What's a good recipe to age in a demijohn?

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pat_00

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So I moved into this house that has a 50l demijohn in the shed. It also has a cellar-ish type room under the stairs that has a pretty stable temp.

So far I have mainly concentrated on brewing wheat beers and ales. What is a good recipe that I can age in the demijohn? I can't fit it in my fermenting fridge, so it will have to be OK at ambient temps in the cellar (so far a max of 25deg, min of ?)

Any good ideas? thinking of a dark ale or stout maybe
 
Lambic or another sour?
 
Berliner Weiss seems pretty popular around here. Not sure if I've ever had one though, Berlin remains a month long blur to me :)

I'm still pretty new to AG brewing, so not sure if I wanna tackle a lambic yet, seems complicated.
 
How long are you talking about ageing the beer for?
 
Russian Imperial stout, baltic porter, belgian dark strong, dubbel, oaked porter or stout.
 
You can just knock out a pale/wheat wort with minimal hops, chuck in one of the wyeast liquid yeast lambic blends and leave for a year. Only as complicated as you want to make it.
But otherwise, something big, or not much point in the demijohn.
Lambic just seems suited to no temp control.
 
Cool thanks for the ideas. I could age for 3-6 months or longer I guess. Might have a look at Russian imperial stout recipes
 
Good temp control until it's done and conditioned a bit, then rack into the demijohn, reduce the headspace as much as possible (even topping up with a small amount of boiled water if need be) seal with silicon bung or foil or something and leave to age, out of the sun/covered etc depending on the demijohn.
 
Barleywine is another good one for aging. Changes over time so is very ideal
 
Only because its grape harvest time, you could look into buying some Shiraz grapes and a good wine yeast. But that would require you to crush and press the grapes, so maybe too much to ask.
 

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