kev211
Well-Known Member
So heres the deal. Im about to barrel age my first beer. My buddy just hooked it up with a 3 gal bourbon barrel for a house warming present so I brewed an oatmeal coffee stout to age in it. The problem is, I missed my numbers a bit. I normally boil off down to about 5.5 gals but on this I wanted to go down to 5 gal. Well I forgot and ended up with 5.5 gals of 1.074 wort instead of 1.080(ish) wort. So Im predicting it should finish up around 1.012-1.014. If it finishes up there, it will be around 8.3%. My question is, is that too low of an ABV to barrel age? I know barrel aged beers want to be higher to fight off the barrel bugs and what not, so am I risking it here?
The barrel still has plenty of whiskey in it, so should be pretty sanitized. And before someone says it, I dont want a sour so thats not really a "worst case scenario" for me.
I dont have an issue just kegging this and brewing it again to get higher numbers, but if you guys think that ~8.3% is fine, then Ill go ahead and age it.
Thanks!
The barrel still has plenty of whiskey in it, so should be pretty sanitized. And before someone says it, I dont want a sour so thats not really a "worst case scenario" for me.
I dont have an issue just kegging this and brewing it again to get higher numbers, but if you guys think that ~8.3% is fine, then Ill go ahead and age it.
Thanks!