Wood-Aged Beer Imperial Bourbon Oak Aged Rye Stout (3rd place - winter 2016 mashfest)

I've been playing around with a version of this recipe for years now and finally nailed it. Some of the rye might be tricky to get (only one shop around me caries the chocolate rye) but it's worth it for sure.

Entered it into a public competition and won 3rd place for experienced brewers (4+ years of brewing). Basically, 100 tickets were sold for a private event to the public. They came in and chose their favorites and each won prizes.
This year i walked out with a growler, a $10 gift card and a t-shirt for a local brewery. Pretty fun.

Recipe - note, this is for 10 gallons and 86% efficiency.

20lb - Great Western 2-row
2lb - Crystal Rye
2lb - Chocolate Rye
1.5lb - Flaked Rye
.7lb - Roasted Barley (350L)
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Mash @ 155* > 60min
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2oz Herkules @90
2oz Willamette @15 (i've done this with fuggles and works equally fine)
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2.5oz Used Bourbon Barrel Chunks (like the bag below, but bourbon)



i picked them up at my LHBS, but here is a link from the companies site
- http://stores.essenciana.com/barrel-chunks/

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Soaked those in half a fifth of evan williams for a few weeks (2 weeks if i recall)

dumped the chunks and bourbon in primary and let it age for 4 weeks and the oak flavor i wanted was perfect for me

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Picture of the event below. Everyone else who won an award for the most part was an IPA... i was the only one with a dark beer to place, so i feel honored to share this with you guys.

peoples view.

0131161145a by Noah Scott, on Flickr

my view

0131161158 by Noah Scott, on Flickr

Did you pour the bourbon and oak into the primary, or just the oak chunks? The recipe looks fantastic

Whoops... good catch Dumped both into primary - editing now

When you say half of a fifth, do you mean half of a 1.5L?

Thinking about brewing this up, but with charred, medium-plus cubes and WLP007 for yeast.

I've been thinking and reading about charring cubes to better emulate a barrel. I'm thinking of charring an oz and then aging for several months on them to bring out the softer flavors of oak, like vanilla, etc.

Howdy Sir!
The fifth is just a normal bottle of whiskey you'll get at the store. 750ml.
Don't mean to come off sounding like an ass, if i do, i fully apologize.

a fifth equals out to a fifth of a gallon.
a gallon is 3750ml.
So if you get a 1.5l bottle of whiskey/bourbon, you'd only want to use 1/4 of that.

this is the correct sized bottle though.



I would for sure use charred oak in this... I've used toasted oak in some beers and it never really comes across correctly... Still makes great beer, but doesn't emulate the barrel correctly. So if you go that route, keep us posted for sure! I know those barrel chunks are hard to locate locally for most people.

Rivenin said:

Howdy Sir!
The fifth is just a normal bottle of whiskey you'll get at the store. 750ml.
Don't mean to come off sounding like an ass, if i do, i fully apologize.

a fifth equals out to a fifth of a gallon.
a gallon is 3750ml.
So if you get a 1.5l bottle of whiskey/bourbon, you'd only want to use 1/4 of that.

this is the correct sized bottle though.

I would for sure use charred oak in this... I've used toasted oak in some beers and it never really comes across correctly... Still makes great beer, but doesn't emulate the barrel correctly. So if you go that route, keep us posted for sure! I know those barrel chunks are hard to locate locally for most people.

Click to expand...

Not perceived as an ass at all! I just find that "a fifth" means different things to different people.

I brewed this up earlier today! I scaled to a 6 gallon batch with a 60 minute boil on my system and rounded the fractions to come up with the following:

13.5 lbs 2 row
2.5 lbs CaraRye
2.5 lbs Chocolate Rye
1lb 13 oz Flaked Rye
1 lb Roasted Barley

1.5 oz Warrior @ 60
1 oz Willamette @ 15

WLP007

I missed my OG big time though, most likely due to my mash tun being basically maxed out; ended up with a 1.073 OG. I'm hoping it doesn't dry out too much as a result.

I have 1 oz of American medium-plus cubes on the way that I plan to char on 2 sides and soak in corn whiskey for a few weeks. When I keg I'll throw the cubes in along with some fresh bourbon and age for the summer. I've used toasted cubes before and I had the same experience: good, but nothing like a barrel aged brew. I got the idea from bertus brewery

The chilled wort smelled amazing! Looking forward to a hydro sample in a month or so. Thanks for the inspiration!

Congrats on the win! and posting your recipe..I'm going to give it a go.

PS: I will have to split the fermentation so any suggestions on adding anything else to the second one to change it up a bit.

And super excited you do this all in Primary!!:rockin:

hopsandhops said:

13.5 lbs 2 row
2.5 lbs CaraRye
2.5 lbs Chocolate Rye
1lb 13 oz Flaked Rye
1 lb Roasted Barley

1.5 oz Warrior @ 60
1 oz Willamette @ 15

WLP007

I missed my OG big time though, most likely due to my mash tun being basically maxed out; ended up with a 1.073 OG. I'm hoping it doesn't dry out too much as a result.

I have 1 oz of American medium-plus cubes on the way that I plan to char on 2 sides and soak in corn whiskey for a few weeks. When I keg I'll throw the cubes in along with some fresh bourbon and age for the summer. I've used toasted cubes before and I had the same experience: good, but nothing like a barrel aged brew. I got the idea from bertus brewery

The chilled wort smelled amazing! Looking forward to a hydro sample in a month or so. Thanks for the inspiration!

Click to expand...

Awesome! sounds great sir. You're going to have a bit different beer on your hands with the different numbers on the specialty grains. With that being said, i have upped those as well on a variant of this recipe and it all came out fantastic. Best of luck on this! keep the thread posted on how it turns out for sure!

:EDIT: as far as maxed mash tuns go... my wife snapped this picture of me stirring my mash of this beer bare feet and all. Normally i'm not on a chair, but i needed a little more control with how much grain was spilling out.

IMG_20151204_100730870 by Noah Scott, on Flickr

Stillraining said:

Congrats on the win! and posting your recipe..I'm going to give it a go.

PS: I will have to split the fermentation so any suggestions on adding anything else to the second one to change it up a bit.

And super excited you do this all in Primary!!:rockin:

Click to expand...

Thanks! it felt great for sure

Going to say, this recipe would play awesomely with vanilla beans as it's a touch on the sweeter side of a stout... not a sweet stout by any means, but it could work very well with a sweeter addition of something like vanilla.
Another variant i did with this was add in 2oz of licorice root at flame out... that was an interesting beer, and one i would play around with again... or even brewers licorice would be rad.

Keep us posted!

Rivenin said:

Awesome! sounds great sir. You're going to have a bit different beer on your hands with the different numbers on the specialty grains. With that being said, i have upped those as well on a variant of this recipe and it all came out fantastic. Best of luck on this! keep the thread posted on how it turns out for sure!

:EDIT: as far as maxed mash tuns go... my wife snapped this picture of me stirring my mash of this beer bare feet and all. Normally i'm not on a chair, but i needed a little more control with how much grain was spilling out.

IMG_20151204_100730870 by Noah Scott, on Flickr

Click to expand...

THAT'S a full mashtun! I had about an inch to spare on mine

I'll def keep the thread updated with how it comes out and the effect of the charred cubes. Def looking forward to the hydro sample

Charred the cubes last night. I used a butane torch and hit em with fire until they were glowing, then doused with water. I then boiled them for 10 mins to simulate an aged barrel and threw them in corn whiskey to sit until I keg the brew. When I keg I'll strain the cubes and hang them in a bag in the keg and add 750ml of fresh bourbon

Woo! that'll pack a punch for sure! 750ml of additional bourbon... you are one crazy feller! haha

upon doing my mathings, that will add i think 8% more alcohol percentage? it's not exact, but... normal bourbon 40% alcohol divide by 5 and you get 8%? hope you're ready for a sipper! haha

I totally mistyped (and misthought) there!

I'll be adding 16 oz of Makers

I brewed Northern Brewer's Bourbon Barrel Porter last year and added 16 oz of Makers to the finished keg and that was my estimate back then.

This post seems to explain it best.

According to that post, 16 oz of 90 proof Makers would add just over 1% to 5 gallons

ah, that sounds better... man, my brain was off as well... apparently while doing my job, i shouldn't involve math... haha

Rivenin said:

You're going to have a bit different beer on your hands with the different numbers on the specialty grains. With that being said, i have upped those as well on a variant of this recipe and it all came out fantastic.

Click to expand...

I just realized that I basically doubled the CaraRye and Chocolate Rye. I'm not quite sure how that happened..

Anyways, I grabbed a sample last night. Sitting at 1.026 and tasting of big time chocolate and coffee. Tasted great!

The only thing is, even with the bourbon addition, I'm only going to be low to mid 7%. It'll be a not-quite-Imperial Stout.. Oh well..