Texas Breakfast Stout

Texas Whiskey Barrel

I've been wanting to do a barrel aged ale since I heard about barrel aged ales but I thought it was a pipe dream. The smallest barrels I'd seen were 35 gal. and it's pretty difficult to make that much beer. For my birthday though, the wife was able to find me a 5 gal. whiskey barrel from a Texas distillery and had it shipped right to the house. It's the perfect size! Now I have a new problem... filling it.

To me, the only beer allowed to have a big oak and whiskey flavor is a big stout. The only stout I've really brewed and liked has been the Guinness clone, but that has a relatively low OG of ~1.040. We need to go bigger. So I found a recipe for a Founder's Breakfast Stout clone that seemed to fit the bill. I couldn't quite mash as much grain as the recipe called for but I still need 5 gal. of beer to fill the barrel. So I cut a few lbs of base malt out of the recipe to fit the system. We're targeting an OG of 1.060.

Brew Recipe

Brew Date: 12/1/2013
Style: Breakfast Stout
Batch Volume: 5.5 gal.
Type: All Grain
Color: 54 SRM
Target Bitterness: 25 IBU
Target OG: 1.060
Estimated FG: 1.015

Grist

9.3 lb. Two Row

22 oz. Flaked Oats

16 oz. Chocolate Malt

12 oz. Roasted Barley

9 oz. Black Patent

7 oz. Crystal 120L

0.5 oz. Nugget @ 60 (13.9% AA)

0.5 oz. Mt. Hood @ 30 (4.3% AA)

0.5 oz. Mt. Hood @ 2 (4.3% AA)

2 oz. Ground Arabica coffee
1 oz. Unsweetened cocoa powder

1 pkg. S-04 English ale yeast

Brew Notes

Mash Temp: 152 °F
Mash Time: 60 min.
Boil Time: 60 min.
Fermenter Volume: 5.5 gal.
OG: 1.070

Bottling Notes
FG: 1.012
ABV: 7.6%
Calories: 230
Carbonation: 2.0 Volumes CO2

Collected 4.5 gal of mash water. Less than the usual 5.5 gal because of the large grist. Raised water to 160. Temperature after mash in was 152. Still some head space in mash tun so heated extra water to 170 and added to tun. Raised temp to 153.

After mashing I decided to try sparging to raise efficiency. Put grain bag in 3 gallon pot and filled with hot tap water. Stirred for a few minutes then removed the bag and squeezed it out. Added collected wort to the already heating boil kettle. Boiled for 60 minutes. Added 2 oz. of coarsely ground Arabica coffee and 1 oz. powdered cocoa just after boil. Collected about 5.25 - 5.5 gal. of wort at about 1.070. That's 10 gravity points more than usual. Batch sparging raised efficiency from the usual 70% to 82%! Pitched yeast at 75 degrees.

Update 12/7/13 - Pulled a gravity sample today. Fermented down to 1.014, 7.4% abv. Tastes pretty good. Medium roasty, a little sweet, and a little alcohol-y which I hope will mellow out but might not have a chance with it aging in a whiskey barrel for a month. Will be racking to the barrel next weekend.

Update 12/15/13 - Time to rack to the whiskey barrel! Filled the barrel with 5 gal. of 160 degree water for an hour like the instructions suggest. I think the reason for this is twofold - to sanitize and to swell the barrel to prevent leaks. Temperature immediately dropped to 150 after filling the barrel. After an hour drained and rinsed with StarSan. Little black roasted barrel chunks fell out of the barrel with every rinse. Will have to filter the beer with a hop bag when I rack it to bottle. Planning to let this sit for four weeks to pick up some oak and whiskey character. SG was still 1.014.

Update 1/12/13 - Bottling day! Beer has a strong oak and whiskey aroma. Perfect in the nose. I think it absorbed a little too much whiskey flavor but after aging time will tell. FG was 1.012. Tasted a little thinner than I'd prefer but not too bad. Cracked a couple of bottles during bottling. Should start looking into kegging. Not sure how many reuses you get out of a bottle but it can't be that many. Primed with 3.0 oz. corn sugar. With 4.6 gal bottled this works out to 2.0 volumes of C02. This seems like just the right amount of carbonation for a flavorful stout.

Forgot to wrap a hop bag around the autosiphon to filter out the barrel char particulate but the bottom of the bottling bucket looked pretty clean after bottling. Looks ok, but try not to forget next time. Now the big question... what gets oak aged next?