Beer Bloggers Brew-off, The Brew!
On Sunday the 12th, 9 beer bloggers virtually came together to brew a beer. But this wasn’t any ordinary beer, each beer by the completion of the brew-off will have a secret ingredient used. The concept is simple, we all brew the same recipe, adhere to the same delivery date, and can do one unique thing to our beer – the Secret Ingredient!
Now some of my fellow brewers have already unveiled their secret ingredients:
- Aarron – Captainschair -> Lactose
- Derek – Lutherhaus -> Molasses
- Erik – Topfermented -> Abbey Ale yeast
- Eathan – BeerGeek -> ?
- Joseph – HopfenTreader -> Toasted Oats
- Michael – Heavenlybrew -> ?
- Nate – THFB_nate ->Maple Syrup
- Peter – SimplyBeer -> Below
- Thomas – TomBGP -> ?
From the “secret” ingredients that are known, it looks like most have opted to do their changes prior to fermentation resulting in a great range of flavors for this Brew Off.
Bourbon Barrel
For my part in this Brew Off, I’ve decided to use the base recipe as is, no changes which leaves me with only post fermentation changes. For my “Secret Ingredient” I’m going to do my secondary fermentation in a white oak bourbon barrel. Derik made a good point in his blog posting, if this was considered one or two ingredients. Quite frankly I didn’t even think about that, I thought of it as a single ingredient. I hope my fellow brewers will accept this as a single recipe change.
Now for the Beer Porn from the brew session on sunday:
Yeast Starter
Chill the Starter
Sanitizer
Grains to Mash
Enjoy a Homebrew!
Sparge Water
wort collection
The Boil, Adding Hops
Straining
Adding the yeast
Airating
Original Gravity 1.052
I cant help but see a brewery in your future
thanks @gservo! I’ll save you a seat at the bar 🙂
@erik, I found it on Ebay, where else does one find weird things like this?
@derek – It actually is pretty nice, the bourbon tastes great coming straight off the oak. I’ve had bourbon in there for a couple of months. The nice thing about the small barrel, the ratio of oak surface area to the volume of beer. So by my guestimations, about a week on oak would be equivalent to a month for a commercial barrel (55g?) or so I hope… It’s an experiment, I’ve never used a full barrel before only cubes or chips. I figured this was as good a time as any.
Oh holy crap. That’s really exciting.
Where did you get a bourbon barrel small enough for a 5-gallon batch?
Violation! Disqualified! Ha ha, just kidding, I think this ingredient has to be granted some leniency. While it is possible to add just oak to a beer, it’s really hard to add bourbon without the use of some medium. I think bourbon barrel aging can be considered one change and I’m quite excited to try it! Word.
On eBay. That’s hilarious. What kind of condition was it in when you got it?
it was brand new, just been toasted. No glue in between staves, appears to hold a seal well. Very happy with it in fact. I’m considering ordering a couple more if I get a good tax refund this year. I was pretty skeptical about them at first, but they seem to be delivering on my high expectations. this is where I found it – http://shop.ebay.com/arts_craftsofmexico/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340
$40 is ridiculously cheap. That’s awesome. Thanks for the link.
Man, your pics are awesome. And that barrel is sweet. Did you inscribe the logo on it?
Thanks Nate! Nope, I just sent them a jpg and they branded it on. It is a very cute barrel, it’s a baby barrel! 🙂
Yeah I’m with gservo and you will definitely have a brewery. And that barrel is flippin sweet!