Minimum Barrel Aging ABV

[kev211]

So heres the deal. Im about to barrel age my first beer. My buddy just hooked it up with a 3 gal bourbon barrel for a house warming present so I brewed an oatmeal coffee stout to age in it. The problem is, I missed my numbers a bit. I normally boil off down to about 5.5 gals but on this I wanted to go down to 5 gal. Well I forgot and ended up with 5.5 gals of 1.074 wort instead of 1.080(ish) wort. So Im predicting it should finish up around 1.012-1.014. If it finishes up there, it will be around 8.3%. My question is, is that too low of an ABV to barrel age? I know barrel aged beers want to be higher to fight off the barrel bugs and what not, so am I risking it here?

The barrel still has plenty of whiskey in it, so should be pretty sanitized. And before someone says it, I dont want a sour so thats not really a "worst case scenario" for me.

I dont have an issue just kegging this and brewing it again to get higher numbers, but if you guys think that ~8.3% is fine, then Ill go ahead and age it.

Thanks!

 

[BGHSmt7]

8.3% should be fine. There's a brewery near me that barrel ages their brown ale and that's only 7.4% Side Lot - Squirrel Woody

 

[dcbw]

I barrel aged 6.3% brown ale for a month in a 3rd turn whiskey barrel. Turned out great, but it took a while for all the flavors to smooth out with such a low ABV barrel beer. Higher ABV beers usually have more assertive flavors which help mask the bourbons and oak better.

I think it's more about time spent in the barrel than it is about ABV.

 

[kev211]

Ok great! Thanks guys! Im gonna pull a sample tonight and see if its even worth barrel aging (new recipe and Im thinking it may be on the bitter side) so we'll see