Bourbon Barrel Stout

General Homebrew Discussion
1

My homebrew club brewed 11 batches of NB imperial stout with specialty grains.  We let ferment for 2 weeks then put into secondary.  We just racked from secondary to the bourbon barrel and we are still about 2 gallons shy of filling the barrel up.  So we tried as much to fill the barrel up with CO2, but we are still a little worried about the airspace left.

I have just made another batch as I was considering filling the barrel as full as possible.  Now I am second guessing.  I don’t want to keep opening up the barrel and expose to O2.  What should I do gize?

Bourbon Barrel is from Wild Turkey.

2

top it up. syphon the new beer on top of the old carefully.

It’s being exposed to o2 in the barrel that’s a big part of the point of barrel ageing a big beer like that. A little oxidation changes, melds, and softens the flavours.

3

I’d top it up too.  All that color in the stout is protecting you from a lot of oxidation.

4

Correction, it took about 80% of the 5 gal carboy.  Yikes.
Topped it up this AM, smelled SOOOO gooood!

I put the rest in a gowler and an airlock.  <=== Does that work?

5

sure, if you transferred carefully you can use that to top up the barrel as you take ‘samples’ for ‘analysis’ over the next couple months.