Ever boil in a wood barrel? Stein Beer

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

I'll make a post in our club forum and see if anyone has published that vid. If they haven't, I'll track it down and post it myself.

 

[Bobby_M]

Awesome, thanks.

 

[caspio]

Digging this thread back up, mainly to keep myself accountable. John provided me with a copy of the video our club was playing at the conference. Forgot it at home today, but hopefully tonight I'll remember to get it up on youtube and posted here.

 

[Bobby_M]

Very cool. We're definitely doing it this fall, boiling and fermenting in the same barrel.

 

[caspio]

Not really a ton of info being presented, but here you have it
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Faq8xO30kSA]YouTube - Chico Brew Club Stone Bier[/ame]

Note: if someone knows how to embed, let me know. The forum won't let me post HTML, and I don't know if there's a <youtube> tag or something like that.

Edit: apparently it just parses links to youtube as a request to embed. interesting

 

[KillerKellers]

Very cool stuff! I am interested in hearing more about how your attempt turns out.

 

[B-Dub]

I love the Beer Hunter series from the other Micheal Jackson. He shows the Stein beer being made for a few minutes.

He said the beer was brought to just below boiling and the hot rocks were added to bring it the rest of the way. Then it shows the rocks going into the lager tanks.

A friend of mine also did the native American sweat lodge. We went to the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon to find the rocks. For the last 15 years I have hauled the rocks (about 11) down to CA and from house to house.

I plan to make a Stein beer using these rocks and Oak wood in the next few weeks. For the sweats the rocks were added at the beginning of the fire to drive out any water.

Planning on 7 gallons in a keggle and will put the rocks in secondary. Fermenting with an English or German yeast, IBUs at 30, OG at 1070 and bottle condition.

Take a look at this:
Steinbier

In the old days, many Steinbiers were brewed as ales, but nowadays, they are all lagers.

 

[caspio]

Very cool stuff! I am interested in hearing more about how your attempt turns out.

Note that it wasn't me in the video. This was actually brewed by a member of my local club, who had the video at AHA in Oakland this year. He's not too web savvy, so he asked me to post it online for him.

I think I commented about the beer before. It was definitely tasty, but I didn't think there was anything that made it stand out from a normally brewed batch.

 

[B-Dub]

It was definitely tasty, but I didn't think there was anything that made it stand out from a normally brewed batch.

caspio,

Did the beer have any smoke flavor?

I just like the idea of doing this once. Ever since the MJ Beer Hunter series 15 years ago the beer has been on my to do list.

 

[caspio]

caspio,

Did the beer have any smoke flavor?

I just like the idea of doing this once. Ever since the MJ Beer Hunter series 15 years ago the beer has been on my to do list.

I didn't notice any. Really the only (unusual) flavor that came out was it being just a little hard or sharp, probably related to minerals off the rocks. That was pretty subtle though. I didn't really pick up any smoke flavor, certainly nowhere near what'd be found with a couple lbs. of smoked malt.

 

[Bobby_M]

I tasted both the ale and lager versions at NHC and didn't taste any smoke. It was definitely unique, but I wouldn't have been able to explain it if I didn't know ahead of time. It certainly had a malty melanoiden thing going on.

 

[Bobby_M]

This is just a teaser, video getting edited. The WHALES club brewed a stein bier style Bock today. We boiled 35 gallons in a bourbon barrel and another 15-20 on the side in stainless BKs. The rocks provided the heat for the barrel wort and it was awesome. We were close to a boil over with 20 gallons of headspace a few times. Once we chilled everything, the barrel got topped off with the side batch until it was nearly full. It's going to be fermented in the barrel for 2 weeks and it has a about 6 of the rocks in there.

 

[Bobby_M]

Ok, here it is. Watching on youtube directly allows for higher quality.

 

[the_bird]

That's awesome. WHALES has got to be one of the coolest brew clubs, ever.

 

[JVD_X]

How many stones did it take to maintain the boil? Is that by count or weight?

 

[bendavanza]

Wow. Nice work! Nice video!
So I guess the mashing was split up between several brewers to make your total wort volume. That must have been fun. So all the wort fit in the barrel for fermentation, or was just part of it fermented there? Between the stones and the wood, that should be a pretty tasty beer.

 

[Bobby_M]

50 gallons preboil was derived from four separate brewing systems, most with 52qt cooler mash tuns. All the runnings were then heated to about 210F and then 35 gallons were dumped into the barrel and immediately lost about 20F. 20 gallons were boiled completely separately.

We didn't really know what to expect going into it so we first started with 1 full block (15 pounds). It hissed and bubbled plenty, but any boiling was very localized. We stepped it up to about 2 full stones at a time and we were getting a rise of about 2F for each cycle. We were worried about using up the blocks too quickly as we only had about 8 of them in the fire, but it turns out that they heat back up in a matter of minutes.

It took about 25 minutes to go from 190 to boil. Eventually we figured out that filling that deep stainless basket, plus one more stone was money. We boiled over bad once, then almost a few more times. I put most of the bittering hops in the side boil that we knew would roll hard for 60 minutes so probably about 1/3rd of the hops went into the barrel.

After chilling, we added the side boil wort into the barrel and it came within 3" of the top after leaving the last 3 stones in the bottom.

The only problem now is that we couldn't chill lower than 65F and it's already fermenting. This unseasonably warm fall is not working for us. Certainly not an ideal lager ferment temp. I'm having the host open the garage door tonight and run a box fan to pull 35F air in.

 

[IrregularPulse]

4 different yeast strains? Do you this type of thing often? Lots of trial and error for what goes together well??

 

[Bobby_M]

That's called cell count desperation. It's like getting an army together.

 

[arturo7]

That is fraggin' awesome.

Makes me want to grab some stones and go find a brew club.