New Barrel photos - pLambic underway!!

I just finished the punishing task of filling 2-63 gallon barrels by myself.

http://bwbrewing.blogspot.com/

After the blow off settles down I will top both barrels and wait until Summer before tasting there progress.

BW

Thats really awesome !!!!!

That is a great setup. Would love to brew at that scale but for now my brew pot is a turkey fryer.

Would love to brew at that scale but for now my brew pot is a turkey fryer.

Click to expand...

That is how it all starts!!!

BW

Will hopefully have my Brutus 10 built towards the end of the summer. Can't wait to be able to fill a barrel, even better would be two! What was the grain bill like if you don't mind me asking? I am thinking about doing a lambic sometime soon.

Welcome to my hero club. Population: You.

B-Dub said:

http://bwbrewing.blogspot.com/...Two hard drives wired up with cell phone chargers and rare earth magnets. This is the cheapest stir plate you can make...
BW

Click to expand...

Can you share how you wired these up? Do you control the spin speed somehow? I love the idea!

I will post the grain bill and how I wired up the fans on Wed.

BW

Damn...how long did it take you to fill them? Did you brew back to back every day for two weeks or what?

Grain for one barrel:
82 Pale
30 Pils
16 Vienna
8 C-77
19 White Wheat
2.5 Spec B
.75 Choc
1 Roast

24.2 oz aged hops (saaz and EKG)

Second barrel:
91 pils
20 flaked wheat

14 oz aged hops (saaz and EKG)

The second barrel might need 5 gallons of a Saison to top off. I will see tomorrow.

All that beer took me about 5 days of brewing to complete.

The first barrel was filled with 30 gallons to ferment (WLP530). Then I added some 25 worth of fermented beer. Some of the beer was seconded with dregs of lambics, some with pedio and lacto and Al B's bugfarm II.

The second barrel was brewed used a high gravity method. The grain bill of 36 pounds would produce 15 gallons of about 1.066 to 1.070. When I added 5 gallons of H2O to that it came down to about 1.050-1.052. It was filled with 40 gallons once to ferment (Flanders Golden, WLP 530 and AL B's bugfarm III) and followed by 15 gallons and left to ferment. I will top with fermented beer soon.

Can any one but me follow that??

BW

Someone buy this man a 3bbl system. Good for you, dude.

Update:

Barrel one, is very sour and progressing nicely. Thinking about bottling around December. That will be a year in barrel. This barrel had tons of bugs added to it. One 5 gallon carboy each of finished beer with the following bugs added in secondary: pedio, lacto, many lambic dregs and Al's bug farm. So a total of 4 bugged carboys added at filling time.

Barrel two is tart, but not very sour. The only bugs added to this one was a 3 gallon batch of one of Al's bugfarm. I am planning on making this beer the base for some fruit experiments. One each of the following: Wild Black berry, whole fresh cherries, peach/apricot and a red wine grape like Syrah. If this one doesn't sour up over the summer when the fruit is added I will add some pedio and lacto for the first 2 weeks followed by some brett to finish it off.

I just added 3 more barrels to the family. Two 20 gallon and one 10 gallon; all French oak. They have some brett so the wine maker didn't want them and was going to burn them in a trash pile!! A few bug holes to patch, but they look great other wise!

The small 10 gallon smells really nice. A little toasted wood, but mainly red wine. That one will get a 1.068 Belgian made with Vienna and D2 syrup infused with lacto. To finish I am dreaming of fresh/frozen cranberries, dry cranberries and a small amount of frozen raspberries.

The other two 20 gallon barrels will house a Vienna, Munich and white wheat in one and the other will be pale malt base with dark crystal malts. Both barrels will have lacto, pedio and various bretts.

Brew on my friends.

are you running primary in them?
yikes, I'm going to go read more details at the link before I pester you.

Over the last few weeks I have pulled all the beer from one of the barrels. Some in kegs for drinking now. It is really good! Twenty gallons went into bottles. Of the 30 gallons left in kegs I plan on topping the barrel in a few weeks with 15 gallons and then wait for the brett ferm to stop. Then I will top for the next 6 months.

Today I am filling the barrel with 40 gallons of fresh Amber wort and fermenting with 530 left over from a Triple. AND my wife wanted a stout, so I am brewing that to. For a grand total of........55 gallons of wort from 3 mashes, 110 pounds of malt and 14 oz of hops! All the mashes are high gravity and diluted in the carboy or barrel.

The stout is a basic 1.050 OG and 40 IBUS. Two of the carboys are getting S-04 and S-05 split 50/50. BUT the other one is getting some De Dolle yeast (http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_yeaststrain_detail.cfm?ID=137) , D and D2 DARK CANDI SYRUP. The OG on that will be 1.062.

Busy day to say the least. The other barrel will have to wait until next month for the same treatment.

BW

PS - Nathan I will get back with your questions soon.

I've never done concentrated wort production and diluted in the fermenter as you are describing, but have triple batched out a total of 45 gallons, including a 10% abv double IPA, so I suppose that could have been doubled, and if run 3 times similarly could be up to 90 gallons (I cringe at triple-batch days, though, as it's physically grueling).

Sunday I have a brewday of 9 brewers for 3 batches at 15 gallons. That'll be cake! I can point and ask that something be done and it is so. Many hands make light work, but they also make light kegs fast!

New pictures of the barrel room!! Yeah baby. My wife is to good to me.

BW