Bourbon Barrel Stout

Base recipe inspired by Goose Island Bourbon Stout.

Note that with such large grain volumes, I had to use my 20 gallon equipment - too little headspace for my 10 gallon gear. Achieving proper final gravity requires extracting a very large volume (11 gallons) and boiling down to product 5.5 gallons at high gravity. This takes about 3 hours, but monitor gravity and remaining volume to determine end point.

Dough in with cold water, add 170F water (to reach 36 qts water added - 1.25 qt/lb rate), check temp and apply heat (if needed) to reach sach temp of 153F. Mash for 60 min or until iodine starch test indicates conversion complete. Mash out at 167F. Acidify sparge water, sparge to yield 11 gallons. Initial runnings 1.082, final runnings 1.040.

Boil for 3 hours, adding boiling hops and chalk/gypsum water agents. At 15 min to end of boil, add irish moss and insert chiller to boil kettle to sanitize. At 10 min, add finishing hops.

Chill, aerate and pitch yeast. Note that a large starter is required due to high OG. In this case, was pitched onto yeast from primary of previous batch. Due to the high gravity, I split this into two carboys as it was blowing off a lot of foam otherwise.

After 2 weeks, transfer to secondary, add oak spirals soaked in bourbon. After 2 more weeks, transfer to oak bourbon barrel, age for 9 months. Transfer back to carboy prior to bottling/kegging.