Beer Forum

I would go with 2.6

Indeed.

Anyone finish this one up yet? I just brewed it up last week and it is happily chugging away still. I'll try and update in a couple months after I oak it. But would love to hear from anyone that completed this one and details on your process.

Not holding my breath as the board seems dead though.

edit: My main question was regarding the fermentation. They didn't cover it too well in the show. There was mention of 6 mos. on oak (stating that Ron said this), and Mike only did it for 3 mos. Been listening over and over again to the podcast and Ron says they try and give it at least 1 month in the oak. Then one month in the bottle before releasing. Didn't hear 6 mos. come out of his mouth, unless that fell to the floor during edit. So, what I'm getting at in a very round about way, what is the fermentation regime I should be shooting for? It's only been a week on the dregs, and looks like it has a ways to go, so I'm not in a hurry.

To be honest I can't remember much about my fermentation regime. I split the batch and bottled some "straight" i.e. without bugs and aged the rest on oak chips and with bugs for about 3 months before bottling. It has been in the bottle for about a year now and the "dirty" version is pretty damn funky. Maybe a little thin. The "straight" version is a bit thick and heavy though, so I'm planning a blending experiment.

Good information. Thank you.

It's coming up on two weeks now for me. I'll be testing the gravity and moving it over onto some oak chips this Saturday. Will be brewing a 10gal batch same day and throwing it on the cake. Will update as I go.

Transferred the first batch onto about .85 oz. of medium toast oak cubes. Brewed the bigger batch the same day and through it on the cake. Fermentation was violent and quick - as expected. The first one tasted pretty close to the real deal, even without the cubes yet. It was a month last week and I bottled the first batch and through the second batch on about 10lbs of cherries. First one smelled heavily of bourbon but did not taste overly oaky. The second one started refermentation and is chugging away one week later. The first one is pretty damn close to the commercial beer. Should be pretty good when carbonated. Now I can't wait to try the second one.

Brewing this now. I decided to try and build up yeast from the dregs of 4 bottles of Jolly Pumpkin (had a lot of fun emptying those), so I am using that as my yeast. Started with an 800 ml 1030 starter, and stepped it up to 2 Liters yesterday. It just passed full krausen, so I'm going to pitch it in the beer today. I'll let you know how it goes.

I added the oak about two weeks ago. I used some cubes from a previous Flanders Red that I made. Checked on it today and here are some pics: