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Peat Smoked, Whisky Flavoured Ale

Post #1 made 11 years ago
by hermanpeckel
Folks,

A few years back I went to one of the Lord Nelson's annual beer dinners. Much beer was consumed so the memory is quite hazy, but at the end of the night they cracked out one of their barrel aged beers. It was fricken amazing!! For me it almost tasted like whisky - a nice hit of strong but smooth alcohol, then an oaky finish from the barrel. There was a bunch of other flavours in there too.

With that in mind, I wanted to do me a similar beer. I was thinking something fairly strong (around 8%), not too dark (15 - 20 SRM) and with some peat smoked malt, then some oak chips in the secondary.

Has anyone brewed anything similar? Any other suggestions for malt, hops or additives?
Last edited by hermanpeckel on 08 Aug 2014, 13:05, edited 1 time in total.

Post #3 made 11 years ago
by BobBrews
hermanpeckel,

I brewed this with success? I used wood chips bought at a local brew supply shop and I always have whiskey on hand (for medicinal purposes only)
AG-BourbonBarrelPorter.pdf
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Last edited by BobBrews on 08 Aug 2014, 19:57, edited 1 time in total.
tap 1 Raspberry wine
tap 2 Bourbon Barrel Porter
tap 3 Czech Pilsner
tap 4 Triple IPA 11% ABV
Pipeline: Mulled Cider 10% ABV

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Post #4 made 11 years ago
by PistolPatch
herman,

The question you are asking is really advanced for a start and it is also totally undefined. Ask it on any brewing forum and you will get a lot of answers and pretty much all of them will be wrong. One reason they will be wrong is because who knows what you are really after?

In Australia and probably a lot of other countries, there will be a 'Lord Nelson' in almost every capital city so you saying the 'Lord Nelson's annual beer dinner is pretty much no info! First tip - say where you are from in your first post or in your profile.

Secondly, don't expect anyone on a forum to give you a decent recipe. A forum is often the worst place you can go to for recipe advice. Sorry Bob but the Northern Brewer recipes are very ambiguous. I know you tell me you don't care but recipes like that really can cause confusion and chew up time on this site which is more of an info site than a brewing forum. The recipe above has no integrity. Here is an analogy of one reason why...

...

I was at my sister's last night and she is the best chef/cook ever. Every time I eat there, it is different and amazing. Pretty much everything she does would be world-class though she doesn't realise it.

Last night she gave us some, to simplify things, I'll call them 'cookies' (sweet biscuits but what we were eating was a little more complex than that). Anyway her point was that to accentuate the sweetness and make it more powerful, you actually add salt. We were all amazed. And then...

My nieces husband said, "How much salt do you add?" She replied, "About half a teaspoon in a batch."

I couldn't believe it. I actually asked about three times. "How big is a batch?" To her it didn't matter. Her eye would know that this batch needed more than the last batch.

We see the same in brewing recipes.Not just the batch size but many other things such as alpha acid percentage of hops go undefined.

But, when you are talking recipes herman, you really need to do a lot of research and ignore most of what you read. You also need to have a library of solid books (eg 'Brewing Classic Styles') and you also need to get your terminology right.

You also need to make sure you are brewing standard styles well before jumping in to the heavyweights. Later in the year we should hae a good collection of high integrity recipes on this site.

:peace:
PP
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Post #5 made 11 years ago
by hermanpeckel
@Bob - thanks! That looks like a great beer. It may well be next on the list to brew!

@PP - So are you saying that you can't ask a question on this site that doesn't have a right or wrong answer? I wasn't after a tried and true recipe that had been brewed and tested 100 times on my exact equipment. I was merely asking for opinions or ideas, and, as far as I am aware, opinions or ideas can't be wrong. Also, just cause a beer isn't "brewed to style", also doesn't make it wrong.

That said, I understand what you're saying. You need to crawl before you can walk, but that means at some point you have to step up and try to walk. As long as you don't cry when you fall down again.

Post #6 made 11 years ago
by PistolPatch
hermanpeckel wrote:@PP - So are you saying that you can't ask a question on this site that doesn't have a right or wrong answer?...
Whilst my post above here isn't my best, I have no idea what gave you this impression. Look at my posts here on the forum (this one for example) and you'll see that I am as open as anyone else to flexibility and you'll also see that I am very dedicated to helping you and anyone else get the answers they need. I am not open however to vagueness.

Here is what I got wrong in my last post here. On a second reading, your post wasn't as vague as I initially thought. Your title and the post does give some very good descriptors - peat smoked, whisky flavoured, oaky finish, smooth strong alcohol, scotch ale/barley wine, light in colour etc. That isn't bad so you might get some ideas here. I think I just latched on to the fact that the first suggestion given to you was a porter which isn't what you were asking for at all.

As for everything else I wrote above, I stand by it. I have written these thoughts though much better in this sticky and in bits and pieces in this one.

Just go a little easy on me. Bear in mind that I and a few others here spend many hours each week correcting and explaining the vagaries of recipes from other sites (such as in the first sticky). On top of that, slowly, behind the scenes, we are building up enough of a bank of high integrity recipes for you. Until then, it would be great if members read the stickies in the beginners forum and invest in the few dollars required to buy a decent recipe book such as "Brewing Classic Styles" ($10 on Kindle). I really think that is the best thing to do when starting out.

Also bear in mind I'll be the first one to try and help you make sense of a recipe you stumble across that you might think will be great. This can often take a lot of time which I think is proof of just how dedicated we are to seeing brewers progressing as fast and as easily as they possibly can.

Fair enough?
PP

(Try a search of barley wine on here as I remember someone looking in to this a while back. Might be some ideas there as well.)
Last edited by PistolPatch on 10 Aug 2014, 08:27, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #7 made 11 years ago
by hermanpeckel
All good here PP. I just felt you were being overly anal about it. I mean, it doesn't really matter if the reader doesn't know which Lord Nelson I'm talking about. Even if they did, they probably wouldn't know the beer I was talking about as it was a one-off cellar release for that night. If they were there however, they'd know exactly what I was talking about.

I disagree with what you are referring to as vagueness. Posing a fairly open (or what may be considered vague) question on a forum is often a great way of getting responses that are outside the box you were originally thinking in. For me, that's what forums are all about. Sure, Bob's response didn't match all of my criteria, but it DID give me some inspiration for another brew. All good!

I understand what you are saying re high integrity recipes. Having a good recipe really takes out the guess work, but it is also fun to cook without a recipe. As long as you learn from your mistakes and "adjust the amount of salt you put in based on batch size". Oh, speaking of recipes, I DO own a copy of "Brewing Classic Styles". It's a great book without doubt, but I wouldn't consider the recipes within it what you would consider "high integrity". Interested to hear your thoughts on this.

All the above said, I don't want to appear unappreciative of your help and input, because that is definitely not the case. I'd be still opening cans of kit brews if it wasn't for this site. My first ever BIAB was a brew by numbers of NRB's All Amarillo, and it turned out great! This is exactly what you need for your first brew. That way the bar gets set high and you know what you are capable of achieving on your equipment. For that, and any future input, I thank you. You do a great job.

HP

PS I had a boy look for the barley wine ideas and didn't find anything recent.

Post #9 made 11 years ago
by Rick
herman,

I'm going to comment on what I see within this thread. Either of you can correct me if I am off base here.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with your thought process, herman. You don't seem to connecting with what Pat is saying here though.

Brewing Classic Styles is, indeed a book that is filled with "high integrity" recipes. Zainasheff and Palmer do a very good job communicating their recipes, so that any brewer can recreate them as intended. They clearly define volumes and provide us with the most important one (what we call VAW here). Next, they let us know they are using Rager for IBU calculations. They also go into depth as to which malts to buy, rather than leaving everything ambiguous enough to where a new brewer could possibly translate things many different ways.

This site strives to do the very same thing. Honestly, I think Pat does a much better job with it than anyone. Coming into the site and not respecting that is going to rustle some jimmies. If he seems "anal" about it, it's for a very good reason. I have very little respect for the average poster on HBT, AHB, and basically any other brewing forum I have experienced, because they all speak the same flawed language. We don't want that running rampant on this site, because we hold ourselves to a higher standard.

Your (and anybodies) opinion of the recipes within BCS are largely irrelevant. What 'high integrity" means, is the ability of the original brewer to communicate their recipe to others properly. Let's say you move forward with your brew in an experimental fashion. Pat is merely trying to arm you with the tools you need to be able to communicate your findings with us in the future.

The file posted by Bob suffers from the same lack of information as the HBT thread you linked us to. There is no clear path to be found in either of those sources.

It's not to say they are useless, we can take some things from them and discard what is not useful. If you are willing to spend months on your life proving something out, that is great .. nobody will knock you for that. But, in the end you really should spend time reading here to educate yourself on how we go about defining brewing terminology.

Personally, I will not follow a recipe until I am confident the original brewer understands all of the critical concepts of brewing, and that they know how to communicate properly. There are more people here who can do this, than you will likely find on any other international forum.
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Post #10 made 11 years ago
by PistolPatch
Sorry guys. I am trying to avoid the forum atm as much as possible as I really need to focus on writing BIABacus help which is where my attention needs to be and where I want it to be at the present time. I also have a lot of other things tugging at my limited resources atm so...

1. My posts above are not nearly as good as I would like them to be. Some of what you are saying herman is definitely correct and some I would disagree with.
2. The bits I disagree with, Rick has written really nicely above.

The contrast of post #8 and post #9 is important and Rick has pointed this out as well. Whilst this is a forum, it is far more importantly and info site. It was not started to be another brewing forum where people can randomly provide low (occasionally high) quality info or a forum where you have to wade through a thread of God knows how many posts to get an answer (or no answer) to very simple questions.

This forum is about giving great info fast. If great info happens to be that most recipe advice you get is crap (or un-concentrated, or incorrect or non-copyable) on existing brewing forums etc then that is the advice this forum will give you. Having this attitude might open this forum up to ridicule by some but do you also notice how much more helpful and friendly and welcoming this forum is than others?

Lots of open questions and new ideas have been posted on this forum and have either been engaged and encouraged or dismissed if there is no obvious merit. Many questions are still open/unanswered. Atm however, if you want recipe advice on such a specialist beer, I don't think you will find it here and I would be very careful on what you read elsewhere.

Gotta race,
PP
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