Barrel project

[admin]

I want to get one going. Anyone interested?

Idea is we buy an ex whiskey barrel between us, decide a recipe, do a load of brews each to fill the barrel, as it takes about 200L to fill it. (You really need to be an AG brewer for this to work.)

Leave it to age and then get some excellent beer 9 or 12 months later.

[irish_goat]

Nice idea, much do barrels cost do you know? Also, I'd assume there is more skill required than simply lashing the beer in and just leaving it.

[nigel_c]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tcguhvXvUY&feature=plcp

[kev]

Sounds good, id be interested

[Padraic]

I'm in!

We can age if for whatever amount of time it takes us to collect enough bottles!

A barrel aged imperial stout has been on my list for a while now!

[johnrm]

Interesting idea, I was toying with this and ended up with the idea of oak chips soaked in whiskey dropped into secondary or keg.

[Spud395]

The South east club has been discussing this and are now looking for a smaller barrel than the normal 55 gallon whiskey cask, they do exist but are rare.

A few things we came up with that may or may not effect others. The brews would nearly want to be fermented in wherever the cask was going to be filled, you dont want to be transporting fermented beer.

We also came to the conclusion it would be more interesting if we all brewed our own recipe and the final brew would be a blend, a true one off.
RIS being our choice of brews as well, everyone design their recipe to a target gravity.

[Spud395]

Tucan has that info, I'll drop him a text

[Rossa]

I'm in. Who has the space?

[MAF]

I want to get one going. Anyone interested?

Idea is we buy an ex whiskey barrel between us, decide a recipe, do a load of brews each to fill the barrel, as it takes about 200L to fill it. (You really need to be an AG brewer for this to work.)

Leave it to age and then get some excellent beer 9 or 12 months later.

just curious, why does it have to be AG?

[kev]

Been chatting to a few guys and looks like we might be able to get a group together to give this a go in Galway, it'd be great if we could piggyback on the barrel order if the source has more than 1 available.

If a few different clubs/areas did it, it'd be a great "national" project for the home brew club

[Tucan]

The only barrels I could find for sale in Ireland are in Kilkenny for €40
@ Kilkenny architectural salvage for
The old woolen mill
Beach road
Kilkenny.
But I've no idea of their condition.
Best I could find in the UK was new barrels (100 l ) for £109
(50 l ) for £94
Available from www.thebarrelmakers.co.uk
They have a good range but I don't know if they export

[Dr Jacoby]

Some words of advice based on our experiences with the whiskey barrel we picked up in Kilbeggan. If you get it fresh from a distillery, having just been emptied and then sealed straight away, you needn't worry too much about sanitising the barrel. We gave ours a quick starstan rinse, which helped to remove some loose charred wood from the inside. If you don't rinse the barrel at all you're likely to get a massive whiskey hit, even with a Russian imperial stout, which was what we used the first time round.

Also, try to get a few bungs. We ended up having to chisel these away each time we opened the barrel so its nice to have a few spare.

My main advice however (and Tube will know what I mean here since he was with us the last time we emptied the barrel) is to use a pump to remove the aged beer. Barrels are big beasts and it can be a serious pain using siphons. The other solution is to set the barrel on its side (which is how the distilleries store them), but this requires a specially built platform. If there is a carpenter here it would be a nice project. Otherwise, store the barrel upright and use a pump.

Other than that I'd say think carefully about your recipe. It's a lot of beer to waste if something goes wrong or you misjudge the bitterness or alcohol level. Our beers always dropped a little further in the barrel so take that into account when calculating your final ABV.

Best of luck lads! It's a great project to get stuck into 

[Cathal O D]

Im definatly up for this.

[brenmurph]

I can volumteer to make a durable stand if ye want. I have the workshop and plenty of 4x2 about.