BILLY BREW
Grandmaster Brewer
Brewed a bourbon barrel stout for my homebrew club. First attempt at this.
Now you tell me where I went wrong;
regular grain bill for a dry stout.
soaked oak chips in vanilla Jim Beam for 3 weeks.
Did an ordinary gotte cooler mash and a sixty minute boil.
So far so good
Used Irish stout yeast, smack pack
Went into the primary and ferment started pretty quickly, nothing unusual. OG 1.038 ( a tad low, but okay)
Ferment settled down and I transferred to secondary at 5 days. Put the chips and stainless steel balls in a grain bag and put into secondary. Dumped the 4oz of vanilla bourbon that the chips were soaking in into the carboy with them.
Everything seems to be fine so far...
at 14 days I transferred to a trieiery to get off the wood. Took a reading and it was at 1.020...Oh oh.
But no off smells or floaters, so I figured a bit more time.
It has now been a month and I just checked the reading in preparation to bottle, and the stuff is still at 1.020. Not much bourbon or oak flavor or smell. Didn't taste bad, just non nondescript.
WHAT THE HELL DID I DO?
If I boil up some brown sugar and putit in with some yeast energizer, do you think it would come to life after all this?
Now you tell me where I went wrong;
regular grain bill for a dry stout.
soaked oak chips in vanilla Jim Beam for 3 weeks.
Did an ordinary gotte cooler mash and a sixty minute boil.
So far so good
Used Irish stout yeast, smack pack
Went into the primary and ferment started pretty quickly, nothing unusual. OG 1.038 ( a tad low, but okay)
Ferment settled down and I transferred to secondary at 5 days. Put the chips and stainless steel balls in a grain bag and put into secondary. Dumped the 4oz of vanilla bourbon that the chips were soaking in into the carboy with them.
Everything seems to be fine so far...
at 14 days I transferred to a trieiery to get off the wood. Took a reading and it was at 1.020...Oh oh.
But no off smells or floaters, so I figured a bit more time.
It has now been a month and I just checked the reading in preparation to bottle, and the stuff is still at 1.020. Not much bourbon or oak flavor or smell. Didn't taste bad, just non nondescript.
WHAT THE HELL DID I DO?
If I boil up some brown sugar and putit in with some yeast energizer, do you think it would come to life after all this?