Bourbon Barrel Black Gose

MASH SCHEDULE:

• Dough-in @ 95F with 98.4F water, hold for 45 min (phytic acid rest to help prep mash pH)
  
• Increase to 113F with boiling water, hold for 20 min (beta-glucan/protein rest)
  
• Increase to 152F with boiling water, hold for 55-60 min (main infusion/sacch rest)
  
• Collect 3.5 gallons in first runnings, sparge to collect 3 more
  
  So, here we are. Making a bourbon-barrel fermented black gose... I don't think either of us is sure exactly what's going to happen, but that's part of the fun. Here's the breakdown:
  
  We want to make a gose. This style of light-bodied, tart and funky spiced ale is pretty en-vogue right now. However, being us, we can't just do it the normal way. It's go hard or go home. So, we're going to brew a gose with 10.5% midnight wheat malt and alderwood smoked salt (y'know, cuz it's gonna be a black gose...), throw it in our bourbon barrel (which has previously aged Damnation Alley bourbon, our imperial stout and our English old ale), pitch a lactobacillus starter into it, wait a week then pitch Kölsch yeast, then probably wait a pretty long time to see what happens to it. We are doing this primarily to infect this barrel once and for all, and figure an insanely outlandish, reach-exceeding-our-grasp recipe will guarantee both that and potentially yield an interesting beer. If the beer doesn't come out palatable, then we'll at least learn something or another about sour beers and barrel-based primary fermentation. I'll keep this page updated with our trials and tribulations.
  
  7/24/15: The experiment begins (and oh, does it begin). Making a starter consisting of steeped acidulated malt, flour and dextrose. Already pretty bizarre, but we're hoping to just grow a small lacto culture from our single vial of White Labs L. delbrueckii (WLP677).
  
  7/24/15: - 11:50 PM: Just washed our barrel out with boiling water in preparation for filling it with wort and a lacto culture tomorrow night. Smells amazing still, but definitely a little buggy already. We had been considering this for a while, honestly. We've heard tell that a bourbon barrel will really only be able to age a beer to provide the usual woody, tannic and spirit-like characteristics for 2-3 uses before getting sour and bizarre... thus, we're pretty much prepping it for future sours right now.
  
  7/25/15: Brew day. Everything's going fine, actually. We collected a lot but it's pretty weak, so we'll boil it down to get a more concentrated wort.
  
  8/15/15: Just to update a bit... we went with the original plan on 7/25/15 after brewing to throw this directly into the barrel and add the previously-mentioned lacto starter we made. Additionally, however, we pitched ~65 mL of Omega Labs lactobacillus blend after throwing the other ~35 mL into a small batch of blueberry hefeweizen. Last week (a week after pitching the lacto blend and the Kölsch yeast, mind you), we tasted this monster and it's already pretty damn sour. However, it also hasn't really fermented much. Considering we only hit 1.042 for our OG (already a couple points off) and the Kölsch yeast seemingly barely did anything, likely due to the pH of the barrel's contents being too low (2.5-3.5) for fermentation to truly get underway, we may have our first "stuck" fermentation, cuz the sample we took, though awesome tasting, was about 1.020. Doesn't really matter cuz we can always throw some Brett in. I think it'll still come out awesome, but it needs time and TLC. We were asking for issues with this idea though, so it's fine.
  
  8/29/15: It's been a couple weeks since tasting this and checking hydrometer readings. Last time we checked, this guy was actually, really fermenting, though pretty slow. Even though we believe the yeast we pitched has been all but completely halted by the low pH of the barrel's current contents, it seems lacto has been slowly chipping away at the complex dextrins and other sugars hanging out in there, as the hydrometer revealed us to actually have a then-current gravity of ~1.020. Checked again today with another 8 oz sample and we are progressing, this time with around 1.014. It's slow going, but at this point we actually have a very tasty, complex dark sour beer that presents a lot of challenging flavor components and which has a well-rounded body to boot. In terms of ABV, we are hovering somewhere around 4%, which is actually pretty solid. Changed the blowoff assembly to an airlock and sipping on the sample as I type. As I mentioned, it's very complex. In the nose I get notes of bourbon and sherry, cocoa, oak, vanilla and an intense tangy funk note, not unlike something like Boulevard's Love Child sours (which are also BBA darker sours, incidentally). The wine-like notes also linger on the tongue, though the finish is sharply sour, salty and surprisingly very dry considering there's still a decent amount of residual sugar. I think we'll probably bottle this one pretty soon, honestly. We're trying to strike a balance between taking 8 ounce samples to check gravity every few weeks and just cutting our (volume) losses and collecting what we can, bottling it and enjoying it. Besides, we're both itching to do something insane with Brett in the barrel, so that's even more reason to get this wonderful little science project out of there and into our beer fridge. Until next time.
  
  9/18/15: We bottled this last week, using Lalvin champagne yeast to hopefully carbonate it nicely given the main yeast in the barrel probably gave up when it was added to such a low pH environment. It's somewhat carbonated in only a week which is good, but the most important thing is...
  
  IT'S FUCKING AWESOME.
  
  Holy shit, this is basically everything we wanted it to be, and pretty much all of the notes, nuances and flavors come together amazingly. It's smoky, salty, sour, malty, roasty, coffee-forward, tannic and bourbon-laced with an absolutely insane acid profile. Super good. Insanely pumped.