Help with Homebrewing Bourbon Aged Beer

Hey Folks,

After about 20 hours of reading this forum and several other I think I've reached information overload, so I thought I would ask the advice of the experts.

After a rough go of obtaining BCBS in the Michigan market I figured I would try to brew my own Bourbon Aged style beer.

I'm thinking going with the 5 gallon dark lord clone on adventures in homebrewing.
http://www.homebrewing.org/The-Darker-Lords-Imperial-Stout-All-Grain-Recipe_p_5845.html

I would like to add some vanilla and bourbon flavors to this recipe in the secondary.

What method do you guys find is best?

I was considering taking 375ml of a bourbon, adding 3-4 Vanilla beans and wood (Spiral, Chips, honeycomb)? And soaking it all for a together for few weeks, then tossing it all in the secondary for a month or two.

Does this seem like the proper method to get the desired flavors of something in line with BCBS, KBS, or any self respected BA beer?

Thanks!

Chris

 

Make sure you chop up and scrape the vanilla beans before you put them in the bourbon to soak. You'll get more flavor from chopping and scraping.

Also a good idea to soak your oak.

Once you put the oak into the secondary, taste it every few days until you get the levels of oak you are looking for. You may be surprised at how fast the oak gets imparted from spirals or chips. If you use cubes you can leave them in a month or longer.

 

Take a look at Denny Conn's vanilla bourbon porter recipe. It's a fantastic beer and those are the amounts I would start with.

 

Homebrewing is very dissimilar from business brewing.

Thanks again for all your help!


British Overseas Export

 

375 mL of bourbon is 12.6 oz, which I see as a quite a bit. I just added 6 oz of bourbon to my RIS and I thought I'd be on the upper end. Depends on if you want it to be in the foreground, background, or somewhere balanced. I added 3 oz of scotch to my first RIS and it was somewhere between noticeable & background.

As for oak, I would advise for spirals or cubes. Chips are much less forgiving with respect to contact time, due to their large surface area per oz. Spirals would work great I'm sure, but I've always gone for oak cubes, preferring to keep a variety on hand for big beers and red wines. I have used 1.5 - 2 oz of oak cubes, giving them 6-8 weeks in secondary for full flavor extraction. I usually soak them in whiskey for 2-6 weeks before hand, for flavor melding and to assure there are no bugs remaining in the wood.

I have no experience with vanilla beans, though you do get some vanilla type flavors when using oak.

 

Thanks for the advice!

I think knowing the amounts to use, and the time for it to age have been the biggest questions I have.

 

I looked at this and it was extremely helpful thank you

 

My batch of bourbon barrel porter tasted very good as a young beer. As I've been tasting it as it ages I'm noticing that th bourbon flavors have become muted and the oak has mellowed. If I do a repeat I will definitely use more of each and give it time.