Ageing My Porter

[Back Yard Brewer]

I have had an old 5ltr sherry barrel sitting around and was thinking of maybe giving it a clean out and putting part of my AG Porter in it.The barrel and what is left of the contents would be near on 15yrs old. The sherry around 1/2ltr of it is very dark thick and conentrated, taste's great. It is the ideal consistency to sip through a port sipper. What are the pro's and cons of my idea.I spoke to a winemaker at work in regards to picking up extra residual sugar and then having a problem later when bottling e.g bottle bombs. He said it should not be a problem because the sweetness taste they maybe be picked up is not the fermentable type, hard to explain but I took his word for it. Ideally comments from brewers who have tried my idea would be of benefit.

BYB

 

[newguy]

My homebrew club did this with a rye whisky barrel two years ago. The barrel held 50 gallons; I brewed 10 and a friend brewed 40 (he has a 20 gallon system and can run off two batches in a day). Various members of our club took the wort home and fermented it. Once it was done, we racked it into the barrel and left it for about 10 months. In the beginning, the flavours it picked up were pretty good, but it was definitely infected by the barrel from day 1. It just got worse with time. I ended up dumping almost the whole 50 gallons on an ant hill in my backyard. It killed the ants, but it also killed the lawn. One year later and there's still a dead spot back there which my wife kindly points out each time I happen by when she's in the backyard.

Chances are your beer will also pick up an infection. To minimise the damage, make sure the beer is rather strong and has a very low FG. The low FG will limit the sugars the nasties can digest and the high alcohol will help to keep them at bay too. Also make sure you can properly seal the keg to make it as airtight as possible otherwise the beer will start to get oxidized quite quickly.

If you're open to the idea of rebrewing just for the cask, I'd suggest an old ale or a baltic porter. Their strength will help to preserve them.

 

[Back Yard Brewer]

Another point of interest I thought of to avoid infection. If I decided to keg and force carb after the oak barrel I could always add a little S02 while in oak. I know that this would kill any yeast cells but in the case of force carbing and provided the S02 was at minnimal levels it would not be an issue??

BYB

 

[danman]

i think you should make a nice Lambic.
i have made a mini AG brew (7L) of wheat beer then racked onto 500g frozen rasperries
once colour is leached from the berries i will rack again and add 1 vial of WLP655 Belgian Sour Mix
if colour is too my liking i will then add to my 7L port barrel to leave for a few years
if colour not to my liking i will rack again onto frozen raspberries then add to barrel

i thought only Lambic styles of beer went into oak barrels?

correct me if im wrong,
cheers,dan