Barleywine barrel chips

[andrei cotiga]

Hi,

I'm planning on putting down an American Barleywine. Will only brew 14L of the stuff and plan on aging it in 0.33L bottles. Since it's a style which could use some ageing in wooden barrels, I was thinking of adding one or two chips to each bottle so they can "grow" together. Has anyone done it this way or is there another way of imparting wood age flavour to the beer during secondary?

[Crusader-Rob]

Dont use the chips. Use the cubes.

and bulk age, dont individually cube the beer, it creates a nucleation point for yeast/carbonation, and it stirs up the yeast sediment etc.

If you bulk age you can botle it up when the wood character is at a level you like.

another suggestion is to soak the cubes in a spirit like whiskey or bourbon or something like that, to add an additional character to it. I've done this with imperial porters and stouts, and it comes out nicely. You add the liquor as well. (Just enough spirits to cover the cubes, and sit in a jar or something for minimum of two weeks)

something along the lines of 1.8 Grams per litre of cubes should be nice.

[andrei cotiga]

Thanks Rob. So a possible schedule would be along the lines:

2 weeks primary; 3 weeks secondary and wood cubes at some point enough to get the desired flavour and then bottle prime, age for another 2 months or more.

Did I get it right?