Whiskey Barrel Aged Tripel

Throughout our brewing evolution, I have gravitated to more technical, traditional German and Belgian beers.  While we've managed to really fine tune our JWIPA recipe over the past few years (and an unknown number of batches between the Canuck and Cackalacky Peck brew systems), I've also spent a good deal of time working on step mashes and improved yeast performance.  When I got a used 5 gallon whiskey barrel that will ultimately be inoculated with a variety of Brettanomyces cultures to bring the funk, I needed to find a way to tone down the strong oak and whiskey flavors.  With that  thought, the most Peck thing we could do would be to toss in a perfectly normal Belgian Tripel into a small batch whiskey barrel. 


Westmalle Tripel recipe from candisyrup.com
OG: 1.075
FG: 1.010
ABV: 9.2%
SRM: 5

Grain Bill:
12.5 lbs Belgian 2 row pilsner
2 lbs Belgian candy syrup, 5 L
0.5 lbs Belgian candy sugar, clear

Mash schedule:
Protein rest at 124F for 20 min
Saccharification at 147F for 60 min
Mash out at 170F for 10 minutes

Hop schedule:
1 oz Saaz at 60 min
1 oz Hallertau at 45 min
1.5 oz Styrians at 20 min

I also added Belgian candy syrup and sugar with 10 minutes left

Transferred to Chronical fermenter and used FTSS as immersion chiller to chill to pitching temp of 66F.  Pitched 800mL starter of White Labs 540 Belgian Abbey yeast.


Primary fermentation:
Let fermentation temp increase 1F each day for a week.
WL540 was a beast after about 7 days.  The first sample I took looked like a parfait and took forever to settle enough to even get a reading


Secondary in barrel: 
Racked to new 5 gallon oak whiskey barrel once gravity hit 1.014.  Barrel quickly imparted oak and whiskey flavors, so it was ready to rack to keg to age in 4 days.  By that time gravity was down to 1.010.


Beer is currently aging in keg at room temp for 3 weeks before putting into the keezer and force carbing to ~2.4 CO2 volumes (9 psi at 36F)