beer and bourbon

Today I was adding some bourbon soaked oak to a beer in secondary while enjoying a home brew stout. I got curious and added a bit of a nice bourbon to the stout in the glass. The taste was quite nice. It make me start thinking of new brew idea. What ways have you blended beer and whiskey or bourbon?

Sounds great. Try mixing a bit of scotch or bourbon or whiskey to warm wort next time you brew. Sooooo good.

Cheers

The next time you brew, try adding an ounce of good single malt whiskey to a mug full of your first runnings. It's called a hot scotchie and it's one of the great joys of all-grain brewing.

I have made the bourbon barrel porter from northern brewer, which I added a whole bottle of makers mark. After about 6 months every thing came together really nice and smooth. I will be making this every year for a hefty cold night drink!

in college I used to add some Windsor to my Natty's ice to play catchup. I always enjoyed it. I must admit that there might have been some over indulgences, and there was more concern about the amount of alcohol then flavor. In the years since I have used higher end spirits to add a little something to the beers I drink.

I think you just have to be careful with liquor in beer. You have to ask yourself, are you making a cocktail in a bottle or trying to add subtle liquor flavors to a beer? In most cases, people are adding liquor to beers that are already pretty high alcohol. How much further do you want to push it? I've done the bourbon-soaked oak cubes in an imperial stout before and just 4oz of bourbon plus 1oz med toast oak cubes added some hefty extra flavors.

I imagine you have to have some serious tolerance for boozy beer to put a whole fifth in a five gallon batch of beer.

Added 8oz of makers mark soaked oak cubes to a dark ale and let it sit too long... I still have a case that I figure I will try a bottle out of a couple years from now lol.

I simply added a small dram to a stout and it had very pronounced bourbon flavor. I usually prefer my beers pretty pure and don't add much. The idea came to me because of adding the whiskey soaked oak chips to a secondary and wondered what I might expect. Now while typing this, I think it's time to pull the stopper on my bourbon bottle. I'll have the beer tomorrow night.

I had previously added an espresso to the same stout (a different glass). The taste was like a mocha (my wife even thought so). Interestingly it made the head mush more tight and stiff. It finished with what looked like a firm head of very fine, almost meringue-like Kraeusen.

I soaked wood chips and vanilla beans in 10 ounces of Jim Beam, then poured all of that into the secondary of a pretty basic stout. It was good then, but 6 months later it was even better!

I've done 1.5 cups of Jim Bean and 2 oz of bourbon soaked oak chips to a vanilla porter (Denny Conn's recipe). That turned out quite nicely! My next experiment will be adding 10grams of Oak Chips soaked in 2oz from a 100.00 bottle of Macallan cask strength into a one gallon carboy for a good 10 days.