when we took the preboil gravity so we added the extract. F.G. was 1.039, a little higher than expected (1.035) but after tasting the hydrometer sample I'm not a all worried. This beer is going to be fantastic with some age on it.

We eventually got the used apple brandy barrel to seal (we used apple brandy) and transferred the fermented brew into it. Here are some pics.