{"id":1685,"date":"2020-01-30T10:09:01","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T16:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/?p=1685"},"modified":"2020-02-01T05:57:25","modified_gmt":"2020-02-01T11:57:25","slug":"barrel-project-final-update-1-30-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socpsy.com\/casks\/barrel-project-final-update-1-30-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Barrel Project Final Update (1\/30\/2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This project began with an idea in early 2017. I described the intended project in a post in March of that year<\/a>. Since that time, I posted several updates (see posts here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>). The project experienced a few hiccups along the way. I am now officially declaring the project at an end. If you do not wish to read the updates linked above, you can get a sense of the project’s chronology here<\/a>. What follows is a summary of the products<\/p>\n

1. The nocino<\/strong> that spent time in the barrel tastes quite nice. It definitely picked up flavors from the barrel. In retrospect, I would probably consider leaving it in the barrel for a longer period of time. My procedures could be called “over-oaking aversive” because I intentionally erred on the side of under- rather than over-oaking anything that went into the barrel.<\/p>\n

2. The split-batch of imperial stout<\/strong>. The half batch that never saw the inside of the barrel tastes very nice at this point. The nocino barrel-conditioned imperial stout still is “noisy.” The nocino flavor tends to overwhelm most of the stout character. To be fair, it tastes better now than it did last year.\u00a0 I once thought that I would blend the barrel and non-barrel imperial stout. I have decided not to do that. Instead, I plan to force carbonate the non-barrel version and bottle it. I will hold on to the barrel version for a bit longer and make a decision on what to do with it later.<\/p>\n

3. The over-hopped Belgian Quad<\/strong>. I described this brew in previous posts. It was to go into the nocino barrel for conditioning. However, in the midst of my eye surgeries, I mis-read the AA levels for my hops and over-hopped the batch by quite a bit. Brewing an under-hopped version and blending the two seemed like a way to remedy the situation. However, after brewing a 3-gallon new batch, which tasted so good, I decided not to blend. A friend of mine really liked the over-hopped batch, so I gave it to him with the stipulation that he give me a six-pack of it after bottling. I tasted one of those bottles recently, and it actually tastes much better than a year ago. I’m almost sorry I gave it away! \ud83d\ude42 By the way, this 5 gallon batch came it at 9.7%ABV.<\/p>\n

4. The slightly under-hopped Belgian Quad<\/strong>. This 3 gallon batch turned out really well. It came in at 11.2%ABV with attenuation out of this world. Two and a half gallons of this went into the former nocino barrel that was slightly recharged with a 750ml bottle of rye (see previous post<\/a> for details) and the other half gallon went into my smallest keg. In September, 2019, this quad was drained into a keg. I recently tasted it again and found that it had quite a bit of nocino character and very little rye flavor. There is some barrel-related flavor, but less than I intended. I plan to force carbonate this batch and bottle it this coming week (week of Feb 2).<\/p>\n

So, what have I learned?<\/p>\n