Bourbon Barrel Stout

A fellow member of my local homebrew club received a 53 gallon bourbon barrel as a birthday present.  Several members are brewing the same stout recipe to fill the barrel.  I will be adding 10 gallons to the total.  Below is the recipe.  I am currently waiting on an order of oat malt before I brew.

15# Marris Otter
6# Oat Malt
1.5# VIctory Malt
1.5# Chocolate Malt
1.5# Crystal 120
1.5# Carafa II
1# Roasted Barley (300 SRM)
3oz Magnum @ 60min
1oz Williamette @ 10min
Mashed at 136° and 156°
English Ale S-04

I ended up with a OG of 1.069.  The beer needed blow off tubes less than 12 hours later and is now fermenting very aggressively.  I need to figure out a better container for the blow off tubes since the container is now overflowing with krausen.

Barrel Top Barrel

Bulk buy and Porter brew

I brewed a porter on Sunday.  It was my first chance to try the brew bag and I am a big fan.  My mash tun cleanup was super simple.  I removed the grain and bag and placed it in a kitchen garbage bag so it did not leak as I carried it out to the compost pile.  I them simply dumped the bag out, rinsed it out, and hung it to dry. I ended up running close to 90% efficiency so my OG ended up at 1.059  which should result in a 6-6.2% ABV beer.  I wonder if the bag actually helped improve the efficiency?  Perhaps reducing channeling down the side of the mash tun?   Five days in and the gravity has dropped to 1.018.  I expect a drop of 6 to 8 more points in the next few days.  The sample was nice and hoppy so I do not plan on dry hopping.

I waited until this Sunday because my grain came in from my clubs group buy.  Homebrew clubs commonly work with a local brewery to do bulk buys once or twice a year.  I was able to pick up a 100lb of 2-row for $0.61/lb.  I also picked up a 55# sack of Maris Otter and Pilsen malt.

Now on to planning my big barleywine.