Barrel beer?

[Gerry99]

Not a new member but I am back brewing after a long break. I’ve just started Kegging again and have a kegerator built at long last.
I have a question about lme. I’d like to buy the 25kg tub of lme and make a full whiskey barrel of beer! I would mix hops with a five gall brew as normal and really over hop it. Boil in the grainfather for sixty minutes and add to the barrel. Is it ok to do this without having to boil all the extract in hundreds of pints of water?
its a dual purpose idea as I want to ferment and age in the barrel plus make a large amount of beer as an experiment. Advice would be most welcome.
Can I ferment and age in the same barrel?
My initial thinking is to hop a normal batch of all grain tripel with ten times the normal amount of hops. Add to the barrel with five gallons of boiling water. Put the 25kg of lme into the barrel and roll it around the garden. Fill with water, add lots yeast, and leave it in the poly tunnel for a month. I’d wrap old duvets around it. The plan is to do this mid August as the tunnel is generally over twenty Celsius. By mid September it’s down to the mid teens. I hope to condition the beer in the barrel until Christmas.
Is this a fairytale or a possibility? I have a number of whiskey barrels so I am reasonably confident I can get one that won’t leak.

 

[kelper]

Sounds like a waste of time and money.

 

[Gerry99]

Many thanks Kelper. That might actually be really good advice. If you have the time I’d be really obliged if you can explain why.
I have the casks and,since i am currently working from home, I have plenty of time. Perhaps not an abundance of money to fire at this idea but enough to give it a go.
Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[kelper]

It might work but if it doesn't you have wasted a lot of money.

 

[Madhouse]

If you do the calculations you could make a really strong ale and add water to dilute it back, problem with this could be that you end up with a really 'thin' ale.

You might be better off doing a number of brews and adding them all into the same FV (barrel), which would be dependent on your sanitisation being on point and take a fair bit of time.

Sounds like it'd be an interesting experiment though.

 

[Gerry99]

If you do the calculations you could make a really strong ale and add water to dilute it back, problem with this could be that you end up with a really 'thin' ale.

You might be better off doing a number of brews and adding them all into the same FV (barrel), which would be dependent on your sanitisation being on point and take a fair bit of time.

Sounds like it'd be an interesting experiment though.

Cheers madhouse. It’s getting twenty or thirty loads all correct. Does the LME need to be boiled before cooling and putting in the barrel??

 

[Madhouse]

Cheers madhouse. It’s getting twenty or thirty loads all correct. Does the LME need to be boiled before cooling and putting in the barrel??

The advantage with adding so many brews into a barrel should be that those brews don't need to be as perfect as they're being diluted by all the others - think pebble in pond vs pebble in ocean here. You could make it easier by not having an overly complicated recipe.

In my mind you'd sanitise the keg and make each brew as you normally would. But if you add all your hops to one brew / boil plan then in theory your subsequent additions are just volume and sugars. I've not used LME before so I'd just say do what you would normally - would probably need a 15min boil just from a sterilisation point of view (water and LME).

Temp wise, it depends how long it'll take to fill. First batches could be a bit warmer as they'd cool while you do the others. Guess it depends on your preference and how soon you want to pitch the yeast, you could go down the no-chill route and wait a day or so to get to pitching temp.
Of course that depends on yeast - you could use Kviek and ferment at 35 degrees C.

 

[terrym]

@Gerry99
One of the problems that you have, as far as I am concerned, is that in my experience some LME can cause homebrew twang in the final product. And you have no real way of knowing whether it will or not until you have tried it. So you if you buy 25kg LME and find it produces twangy beer you will be a tad disappointed.
If you do proceed at all, I suggest you use DME/spray malt which may cost more but will deliver a product far less likely to have the twang, and because of the water content in LME you actually need less DME. In the past I have used 0.75kg DME= 0.65kg DME as the rough conversion.

 

[Gerry99]

Terrym and Madhouse. Cheers to you both. Sounds like good advice. The twang is something I will have to avoid as it put me off home brewing for years. I’m going to try a small batch brew first. I’ll make one gallon of really well hopped beer and then add it to four gall

 

[Gerry99]

Apologies
Fingers are doing their own thing.
I’ll add the one gallon to four of lme mix. See what it’s like and proceed.