Brewing a "traditional" IPA

[s89bunton]

Saturday I'm brewing a traditional IPA(Burton's best indian pale ale). I found the recipe in an old issue of BYO. Recipe is very straight forward, no trouble with that. However id like to age the beer for 5 months to recreate the boat voyage(if I can stand not to drink it). Should I bottle and leave it sit or leave it in the secondary for that amount of time. I guess if I wanted to be truly "traditional" I would put it in an oak barrel, but I read that the type of barrels used didn't add much wood character to the beer.


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[bja]

Do yourself a favor and don't age it for 5 months. It'll lose a lot of the hop character.

 

[johngaltsmotor]

How much research have you done on traditional IPA? Would it end up carbonated or would the barrel let the CO2 escape?
Assuming it's consumed flat then I'd leave it in secondary simply to avoid the extra handling and risk of contamination.
If it retained carbonation then bottle it now to mimic storing in the keg.