Help me plan a barrel fil

[gregkeller]

Ok, so I wasn't sure where to put this, so figured this was as good a forum as any. A friend and I are planning to fill a 60 gallon wine barrel to start a solera project. We've got the line on a recently dumped pinot noir barrel and both have enough experience brewing and making sour beers to feel comfortable taking on this project. Where we are at now is to try and map out our brewday (and stuff leading up to the brewday). It seems as if the chokepoint in our system is our boil kettle. I have a 15 gallon kettle and a 15 gallon keggle. My mash tun is a 20 gallon insulated kettle, I should be able to get close to 50 pounds of grain into that thing.

Here is my plan:
1. Brew 15 gallons of the beer (10 gallons of mine, 5 gallons of my partner), this is going to be our "starter" about a week before our big brew day. We will ferment these with our culture with the idea to build up the critters slowly. On brew day I'll bring my 10 gallons to my buddies, and that will go into the barrel first.

2. Brewday: Hoping to brew about 50 gallons this day. That will give us enough to fill the barrel (leave room for primary fermentation) plus extra that will top up the barrel once primary settles down.
-Not sure how to go about the day. I think I can get all the grain for this into two mashes. We've got two burners, two 15 gallon kettles and 2 8 gallon kettles. We probably need to do a total of 4 boils to get to 50 gallons of finished wort. Here is where my questions start:
A. If I need to do 4 boils, should I make my life easy, but longer day, and do 4 mashes and just try and go back,to back, to back, to back? It seems the easiest, but longest and is not taking advantage of my equipment.
B. Do two mashes that max out my mash tun, collect all the runnings in food safe buckets and then do a mega boil session. Since I'll have all of my wort collected, I think I can stagger boiling in my two 15 gallon kettles so that I can time cooling/transfers so the 4 boils should take us less time.
C. Do two mashes that max out my tun, collect runnings that are way over my planned OG (1.045-50, not 100% sure yet), boil, cool and then add spring water to bring us to our planned OG in the barrel? This would shorten our brewday by at least one boil if my math is correct, but I've never "watered down" a brew before. I know the macrobrewers do it, but I'm not trying to make Bud.

Right now I'm leaning towards option B, I'd have to get a bunch of food safe buckets, but otherwise it seems like the easiest way to do things. I could start boiling as soon as I can fill the first kettle, then drain second runnings into buckets, then get into the second mash. Hopefully the overlap would allow the first boiling to be finished about the same time the second mash is finishing up.

Ideas? Thanks in advance

 

[mashpaddled]

If you can get it all done with two mashes and four boils I think that's the easiest route. Two high gravity mashes would be an easier process but you would need to go back and make sure you didn't lose efficiency and need to add extract or sugar in the boil.

You didn't ask about this but if you're doing primary fermentation in the barrel then do everything you can to minimize sediment getting into the barrel. It's hard to get out and as it accumulates you'll lose beer volume to it. Make sure you account for that wort loss in calculating the total volume of wort you need to brew.

 

[gregkeller]

Yeah, We are slightly concerned about the amount of trub getting into the barrel. Hoping that using 15 gallons of partially fermented beer (that will go in relatively clean to the barrel) will help. We will probably whirlpool before running through the chiller and if possible we will knockout into buckets that will allow us to keep some cold break out of the fermenter if we let the buckets settle for a couple minutes before going into the barrel.

As to the solera aspect, we will be replacing beer at each pull with fermented base most likely, and that should keep trub from building up as the years go on.

 

[goodolarchie]

First, love the project, I'm trying to find a recent pinot barrel (well, 2, so it has a friend) myself to do the same.

Yeah, We are slightly concerned about the amount of trub getting into the barrel.
As to the solera aspect, we will be replacing beer at each pull with fermented base most likely, and that should keep trub from building up as the years go on.

Regarding trub, have you looked at using an inline filter / wort strainer? I have been eyeing this, it's on my Xmas wish list: https://www.brewershardware.com/1_5...-Strainer-with-3-OD-Body.html?category_id=295

They make a ~75 mesh (.2mm) sleeve for it, so you'd have almost all the crap that doesn't come from floccing out in the barrel.

 

[cactusgarrett]

Are you adverse to modifying the barrel with a trub dump valve? That could solve the issue of trub buildup over time since you're doing primary fermentation in the barrel.

 

[jfolks]

I like B, but would recommend holding the hot wort in corny kegs instead of plastic buckets

 

[gregkeller]

I might be able to round up enough corny kegs to hold onto the wort. That's a better idea I guess than lots of plastic.

 

[jfolks]

I use them for this kind of stuff almost every brew day - they work great! (Easier to pick up and dump, and you can use co2 to push the beer out if you’d like).