Ever boil in a wood barrel? Stein Beer

I know, it sounds nuts. Anyway, after seeing the video of the Chico homebrew club making a stein beer and seeing the presentation by Port Brewing/Lost Abbey's Tomme Arthur (both at the NHC), I've got my sights set on doing a club stein beer in November.

If you don't know already, it's basically boiling the wort with superheated rocks. The wort caramelizes like crazy. Eventually you're "supposed" to add the rocks back into the fermenter so the yeast can break down those sugars too. Mosher's Radical Brewing touches on this style briefly.

Both of examples I mentioned kinda cheated a lot by using stainless boil kettles. I was thinking that half a wood barrel would make a great boil kettle in this regard because our club usually has a few barrels to decommission and it has quite the rustic feel. What are the downsides? Is it safe? Will it taste like an oak sandwich?


So far, I found this BYO article:

http://byo.com/stories/beer-styles/article/indices/11-beer-styles/862-hot-rocks-making-a-stein-beer

sounds like a fun experiment....really impress me and boil in a barrel over a flame, it would probably take a long time to get to a boil without setting fire to the barrel.

Some shielding to keep the temperature low it could be doable


engineeringtoolbox puts the auto-ignition temperature of oak at 900F wow that surprised me! this sounds like an epic Bobby M video

sounds like fun with the right rocks. Some can explode when heated and drenched in liquid ... Ask me how I know

Granite seems to be the theme and I'll be containing them in the stainless steamer basket that I thought I'd never get around to using. The place that sold me granite countertops has a huge dumpster in the back with chunks of granite but I'm wondering if they've got any sealers or polish in the mix. That would suck.

We have done some traditional Indian sweats. Where rocks were heated to red then water poured over them to create steam. In that case lava rocks were used because they would not crack when quenched. I realize that we may be talking apples and oranges here but, I think this is a great and unique endevor.
Bobby, please keep us posted!
-Cheers
-David

my ex[erience was making maple syrup the way the American Indians did heat the rocks and place them in a shallow hollowed out log went fine till one went bam hot syrup all over ..

Be sure to make one of your amazing videos if you try this!

It looks like this is going to happen. I sold the idea to enough folks in the club that I think we'll have a 40 gallon boil going. I'm thinking of a smoked porter because the oaky malty think will be a nice compliment. I just have to figure out if there are any undesireables in the pores of polished granite countertop scraps.

Bobby_M said:

It looks like this is going to happen. I sold the idea to enough folks in the club that I think we'll have a 40 gallon boil going. I'm thinking of a smoked porter because the oaky malty think will be a nice compliment. I just have to figure out if there are any undesireables in the pores of polished granite countertop scraps.

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Whatever would be in there I would think you could get out with a good rinse or maybe boil them in some water first

The Brewmaster at America's Brewing Company | did it in his microbrewery and there were several newspaper articles written about it. Mike is very approachable and I'm sure if you contacted him he would be willing to share his experiences with you.

Do you really want to do this with a 40 gallon boil? That's a LOT of wort to keep boiling, if you're only going to be using the stones. What's the plan for heating (and moving) the stones? How hot? Get those suckers hot enough, seems that you'd burn off whatever sealants were being used.

I'm thinking of a few ways to support a large batch.

1. Preheat to 210F in traditional kettles on propane burners.
2. Only rock-boil 10 gallons of the larger batch and run the rest in individual kettles.
3. Run multiple bundles of rock so that one is heating on the fire while another is providing heat.
4. Supplement the rock heating by putting some of the bundles on my multijet burners.

The chunks of granite will be contained in steam pots, the stainless baskets that come with some turkey fryer kits. I think the club probably has about 10 of these collected over the years. I know I have at least two. They have a handle to which I'd attach a chain. The two rock dunking technicians will grab the chain with a hook on the middle of a 8' 2x4 to give them some safety distance.

What a wicked cool idea! Just be careful when digging through the countertop scrap. The company likely works with both natural granite and cheaper, manmade materials that could be made from plastics.

Not this joint Yuri. This company only deals in marble and granite. Granite Countertops and Vanity Tops at All Granite And Marble Corp I only know because I went in there originally looking to get a quote for Silestone or some other man made quartz product. The dumpster is pretty much out in the open too though I doubt they'd be too mad about me taking a few buckets.

Looks like you've done all the homework Bobby. If I were pursuing steinbier, I'd likely do a 5-10 gallon trial batch before tackling the 1 barrel behemoth.

That's a good point. I should probably start by grabbing some of that granite and see what a few superheated pieces can do to 5 gallons of water.

I remember hearing them talk about this on Craft Brewer Radio. Don't remember the episode, but I'm thinking it was 2006. They used a kiln to superheat their rocks. From what I remember, they needed a kiln to get the rocks hot enough to boil wort.

Potentially epic thread. Safety here is paramount, and protective gear is a must when dropping the rocks in. I was just thinking about this brewing method a few days ago and it would be great to see it done.

I would construct a blast forge for heating the rocks. There are a ton shown on youtube, here is the one at the top of the list:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgADH6GRYfU]YouTube - Home-Built Blast Forge[/ame]

That way you will be able to heat a large volume of rocks quickly to keep up with the large volume.

Edcculus said:

I remember hearing them talk about this on Craft Brewer Radio. Don't remember the episode, but I'm thinking it was 2006. They used a kiln to superheat their rocks. From what I remember, they needed a kiln to get the rocks hot enough to boil wort.

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I can't remember where I heard this (Jamil show, maybe?), but I seem to recall temperatures that were near 2000°, which yeah, would imply having a forge. Know any blacksmiths?

We did this - in a stainless kettle. Worked ok - but you will need a lot of rocks to maintain a boil. I recommend two baskets if possible - you can always be reheating one while the other is in the wort. We used a hardwood fire supplemented with forced air for heating the rocks.

Found it. Apparently they have tried this method over a 3 year period. A search for "stein beer" on their site brings up all the episodes where they talk about it. You will have to search through the episodes though. They don't focus on one single topic like the Jamil Show or Brew Strong.

The episode I remember was April #2 2006. Thats where they get the idea for a kiln to heat up ceramics. Ceramic has already been kilned, so there is no chance of excess water. They also talk about how they need temps excess of 2000F, like the_bird said.

It looks like May #1 2009 might be a good listen. According to the text, they have brewed this beer 8 times and have "figured out the secret".

Thanks for the link, I'll have to check it out when I get home because work blocks podcasts. I think maybe I'm underestimating the heat I need to achieve. Perhaps a 10 gallon batch would be the safe place to start without having to ditch the entire idea. I'll be working with the heat from a hardwood fire in a raised fire pit. I think I'd have better luck with a pit on the ground, but then I'd have to rethink my location because it's not something I'm going to do in my driveway. Blast forge is getting a little carried away I think because part of the exercise is to have fun with traditional techniques and use a wood fire in the process.

Bahh.. the link is mostly useless, don't get excited. Basically, blast forges or furnaces are just a fire (usually with hardwood charcoal) and a forced air current running through them in an enclosed space.

Just set up some brinks or a lot of people use cinder blocks (that's what I have used), build a fire inside, then route an air source tot he bottom. I used a box fan, some cardboard, ducts tape, and a steel pipe to route the air under my bed of coals which I placed on a grate.

I think John from the Chico club cheated a little and used his burners to reach boiling temps, and then just used the heated rocks to maintain the boil. They had two baskets of rocks so that they could rotate with one in the fire and one in the boil. I don't believe they did anything special, they just had some sort of outdoor fire pit going.

Not sure how much of the video you caught, but it's pretty cool. The rocks were hot enough that they had to lower them in incrementally - if they'd just dropped the basket in they would have gotten a boilover.

In terms of the finished product, it was ok. The process was neat, but I didn't taste anything that was different enough to make me say "wow, I need to do this". The guy was a pro brewer at one point and does make some good beer, so it may just be that after two tries he just doesn't have the technique down yet.

Edit: I also think they didn't add the rocks back into the fermentation. Although they did re-use the rocks for the second attempt, so not sure how much, if anything, transferred.

Our club made one of these at our big picnic at the start of the month. It was absolutely incredible. You'd be surprised at how far those rocks go, seriously. We had a bigass fire with chunks of granite in it wrapped with stainless steel welding wire, looped so we could slide a pole through. With three rocks and 6 gallons in a 15 gallon pot, it STILL boiled over a lot (at one point, so vigorously it splashed on my shoe and gave me a nice blister the next day).

Here's a video (I'm in the green):

[youtube]yCLXbBp0Kjo[/youtube]

One thing I'd say though is that if you're going to make a smoked porter it won't be a steinbier; it'll just be a smoked porter that you made in a really awesome way.

Caspio, I didn't spend too much time at the booth but I did try to find the video on the chico website. Any idea if it's out on the internetz somewhere? Sigafoos, sweet video. Are those squares of granite what you'd find a the building supply for edging driveways with? No explosions?

sounds interesting. From the title, I originally thought someone made a wooden brew kettle with an electric element. but rocks and fire sounds way more fun

I think we got them at a gardening supply store. They were originally twice as long, but we split them. A few cracked, but we're pretty sure that's from fissures made by other hits of the chisel.

Oh, one piece of advice: have compressed air (like in the video) to blow the ash off the rocks. This is the third or fourth time my club's done it (the new guys get to ferry the rocks), and I hear the first time they made it they didn't remove the ash, and the beer was basically a liquid ashtray. They claim it doesn't really turn out well either way, but the batch I had that was a few years old was pretty good (you could definitely taste something different from the rocks), and the wort we tried when we were done seemed great.

Bobby_M said:

Caspio, I didn't spend too much time at the booth but I did try to find the video on the chico website. Any idea if it's out on the internetz somewhere? Sigafoos, sweet video. Are those squares of granite what you'd find a the building supply for edging driveways with? No explosions?

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When they brought the beer to the club meeting for tasting, they just played the vid locally off an (ancient) laptop. Most of our club members aren't too friendly to the tubes, so I doubt it's made it online.

I won't be making it to our meeting this thurs, but I'll bug THB to ask about the vid.

I'll make a post in our club forum and see if anyone has published that vid. If they haven't, I'll track it down and post it myself.

Awesome, thanks.

Digging this thread back up, mainly to keep myself accountable. John provided me with a copy of the video our club was playing at the conference. Forgot it at home today, but hopefully tonight I'll remember to get it up on youtube and posted here.

Very cool. We're definitely doing it this fall, boiling and fermenting in the same barrel.

Not really a ton of info being presented, but here you have it
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Faq8xO30kSA]YouTube - Chico Brew Club Stone Bier[/ame]

Note: if someone knows how to embed, let me know. The forum won't let me post HTML, and I don't know if there's a <youtube> tag or something like that.

Edit: apparently it just parses links to youtube as a request to embed. interesting

Very cool stuff! I am interested in hearing more about how your attempt turns out.

I love the Beer Hunter series from the other Micheal Jackson. He shows the Stein beer being made for a few minutes.

He said the beer was brought to just below boiling and the hot rocks were added to bring it the rest of the way. Then it shows the rocks going into the lager tanks.

A friend of mine also did the native American sweat lodge. We went to the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon to find the rocks. For the last 15 years I have hauled the rocks (about 11) down to CA and from house to house.

I plan to make a Stein beer using these rocks and Oak wood in the next few weeks. For the sweats the rocks were added at the beginning of the fire to drive out any water.

Planning on 7 gallons in a keggle and will put the rocks in secondary. Fermenting with an English or German yeast, IBUs at 30, OG at 1070 and bottle condition.

Take a look at this:
Steinbier

In the old days, many Steinbiers were brewed as ales, but nowadays, they are all lagers.

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KillerKellers said:

Very cool stuff! I am interested in hearing more about how your attempt turns out.

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Note that it wasn't me in the video. This was actually brewed by a member of my local club, who had the video at AHA in Oakland this year. He's not too web savvy, so he asked me to post it online for him.

I think I commented about the beer before. It was definitely tasty, but I didn't think there was anything that made it stand out from a normally brewed batch.

It was definitely tasty, but I didn't think there was anything that made it stand out from a normally brewed batch.

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caspio,

Did the beer have any smoke flavor?

I just like the idea of doing this once. Ever since the MJ Beer Hunter series 15 years ago the beer has been on my to do list.

B-Dub said:

caspio,

Did the beer have any smoke flavor?

I just like the idea of doing this once. Ever since the MJ Beer Hunter series 15 years ago the beer has been on my to do list.

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I didn't notice any. Really the only (unusual) flavor that came out was it being just a little hard or sharp, probably related to minerals off the rocks. That was pretty subtle though. I didn't really pick up any smoke flavor, certainly nowhere near what'd be found with a couple lbs. of smoked malt.