The solera project is about to turn one year old. Before I can package the first year’s beer, I need get year two’s refill ready to go in.

I’ll be brewing two batches to get enough volume for this year. I expect to need about six gallons to refill the barrel and the rest will age in a keg that I’ll use to keep the barrel topped up. I think I’ll get enough extra in the keg for about two years of top ups.

Last year, top ups were the most error prone and annoying part of the barrel aging process. Each time I topped up the barrel, I had to rack the top up beer into smaller and smaller vessels to avoid leaving excessive headspace. In the end I wasted a lot of the top up beer, and the top up beer that remained at the end of the year didn’t taste great.

Storing the top up beer in a keg and topping up the barrel with a picnic tap should be a much nicer way to keep the barrel full. I’ll never have to rack the top up beer around again, and it’ll always be protected from oxygen.

In another process change from last year, I’ve moved the barrel. It was a pain to try to air condition the closet my sour beers were in last year. There is no cooling in the new closet, but last summer I measured that the temps were quite stable and never got above ~75*. That’s a bit on the warm side but I think it’ll be ok.

Recipe

Pretty similar to last year. Notable changes:

• Weyermann Pils instead of US 2-Row
• Added the 27% Vienna from the original recipe that I accidentally forgot last year

Batch size:      6 gallons
Target OG:       1.060
Target FG:       1.005
Calculated IBU:  13.5
Calculated SRM:  15.6

Grain bill:
3.5 lb Pils             (27%)
3.5 lb Vienna           (27%)
3.5 lb Munich           (27%)
1.0 lb White Wheat Malt (7.6%)
0.5 lb Crystal 40       (3.8%)
0.5 lb Caramunich       (3.8%)
0.5 lb Special B        (3.8%)

Mash (Batch Sparge): 157 °F @ 1.4 qts/lb

Hops:
1.0 oz Hallertauer Mittelfrueh @ 60 minutes

Yeast:
ECY20 BugCounty
Decanted 3L starter split evenly between the two batches

Both batches were fermented at roughly 66 °F ambient temp.

Notes

2021-01-02 - Double brew day. First mash 158, second mash 157

Pre-boil gravity on first batch 1.056. Expecting OG around 1.064. Target was 1.060 First batch chilled. OG 1.062. Second batch OG 1.058 after adding a little extra water toward the end of the boil.

Mixed the two together to get two ~5.5 gal batches at ~1.060

Had some extra volume so I split off two 1 gal test batches. One got ECY46, the other some old Imperial Dry Hop. One or both of those will be aged with some bottle dregs depending how they taste after primary.

2021-01-10 - Transferred from primary to the barrel. About 4 gal went to a keg for future barrel top ups.

2021-01-24 - Both 1 gal batches got some bootleg biology funk weapon 2 dregs. I’ll probably use them for blending with overly sour beers in the future.

2021-04-10 - Topped up the barrel from the keg. Topping up from the keg is great. I’m never topping up barrels without a keg again.

2021-07-15 - Topped up the barrel from the keg. Snuck a little sample from the barrel, still tasting great!

The top up beer isn’t tasting so good. It’s not gross but definitely sub-par. Not sure what’s going on there. Same wort, same ECY20 pitch, same temperature. I think I’ll dump the rest of the top-up keg and re-brew for year three.