As our homebrew club did about a year ago, we again decided to age a beer in a bourbon barrel.  The Belgian Dubbel turned out nicely last time and this year we are upping our game and going for a Russian Imperial Stout.  ( Here is the brew sheet for the RIS. ) To be honest, there isn't a whole lot of stuff for me to talk about... 11 of us brewed 5 gallons of the beer and brought it to our local meeting place, Canal Street, and all siphoned our individual beers into the one barrel.  We'll let it sit for a couple to a few months and transfer back out into our individual kegs/carboys.   I have an idea on a few questions you may be asking, so let me take a stab at what may be on your mind. How did you get a barrel? One of the main guys in starting the club, Colin Presby, works for Weyerbacher Brewing.  They use Maker's Mark barrels for some of their brews.  Last year, he got one of their barrels after it was used.  Thi...

So, you want to brew a pumpkin beer, eh?  Good for you - now that is is the fall season .  Let me help you out by spinning two tales for you to ponder. First, a brewer and his partner gather up ingredients to brew a pumpkin spice beer - a beer with no pumpkin in the mash or the boil; there is simply pumpkin pie spices added at flame out.  Nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice... you can already smell the flavors, can't you? Actual pumpkin in a can. On the evening before brew day, the two decide they want to use actual pumpkin in the beer - to add a little extra flavor and fermentables, to make it more authentic, and just for the overall experience of brewing with a vegetable.  The quickest and easiest way to do this is to add canned pumpkin - not the pie filling, they know.  They want to add actual pumpkin in a can, which should be readily available at the grocery store.  After a quick glance at the "If you want to add pumpkin" section of the instructions whic...