Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout Tips and Pointers

Our club is getting together to collectively brew enough of the same stout recipe to fill a 50 gallon bourbon barrel. We are collectively developing the recipe and I'm having some difficulty figuring out what will bring balance to the recipe.

First when aging stout in a bourbon barrel I would think the beer would need to be big to avoid masking the beer with too much oak and bourbon flavor. Would this be a good assumption? In your opinion what would be a good ABV to shoot for? I'm picturing somewhere around 8-10%.

Secondly would you purposely avoid any specific hop varieties? One of the members is interested in using homegrown cascade, but I've typically steered clear of cascade in favor of earthier hops in stouts. Any thoughts?

My biggest concern is making a base beer that will have flavors that conflict following oak and bourbon aging.


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Wow, nothing?


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In general bigger beers do well in barrel aging, so your thought of 8-10% sounds great. Obviously a bland beer will allow the oak/bourbon to mask it more, but alot of the oak/bourbon factor is dependent on contact time. Even the biggest baddest brew can be over-oaked. How long to go depends how much of those characters you want and how fresh the barrel is.

homegrown hops in a barrel aged stout sounds like a waste to me. I too would prefer earthier hops in this

Sorry had to changed this post. Posted on the wrong thread.

Agreed on the beer being big. I would shoot for the higher end of 8 - 10% which will be an Imperial Stout.
I would also look at Magnum and/or Perle for bittering to about 55 to 70 IBU's and maybe some Willamette and/or Styrian Goldings for flavor.

I did a similar thing over the summer, except my barrel was only 3.5 gallons and it came out excellent.

Here is my opinion for what it is worth:

Go big. I shot for 10% ABV and got 9.6%. Forget any thought about having and hop aroma or flavor. Your flavor will come from the roasted grain and the barrel. Go for about 1:1 gravity units to bittering units. 1.100 OG means about 100 IBUs. Trust me, it will not be bitter. You need the IBUs to balance out the residual sweetness from the unfermented sugars, as well as the sweetness from the bourbon. And go big with the roasted malts. I brewed a total of 15 gallons (not all was destined for the barrel obviously - some regular, some espresso infused), and I used 3 pounds of roast barley, 3 pounds of chocolate malt and 2.5 pounds Carafa III to make it BLACK. The total grain bill was 48 pounds with these grains, so you can figure the percentages. I also mashed at 148* - 150* and only added the dark malts for the last 30 minutes. (Just something I do with all my dark beers.)

After fermentation was complete I waited about 4 weeks and transferred into the barrel. Don't forget to save some for top off due to angel's share (I used some of the beer I bottled for top off.) Be patient with the barrel. After 2 weeks all I could taste was oak and I panicked. But I remembered something I read here on HBT about flavors coming out of the barrel at different times and then melding together (just like it takes time for all of the flavors of bourbon to come together over the years). I sampled every two weeks and decided that at 8 weeks it was good. (I topped the barrel off at 6 weeks with two bottles of the same stout.) I bottled at that time and even added a half cup of the bourbon that I had used to keep the barrel swelled. Remember that a larger barrel will take more time due to a smaller surface area to volume ratio.

My beer has been in the bottle for about 4 months and it is great. The bourbon sweetens up the roastiness, but it is balanced well. So good luck, have fun with it, and be patient. And don't forget to let us all know how the process goes! Cheers !