It's back! We just pulled our first barrel of this year's Bourbon Wee Heavy and it is hands down the best batch yet! It will be debuting at Fall Festivale this weekend and I can't wait to hear what people think about it. I wanted to take some time to tell everyone how it is different this year.
The first year we released the Wee Heavy was in 2012. It was a really good beer with a lot of bourbon flavor, but we didn't know that our yeast supplier had shipped us a contaminated slurry of yeast which lead to over carbonation in bottles that were kept warm.
Last year, we were really excited to brew it again, but we waited a little bit later into the year. The beer was still good, but the bourbon flavor was more subtle due to the colder climate that the barrels were aged in. The beer still got a nice oaky flavor, but I always missed the bourbon flavor from the first year.
So this year we learned our lesson and we brewed the beer during the summer so that the barrels would age in similar conditions to the 2012 batch. We also made sure to get a specific type of Buffalo Trace barrels so that we would get the vanilla bourbon flavor that the first batch had. It was definitely successful as we now have a ton of bourbon flavor.
Both of the previous batches were originally carbonated to a low volume of carbonation. Historically, Wee Heavys were carbonated at 1.2-1.5 volumes of co2. The low carbonation helps to make the beer a little more drinkable since you are less prone to feeling bloated. However, with such a low level of co2 in solution, we have had complaints that customers have thought the beer was flat. This year, we will be carbonating the beer to a higher level, but it will still be relatively low to keep the drinkability. Typically, bottled beers are around 2.4 volumes of co2, so we will be carbonating to 1.9 volumes.
So if you are at Fall Festivale this weekend, post reviews in the comments section. I'm looking forward to getting consumer feedback!
No comments:
Post a Comment