Flanders Red - Solera

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coldrain

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I just located a 60g red wine barrel, freshly emptied, rinsed, and sulfured. Going to pick it up Monday and I need a plan to fill it with a Flanders red based wort to start a solera. I would like to pull 20 or 30 gals each year and top off with fresh wort.

My 10 gal brew system could create 20 gals of wort in a brew day or possibly 30 gals on a long day.

I have 5.5 gals Flanders red fermenting in a glass carboy 4 months old that I could use as a starter.

I also have 8 empty glass carboys and a few cornies to store enough wort until I can rack all at once...

Option 1: Brew 20 gals wort and pitch into barrel with 5.5 gals started Flanders including the cake, and keep adding wort as I have time to brew it, making sure it full within a few weeks.
1a: use fresh Wyeast Roeselare 3763 in the barrel instead of my fermenting Flanders.

Option 2: Brew the wort and ferment with 1056 in carboys and hold until 50 -55 gals are ready, then rack all to the barrel at same time and pitch my 5.5gals of Flanders.

Option 3: Fill each carboy and primary separately with a fresh pack of 3763 Roeselare in each, and then rack all to barrel together.

My biggest question is should I primary in carboy then rack to barrel or let it primary in the barrel. Doing the primary in barrel would be easier, but I dont want the solera to have too much trub...
 
We just started a solera in a barrel. 50 gallons were pitched with 1056 (or similar) and 10 gallons were pitched with Roeselare. After primary fermentation (2-4 weeks, depending on when everybody brewed) we racked into the barrel. We wanted to avoid trub in the barrel.
 
OK, I`m going to primary in carboys but still need to decide whether to use fresh packs of 3763 Roeselare in the carboys, or use something like 1056 and then rack into barrel with my 5 gals of 4 month old flanders that is fermenting right now... Thanks for any input.
 
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