2022 Barrel aged beer - Members Collab

ETA 10:20… je me grouille

Thanks everyone. That was a nice way to spend a half day. I’m very much looking forward to getting this beer carbed and ready to serve. It’ll be on tap very soon.

Merci encore Pat d’avoir accepté d’héberger le baril et a ta femme de nous tolérer lorsqu’on passent. J’espère qu’elle aime les bières barriqués!

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fait plaisir ! c’étais bien le fun.

So, how do you like your bourbon barrel aged imperial stout so far ??

Very much. After the holidays, I’ll hide away the remaining bottles in my basement so they can condition and improve.

It’s very different from the previous Imperial stout barrel project I participated in. That one was a red wine barrel and it brought out wild yeasts and bacteria that was present in the wine, making an unusual but still very tasty beer. This one is very clean.

My bottles are conditioning at the moment and I’ll give them another 2 weeks before giving it a try. With some other members, we also added coffee to a portion of it (the process was described in another post) and according to the sample we tasted at bottling, it was delicious : bold and well rounded. I’m looking forward to tasting them both cold and carbonated!

As a side note : I had about 10-15 litres of my non-barrel aged version that I put on tap and surprisingly, it got more traction than expected considering that both my spouse and I aren’t normally fans of big beers. I think the recipe we followed was definitely a winner.

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Same here for the non-barrel aged version, it’s quite delicious!

I’ve open 2 bottles so far of the barrel version, conditionning was not done yet but it still was very good. My co-brewer were impressed by the result. I found the Bourbon taste on the strong side, i’m curious to see if it will mellow with time.

Here is the BJCP sheet for the Imperial Stout Bourbon :
Bourbon Russian Imperial Stout - 2.pdf (386.9 KB)
Bourbon Russian Imperial Stout.pdf (214.5 KB)

In resume : to long exposition to wood

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Interesting as it only sit for 4 months in the barrel whereas we often see much longer aging periods typically for Imperial Stouts… Thanks for sharing these.

“Coconut lotion” and “latex”, can’t help but wonder what the judge was doing the night before :roll_eyes:

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Comparing with my other BJCP sheet from BOTY 2022, judges didn’t give any chance, score number lower than usual, but really good and complete feedback. I got quite some stuff to work on for improvement.

Fill date : 6 May
Empty date : 23 October

That’s about 5.5 month ish ?
Maybe the Bourbon bottle was to much ? I tend to agree with that it taste a lot, but still enjoy it.

Speaking of that… We taste the quad with @Norm and @ericpare and it’s already have interesting wood/bourbon notes. I think it could be a good ideas to kick start discussion on the next fill.

Ouin c’est quand même sévère. Je n’aime pas les bières barriquées habituellement et j’apprécie beaucoup celle-là ! Effectivement, on a un bon goût de bourbon, mais c’est pas trop non plus. Le côté bois/barrique sort juste assez à mon goût. J’ai déjà bu des bières pas mal plus intense que ça !

Bref, pour l’update du keg, avec ma blonde qui l’apprécie pas mal, je sais pas si ça va finir 2022 !!

Tu as raison, c’est 5.5 mois en fait. Ça reste que ce n’est pas si long que ça.

Pour la bière suivante, je crois qu’on pourra faire une bière “clean” et encore extraire un caractère boisé du fût. Reste maintenant à décider quel style de bière on utilisera. Vite comme ça, les possibilités intéressantes qui me viennent en tête (pas d’ordre particulier):

  • Wee Heavy
  • Strong Scotch Ale
  • Strong Bitter / ESB
  • Barleywine
  • Old Ale

C’est pas mal anglais, haha! Mais je lance ça surtout pour aider à lancer la discussion.

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Je serais intéressé d’embarquer pour la prochaine si ya toujours de la place et que c’est possible.

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Je pensais ça, la biere a été envoyée en sortant du baril…

De mon côté il y a une bonne différence entre la biere dans mon keg gazee 1 semaine après et la biere que je bois aujourd’hui…

Pas mal certain que la note serait différente.

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So I submitted this to the last two competitions (ALES and Green Mountain). The scoresheet results are here for anyone interested.

Ales
000228.pdf (366.1 KB)

GMM (silver medal!)
000170.pdf (2.6 MB)

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Really nice to see the evolution. Aging is the key here!

Here is some sheet I send to BOTY2022 (November 2022) of the same beer.

Bourbon Russian Imperial Stout.pdf (214.5 KB)
Bourbon Russian Imperial Stout - 2.pdf (386.9 KB)

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Aging is the key no doubt! Based on the name, I think Eric just took a 3rd place Best of Show with the beer??

I put the Quad version in to ABC for curiosity’s sake, and here are the results (TLDR no medal, but good comments… also asking for more aging and a higher carb than I was willing to send in the bottles from my keg)
ABC scoresheet BA Quad.pdf (584.1 KB)

Correct but it was our coffee version with Norm, Pat and Yacine.

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Ouais, merci à Café Pista et à leur café Kusillo pour la commandite. Faudrait d’ailleurs que je leur amène une bouteille en leur mentionnant les récents honneurs :wink: