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Soulless end game

Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Derrick.

After months of hard work and patience we finally came to an end on our homebrewing experiment. Our gingered irish red aged in a buffalo trace barrel named “Soulless” was ready to be bottled/kegged. We got the boys together and a bottling party.

It wasn’t a party as so much as a sweat shop. After kegging 15 gallons, we still had 40 gallons (give or take) to bottle. It went amazingly smooth compared to what I thought it would. Thanks to Kell, Kevin, and Nick we rocked out 6 cases of 12oz bottles, and another 4 cases of bombers.

Now for the actual beer and how it turned out

• Appearance – The color turned out to be a copperish orange, unfiltered with a tan head.
• Aroma – On the nose, starts off with caramel and a hint of spice. Very little hops aroma, but in the end the whiskey dominates the overall aroma.
• Taste - What a deliciously complex beer. The first thing that comes to mind is a whiskey spiced apple with vanila notes and just a hint of oak. The fuggels brings just enough bittering but not enough to dominate the pallet. As the beer finishes, it leaves the spiced taste with hints of whiskey and you finally get the ginger.
• Mouthfeel – Overall, its just a bit heavier than what you expect out of an irish red. But just slightly.
• Overall Impression – I absolutely love this beer. It turned out completely different than what I had expected. But that is irrelevant, what is relevant is that it tastes amazing, and this beer is in my top 2 homebrews.

With all the hard work that went into this project. Seeing our beer being drank at a public setting at a party (a going away party) was the final treat to brewing this beer. Something is said about brewing a beer that people not only enjoy, but come up to you during the party and tell you how much they liked it.

To sit back and watch people continue to go to the keg to pour themselves beer after beer has to be one of my favorite homebrewing experiences. It wasn’t just the beer geeks that were partaking, but the average party goer.

I want to thank the big guys Tomme Arthur from Lost Abbey, Tyler King from the Breury, and Vinnie from Russian River. Without their input, this project could have and would have turned out disastrous. It makes me happy that even the professionals love beer enough to help out a couple of amateurs in making something that we all love.

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Re-hydrating and re-racking

Posted on 19. May, 2010 by Derrick.

матрациAfter a week of first fermentation, the 6 batches were ready to be re-racked into the barrel for 2nd fermentation. That meant that I had to get the barrel re-hydrated as it was dormant for 4 months.

From what we were told, the barrel will take up to 3 gallons of whatever liquid is put inside it. So the idea was to get the outside to re-hydrate first, put some sterilized water on the inside later. Then the final step, whiskey. Just to sanitize the inside and kill some of the buggies.

The next day after the barrel was re-hydrated we re-racked it in the barrel.

But before we did that we took gravity readings.

Mine = OG 1.062, mid point 1.017
PJ’s = OG 1.072 mid point 1.029
Kevin’s = OG 1.065 mid point 1.019
Tristans = OG 1.068 mid point 1.02
Tristan’s Friend = OG 1.065 mid point 1.019
Nick’s = (we don’t have an OG) mid point 1.022

Our OG averaged at 1.068 and mid point average of 1.021. Based on a handy online ABV calculator. It says that we are up to 6.17 ABV. Decent, and I imagine that it will be even more ABV when we take the final hydrometer reading.

And here is a really boring video about the process…

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Soulless gingered Irish red, aged in whiskey (pt1)

Posted on 07. May, 2010 by Derrick.

Several of us fellas will be doing a “going away” brew for our friend who happens to be a ginger and loves whiskey.

Here is the Partial mash recipe

1lb of Colorado 2 row
1/2lb Special Roast
1/2lb Cara Red
1/2lb Crystal 75
8lbs of extract light

2oz of grated ginger at 10 minutes
Crystal at 60 and 30 minutes
Fuggles at 10 minutes

Irish Ale yeast at 65-75 degrees

6 5 gallon batches will be made and re-racked into our Buffalo Trace barrel for 2nd fermentation. I emailed several of the big guys (Russian River, Boulevard, Avery, Lost Abbey, and The Bruery) and got some great feedback on how to re-condition our whiskey barrel. Some of our answers can be found here brewadvice.com

We will be force carbing 15 gallons with Korny kegs and then bottle conditioning the rest for all the brewers to take with them.

You can find a small write up of Nicks batch here. My photos from my batch are following.

The house smell amazing after i grated the fresh ginger.

This is my handy dandy brew tool iBrew.

Wort Chiller (notice I had some boil over.. oops)

I got close, the recipe called for an original gravity of 1.068. I think I’m more at 1.062

BREW DOG!

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