I'm looking at brewing a Tripel like Allagash Brewing's Curieux, which is aged in Jack Daniels barrels. Not expecting to get any of this dead on given the homebrew scale and methods, but which of the cubes would you recommend to simulate a bourbon barrel? American Medium Toast cubes? Medium Plus?

I would plan on soaking them in Jack for a while and adding them to the secondary to age. Unless there's a reason to use them in both the primary and secondary?

Have never used cubes or chips so this is all new territory to me.

Instead of messing with cubes I used a 5 gallon barrel for my rye porter.



As a club project we have a 50+ gallon batch of stout in a real Jack Daniels barrel.

Wayne

Our club did that last year--Imperial Stout in a Jack barrel. I think 8 of us brewed a batch for it (a couple guys did 10 gallons). Spent about 10 months in there. Everyone loves it, I say it's got too much whiskey character, I'm thinking the second beer in that barrel will have a more optimal whiskey level. I bottled the rest of my keg when it got to be 100 degrees out, I'll pull it out of the cellar again next winter.

Where did you get the 5 gallon barrel?

Don't use chips, they taste like ass. Use cubes which take much longer, but are worth the wait. I couldn't tell you what type to use. Probably american oak, medium toast.

A few weeks ago I brewed my clone attempt of Firestone Walker's Velvet Merkin (Imperial Oatmeal Stout) which is fermented for 7 days in American Medium Plus or American Heavy Oak barrels and then aged in Heaven Hill or Angel's Share bourbon barrels for a few months. Here are some of the flavors Matt Brynildson detected from the oak:

1-3 months: Vanilla Bourbon
6 months: Coconut
12 months: Toast Almonds & Deep Coconut

On the homebrew scale I pitched 1 oz. of American Medium Plus cubes at the beginning of primary and then racked onto 1 oz. of American Medium Plus that were soaked for 21 days in Eagle Rare Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. I drained all the bourbon out of the mixture and have the bourbon cubes sitting in the keg.

Not sure I would use the bourbon cubes until I was sure primary fermentation was complete. Good luck, hope some of this helps.

Boog, where did you get your barrel from.....and how many duckets did it set you back?? Just curious....we got 2 pallets of them, and got ours for $62, including shipping, straight from the distillery.

We bought 3 or 4 pallets of them for about $40 each plus shipping for a total of about $60 each like yours. We got them from the Balcones Distillery.

Wayne

Thanks Afterlab for the aging suggestions. I have an Oatmeal Stout in a 5-gallons used Balcones barrel. When I get off this boat and back at home, it's going to be 3 months in the barrel. I was going to keg it then but I'm going to wait for the 6 months or the 12 month of aging.

For those that can't do a pallet, I got my barrel from http://www.homebrewing.org/Used-5-gallo ... _2187.html