Solera

Anyone experimented with fermenting/aging your beer in a pseudo-solera fashion.

As I understand it, basically you brew your beer (let's say 10g) and put it in a barrel. You let it age for an extended period and at the end of that period you rack off a portion of the aged beer. You then add a new brew to the partially filled barrel and let the blended beer age as before. Repeat.

I am thinking of doing this with a Sanke keg with some oak staves inside. I would like to try this with a oak barrel, but they are a bit pricey (I already have the keg) and take some special care to maintain. Additionally, with an oak barrel, once it is innoculated with yeast and/or bacteria, then the barrel is kinda limited to what it produces. With a keg, if I decide I don't like my experiment, I pitch the oak staves and try something else.

Any thoughts?

There was an article in Brewing Techniques by someone who practiced this with barley wines and an oak barrel with, according to him, great success. I would use the oak sticks used in wine making, and go for it.

An important aspect of Sherry aging is oxidation. Wine, beer or hard alcohol aged in wooden barrels exhibits some oxidation, which is a good thing as long as it is kept under control. This is the reason that vintners top the barrels off with young wine, to prevent acetobacter growth, which will lead to sherry vinegar. I think your system would work but your beer will not have any oxidation characteristics. It looks like you will be doing blending and wood aging, rather than a traditional Solera. Either way you will have some unique beer.

I might be able to get some oxidation if I bung the keg with an oak dowel that extends into the beer. I know this technique has been used for sour beers. The oak dowel would replace the tap assembly at the top of the keg (I would install a weldless valve at the bottom for removal of beer).

Also, solera is just for aging, correct? Not fermenting.

Solera is a maturation process, correct. Interesting idea on the dowel, I use one when I brew Flanders ales. It is not used to oxidize sour beer but to provide oxygen for brettanomyces. A dowel would oxidize the beer slightly, it be interesting. Beware the beer might become over oxidized, but I think it would take a long time for that to happen.

My plan is to fill the keg and rack off 5 gallons a year (10 if I find that 5 gallons doesn't last a year) and replace it with 5 gallons of new beer.

If at the end of the year the beer is a bit too oxidized, I can pull the dowel out after 6 months and bung up the keg.

Another question...usually I see wine barrels on their side. My idea was to have the keg upright and put a weldless fitting in at the base. This would allow me to fill from the opening at the top of the keg and only have to drill one hole to easily rack off some beer. See any problem with this?

The reason the barrels are on their sides is because they are stacked on each other creating several "levels," like a building. The purpose of solera is to age the sherry, once it reaches a level of maturity rack off a third or so to the lower level. Continue doing this untill the sherry is on the bottom level, where it is considered ready for bottling. Solera means floor or bottom level because the wine is ready once it reaches the bottom level. At each racking the top level of barrels are topped off.
Your plan seems good, but do you want to drill a hole in the keg? If you pump some CO2 into it you can "rack" the beer from the bottom and then top off.

Well, I guess the reason I was thinking of putting a weldless fitting in was because the keg is European (not really a Sanke keg) and has a weird triangular head where the tap attaches.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy an odd European tap just to move beer out of this keg. With a weldless fitting, I can always convert it to a keggle by cutting the top out.

I am also considering cutting the tap fitting out and putting in a corny lid.

I will look into what a European tap might cost me.

Oh, I see! I though you had a corny keg, don't know what I was thinking! Well now it makes sense, you should try it, like you said you can always turn it into a keggle.

I set one up kind of by accident. I was aging 3 glass carboys with lambic and brett strains and got busy and they ended up 4.5 yrs old. I did not notice a difference between the brett with the oak dowel vs the brett with the airlock, though the airlock did dry out occasionally. The 3rd was a sour cultured from the lees from a bottle of rene cuvee lambic.They were all more or less the same age. I racked and blended them to get a more uniform flavor and bottled 5 gallons. Next year the blending will start as I pull off 2-3 gallons per year it will approach about 8 yo. msg me and Ill send you my excel calculator.

I started this same project a year ago. I got 2 -15 1/2 gallon kegs and 2- 7 3/4 gallon kegs from a local brewery that was updating their kegs. These kegs are the style that has the bung on the side and also the sanke tap on top. I made a rack that holds the large kegs on the bottom and the ponys on top. I filled the large keg with a lambic (Belgium pilsner and wheat) and fermented it with the wyeast lamic blend. It has been in there for 1 year and I just recently brewed a 73/4 gallon batch of the same but fermented it with a Belgium saison yeast. I racked off half of the lambic and refilled with the new Belgium Saison. I hope to put my Lambic on blackberries next summer. I have rubber bungs in with airlocks and also am wondering if I should use an oak dowel.

bmckenzie said:

... I have rubber bungs in with airlocks and also am wondering if I should use an oak dowel.

Click to expand...

I made my dowel with this stopper.

http://morebeer.com/products/universal-stopper-solid.html

I got a 1 inch oak dowel, cut out the top of this bung, sealed the bung to the dowel with aquarium silicone so the oak is the the only path for gas exchange. the stopper lets it fit nice and snug in the top of the carboy. might work for your setup too.

hello all,

I just got interested in trying a solera project.

my plan is to start big cause I don't know any other way.

my plan is to have 7 - 5 gal ball locks as my "barrels"

I'm planning to brew either an English Barley Wine or a Russian Imperial Stout
I haven't decided yet. my plan is to blend the beers after they've finished fermenting and have aged at 1 year intervals so I guess it's not a true solera but still I think this will be a fun project.

My plan is to pull 50% or 2.5 gal from the solera and bottle and then top it off with 2.5 gal of beer from the 2nd oldest keg and on down the line til I reach the youngest beer in a keg and top it off with freshly brewed beer. I chose 2.5 gal as the pull amount cause it seemed like the easiest amount to work with using 5 gal corny kegs.

anyone see any issues with this?

Bumping this thread back from the dead. I am looking to start a solera project. What type of experience have you guys had with it and how many vessels are you using? I was thinking of just doing 1 vessel of about 15gal and pull 5 gal every 6 months but im interested in hearing about what others have tried and succeeded with