Bourbon Porter!!

[Mangod52]

Hey there,
I have a basic porter that is at 2 weeks in the fermenter. I was thinking about adding some bourbon. How much should I add for a 5 gallon bucket. I dont want heavy bourbon taste, but it should have a little bite.

Thanks

[tlael]

I've found that bourbon added is nothing near what a barrel aged beer flavor will provide, but ,to add bourbon, you'd want to be in the .25 oz/12 oz bottle area or less. That's 13.5 oz or less per 5 gallon.
I'd start with a sample out of the fermentor with .125 oz before you dose the whole batch.
Scale from there.

[Ozwald]

Definitely dose a small sample first. If you do it in a measuring cup, it's pretty easy to do the math to figure out the dose for the whole batch.

[Mangod52]

Ok thanks guys for the input.

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

I think you should soak oak cubes in some bourbon, and add them to secondary rather than just dumping bourbon into your beer. Put 4 ounces of cubes in 2 ounces of your favorite bourbon. Strain, and add the cubes to the keg. The oaked bourbon ain't bad, either.

Just my two cents.

Send me a sample!

[Afterlab]

I think you should soak oak cubes in some bourbon, and add them to secondary rather than just dumping bourbon into your beer. Put 4 ounces of cubes in 2 ounces of your favorite bourbon. Strain, and add the cubes to the keg. The oaked bourbon ain't bad, either.

Just my two cents.

Send me a sample!

+1. I did a Firestone Velvet Merkin clone with 1 oz of American Medium Toast Oak cubes soaked for 3 weeks in Eagle Rare Bourbon. Decanted off the bourbon and dumped the cubes freeball-style into the keg. Turned out well with the bourbon in the background and the beer in the forefront.

Pouring bourbon straight into 5 gallons of liquid will make it tough to get a homogenous mixture of beer and bourbon. Not to mention that concentrated dose of a high level of alcohol is going to do a number on your yeast cell walls.

[Ozwald]

Pouring bourbon straight into 5 gallons of liquid will make it tough to get a homogenous mixture of beer and bourbon. Not to mention that concentrated dose of a high level of alcohol is going to do a number on your yeast cell walls.

Cubes are another good way to go, but mixing it well isn't any harder than adding priming sugar. Also your beer should be fairly clear of yeast at this point. Even if you rupture a few cells, it shouldn't be detrimental to your beer.

[Bugeater]

Here is an excerpt from a discussion of Denny Conn's Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter, one of my all time favorite recipes to brew.

Once fermentation has slowed down, it's time to add your extras (Bourbon, Vanilla, and Oak (if you want)). Denny's original recipe calls for you to split 2 fresh vanilla beans, scrape the insides, chop the pods into quarters, and add all this to the secondary fermenter (or just throw it in the primary if you do not use a secondary.) Then taste this periodically for between 7 and 14 days to get the right level of vanilla flavor you are looking for.

When the vanilla is right and it's bottling/kegging time, it's time to add the Bourbon. Denny's original recipe calls for 10ml. of Bourbon per pint of finished beer. He arrived at this by adding ml. samples to 4 oz. of beer and then scaled up. To some, this may be a bit too much bourbon, so I suggest you do the same calculations and figure out what suits your taste best. You can get more bourbon in, but you can never take it back out

For the sake of math, however, 10 ml. Bourbon/Pint of Beer = 400 ml. Bourbon/5 Gal. of Beer = 1.69 Cups Bourbon/5 Gal. Beer

Although the original recipe does not call for oak, I like it. Restraint, however, needs to be practiced here. Jamil Zainasheff on The Brewing Network recently recommended 1 - 2 oz. of Medium Toast Oak Cubes per 5 gallons of beer. If you are using oak chips, they have more surface area and will require less to get the same effect. Jamil also recommended boiling the chips or cubes in a bit of water for about 10 minutes to sanitize them. Alternately, you could also soak the chips in the bourbon for a bit then pour the whole thing into your secondary fermenter.