I acquired 2 bourbon barrels from Goose Island yesterday. For one of the barrels I decided to do a Club Vote on what should go inside the barrel.
The first step of this vote will be brainstorming, so throw any idea that comes to your mind. I will let the brainstorming go for 2-3 days.
I will then look at the ideas that seem to be the most popular and narrow it down to 3-5 choices. With these choices we can then vote on the beer that will go inside this barrel.
Once we come up with a beer we can then formulate a recipe.
I could whip up a recipe pretty quick from the specs listed on goose island's website if it gets voted in:
Style: Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout Alcohol by Volume: 14.5% International Bitterness Units: 60 Color: Midnight Hops: Willamette Malt: 2-Row, Munich, Chocolate, Caramel, Roast Barley, Debittered Black
We could easily do something akin to the breakfast stout barrel that we have going where we don't add any flavors to the stout until after it's been barreled. After we removed from the barrel we could experiment with putting vanilla in some batches, coffee in some, berries in some. We could have variants of all the Bourbon County beers. Just an idea.
I also like the idea of a big brown ale with significant amounts of honey in it. But I like the stout better :).
I wasn't a huge fan of Bramble Rye either. The bourbon barrel variants all mask the alcohol much better for some reason. Plus I'm bitter because they could have made more coffee instead.
i like this idea!
Kevin Saberniak said:
...igz...
I read in article last night in BYO about brewing with honey. I then thought about a barrel aged honey ale. Maybe something like an imperial brown ale brewed with honey. They talked in the article about all kinds of honey and what flavors you can get out of these honeys. I think a few of these honeys would compliment the bourbon quite nice.
Tonight I will narrow down the list and we can start voting on the choices. Thanks for the brainstorming! If you have anymore ideas post them before tonight.
Kevin Saberniak
ugh bramble rye was so bad why would you want to clone it? Ruin a perfectly good barreled beer :(
Why not try recreating the greatest thing to ever come out of a BCS barrel? Something that may never be brewed again by Goose Island. Vanilla Stout!
Why not add some fruit a la the bramble rye after the stout has been in the barrel a few months?
I'm gonna have to go with stout...barrels love stout. And we haven't done one in the bcs barrels yet.
Second choice would be a barleywine.
the stout in the barrel is so obvious. cant we get more creative than that? if you were a barrel, would you want to be stuck with a stout for another year??
...igz...
Thomas a wee-heavy is already in the works for my barrel. It has a small amount of peated malt in it.
I like the idea of a stout, I also like the idea of a peat-smoked wee-heavy. Smoked beers are polarizing but if we do our research I think we can brew up a great peat-smoked wee-heavy.
I hope no one else puts in a word so we can do a stout!
I vote for a giant stout similar to what bourbon county is. None of the bourbon county barrels have had a stout brewed for them yet and I'd love to see it happen. It just seems like the obvious first choice to me. The gravity would have to be something monstrous. As big as the old ale.