I've done wood aged beers in the past, both clean and sour, but those were always done with toasted oak cubes that were either boiled or soaked in spirits before being added to the beer for aging. So this will be my first beer using an actual barrel and I couldn't be more excited. I have at least two clean beers I want to put though the barrel to strip away most of the big, bold flavors that the wood and whiskey will impart before aging sours in it, the first one will be detailed below, a big, luscious, thick Russian Imperial Stout, and the second will be a slightly left of center choice in an English Dark Mild.

For the Russian Imperial Stout, I'm using a recipe I've used multiple times before and really enjoy. Last year I brewed the same recipe, and aged it on oak cubes soaked in Crown Royal. I ended up loving it so much I blew through the keg and bottles before they were even a few months old! The recipe for this years batch is as follows:

Russian Imperial Stout Recipe, batch size 10.5 gallons:

Grains

26 lbs American 2-Row

2 lbs Chocolate Malt (350 SRM)

2 lbs Flaked Oats (Quick Oats from the store)

1 lbs Crystal Malt 40L

8oz Crystal Malt 120L

8oz Black Patent Malt (500 SRM)

Mash at 156F for 1 hour, batch sparge, and boil for 90 min

Boil additions:

2.25 oz Warrior Hops @First Wort Hopping

1 oz each Glacier and Liberty hops @30 minutes

0.75 oz of Norther Brewer @15 minutes

2 lbs of Dark Brown Sugar @15 minutes

Irish Moss @15 minutes

Fermentation Plan:

Grew up 2L starter of WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast, and used 1L for each carboy

Ferment at 62F for 5 days, then free rise to 70F and hold at 70F for 1 week

Bring carboys to basement (65F-70F), let settle for 3 days, then rack to barrel

Add 100g of dark brown sugar (boiled and cooled in 1 cup of water) to help purge oxygen from both the beer and barrel to help prevent oxidation.

It was another simple brew day, which is always good to have. I filled up my boil kettle with water straight from my tap, made no water adjustments, and heated up the water so I could mash in. After mashing, I added boiling water to heat the mash up to 170 so I could kill enzymatic activity and start collecting my first runnings.