Oak aging?

[WalesAles]

Great post Jocky!
Chunks for me then.
Going to put them in a `Red Ale`. Brewed this before with 100gr Tomahawk dry hop, `twas BLM.
Brewed also with 50gr Mosaic and 50gr Equanot dry hop, this was more BLM!

WA

This tap thing still won`t tork!

[rpruen]

Thanks to you both for the tips. I have read those topics and the blog, so hopefully know what to expect.

Hopefully I'll know in a few months time

Regards

Richard

[rpruen]

Thanks for all the tips.

I have made a barley wine, and dumped it into the barrel while still fermenting. My thoughts on this are that if it works for sherry casks, then its probably good enough for my beer. This will likely be a throw away batch, much as I hate to throw out good booze, experiments must be done.

I will keep you updated with how it goes, and how the contents taste when fermented out. I'm assuming the beer will be predominantly barrel flavoured at this point.

regards

Richard

[WalesAles]

This will likely be a throw away batch, much as I hate to throw out good booze, experiments must be done.

rpruen,
Don`t throw it out!
Bottle some and let it `age` a bit. You might have a nice `Oak Aged Barley Wine` .

WA

[rpruen]

I had to give it a try, so tapped off about 30ml

Smell: boozy with vanilla notes (interesting as it certainly wouldn't smell like that normally) and a bit of smoke.

Taste: surprisingly sweet, vanilla again, and oak. The sweetness is possibly because it hasn't fermented out yet, but I'm almost sure it sweeter now than when it went into the barrel.

Looks: Pale amber gold (not much change, a bit darker maybe)

Nothing revolting so far, in fact it reminds me of desert wine a bit. The yeast seems to go a lot slower in oak, or it should have fermented out by now.

You might be right, bottling is a possibility, but I'm going to leave it a while longer, if things continue the way they are, I will have one unique barley wine.

Regards

Richard

[rpruen]

The result?

Contaminated bottle bombs it got way too carbonated, and thick and ropey with the smell of rotting pineapple. Pediococcus infection I suspect.

I'm going to have another go, but without the wooden tap, it's hard to clean and weeps ever so slightly. Possibly where the infection came from.

Regards

Richard