We are big fans over here of Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale. Most bourbon barrel beers I have tried are generally based on Stouts. I enjoy a good Stout, but I tend to enjoy Ale's more. This beer is a smooth beer that is well balanced. We decided to try to make a similar beer here.
Researching the internet, it was hard to find a solid recipe for this. There is much debate out there on several aspects of a beer like this. Most people feel that the recipe is probably based on the brewery's Kentucky Ale recipe, which is a blend of an Irish Red ale and English Pale Ale. However there are not many Pale Ale characteristics (I feel) in the KBBA, so I decided to go with a straight Irish Red Ale recipe to use as the base.
Here is the recipe we used:
20 lbs - US 2-Row
2.16 lbs - Crystal Malt 40L
2.16 lbs - Briess Carapils
1.62 lbs - White Wheat Malt
Mash was a 90 minute mash at 150 degrees with 33.75 quarts of water. We mashed out at 170 degrees and Sparged for 60 minutes.
Hops
24 g - Goldings, East Kent - 90 minutes
24 g - Fuggles - 45 Min
12 g - Fuggles - 15 Min
2 each - Whirfloc Tablets 15 Min
Boil was for 90 minutes.
Yeast
Wyeast 1098 - British Ale
Fermentation at 64 degrees
The second discussion is how to best oak. Some people use oak chips, some oak cubes, some oak spirals, some oak barrels, some oak for a couple of weeks, some oak for months, some pour whiskey directly into the beer. As you can see no one has a concrete formula, there is trial and error here. With that we were going to split our batch into two batches and try to methods. The first method was going to be a used 5-Gallon oak whiskey barrel. The second method was going to be soaking an American Oak, medium char spiral in whiskey for 4+ weeks. For the oak spiral I used Single Barrel Jack Daniels. No particular amount, just enough to soak the entire oak spiral.
Unfortunately the place I had identified to get used whiskey barrels ended up selling out. I did not act fast enough! I decided when I transferred to secondary to transfer both batches, but only put the oak spiral in one of the batches and sit tight on the other hoping the place would get more oak barrels. After waiting about 2 weeks though, no more oak barrels have showed up so I went ahead and got a second oak spiral soaking in whiskey now.
Tasting of this brew at the time of transfer was great. It is a very smooth beer on its own. I might have to make this as a simple ale later on. We then did a tasting a week later of the batch that had the whiskey soaked oak spiral, and I can tell this is going to be good. It isn't on the money in taste right now with the Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale, but it is tasting real good as its own. We are going to sample the beer weekly to determine when to pull off the oak. As mentioned above there is great debate on how long the oak should stay in. People indicate it is easy to go overboard. It has everything to do with volume and oak surface area, so it will vary.
More to come later with more tastings!
Here are the key metrics on this batch:
IBU's - 14.54
Color - 8.6 SRM
Calories - 245 per 12 oz (ouch!)
OG - 1.075
Anticipated FG - 1.019
Actual FG - 1.020
Anticipated ABV - 7.34% (the whiskey may increase that part)
Actual ABV - 7.21% (not factoring in whiskey)
We hit our efficiency of 83% on the nose for this batch.
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