Which yeast would work best with this recipe: Safale S-04, Safale S-05, or White Labs WLP007? I have all three of these on hand and I can't decide which one to use.
Hey guys - I've soaked some oak cubes in bourbon for a few weeks and I'm ready to rack to secondary and add them. Should I add just the soaked cubes or all of the bourbon it's soaking in too? I feel like dumping in the bourbon will add more oak flavor, but I don't want the bourbon to be overpowering.
Too late to follow my advice, but what I did was: soak the oak on bourbon for 12 or 24 hours, dumped out the liquid to get rid of the harsh oak flavors, soaked the oak in bourbon for a few weeks and then dumped the liquid and all in the secondary.
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Yeah I've actually been to the gypsum mines they age the beer in. Its an abandoned mine purchased by a storage company that now leases space and advertises it as a constant temp and humidity environment. Its always dry and 50 degrees F, if anyone can mimic those conditions long term... More info here if you're interested: http://www.undergroundsecuritycompany.com/history.html
Here's what I'm going to do. I'm bottling half of my batch today without any oak or bourbon. Should be a good coffee stout. The other half I'm splitting into two, one gallon glass carboys. I'm going to put half the oak cubes in one, and in the other I'll put the rest of the oak cubes and half of my oaked bourbon. I'll save the other half of the bourbon for another batch of something else later.
So I'll have:
2 gal coffee stout
1 gal coffee stout + 1oz bourbon soaked oak cubes
1 gal coffee stout + 1oz bourbon soaked oak cubes + 4oz oaked bourbon.
If one is weak and the other strong I'll mix them before bottling, otherwise should be an interesting experiment
I'll use regular priming sugar and bottle condition the plain brew. Probably the same method for the others as I don't see any other way (no keg system here unfortunately, although after aging for a year, who knows).
As far as the cold brewed coffee goes you're probably right to want to sanitize the French press and boil/cool the water first. Not much you can do for the beans I guess. I'm ok with assuming they won't spoil the batch.
To get the 11.2% I had to use the scale button in Beersmith. I then tinkered with my grain percentages and hop IBU's until they closely matched the original recipe's.
I didn't put a lot of thought into the oak and bourbon. I have (for my half batch) 1 oz of American Medium Toast oak cubes in 1 cup of bourbon. They're in a sealed Pyrex container and will be for about 2 weeks. I plan to rack onto them and taste after two weeks. I'll leave it on them for 2 months or so; depending on taste. This was the advice of my LHBS.
I know that deviates from the original recipe but it's what felt right to me. I have not accounted for how much that 1 cup of bourbon will increase my ABV.
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