Our Gin Barrel Biere de Garde

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http://www.singingboysbrewing.com/blog/barrel-aged-biere-de-garde

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Last night, we emptied the first batch of beer from our gin barrel, a Biere de Garde. Ten months ago, a group of us brewed thirty gallons of the beer - we're all CHAOS homebrew club members - Bianca Alley, Ben Resch, Freddy Zavala, Americo Ochoa, Mark Paris, Hugh Vondracek and Chris Bernardo. After letting the beer ferment out for a month, we added it to the barrel and let it age for nine months - until last night! We don't let our barrels sit empty - we filled it immediately with our next group batch, a Saison featuring Sorachi Ace hops.

None of us had ever used a gin barrel before - our previous barrel-aged beers had been in bourbon barrels - so we weren't sure what to expect. Tasting it out of the barrel, it was extraordinary, some oak, some gin aromatics, a nice malty backbone and a little caramel. Hugh and I will bottle condition our portion, so we're looking forward to trying it chilled and carbonated in about 3 weeks.

We acquired the barrel from Koval distilling. It is a medium toast oak barrel, that Koval used to age one batch of rye whiskey and then one batch of gin.

barrel-bier-de-gaarde.jpg


Bianca works for Omega Yeast and provided us with a big, fresh pitches of their Biere de Garde yeast. Our recipe was:

Target OG: 1.071
Target IBUs: 28.5
Color: 9 SRM

Grain Bill:
11 lbs Two Row/Brewers Malt
4 lbs Munich 10L
1 lb Aromatic Malt 26 L

Hop Schedule:
0.75 oz Perle (8.9% aa) @ 60 minutes
1 oz Saphir (4.2% aa) @ 20 minutes
1 oz Saphir @ 10 minutes

Irish Moss
Fermented at 65F

Mash:
60 minutes at 152F (higher than most Biere de Gardes, to give it a little more body to stand up to the barrel)
 
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