Tom's Notes

Chill wort to 75-78 degrees for pitching. Place wort in two 5-gallon carboys (you'll be glad you did when the explosive fermentation begins!). Use a cultured yeast slurry. After pitching, allow wort to drop to 68-degrees and ferment at 68-degrees for 30-days in primary. Swirl carboys from time-to time to keep the yeast active. When primary fermentation is complete rack the beer to a Cornelius keg containing damp bourbon soaked oak chips (see below for information on how to do this). Allow the beer to rest on the oak, under 30# CO2 pressure, for 2-4 weeks. After this, you must either drink it all, or rack it off the oak for future consumption (there is such a thing as too much oak!).

How to "bourbon" the oak:
Do this at least 12-weeks before the day you plan to rack your beer off primary. In a sanitized 5-gallon Cornelius keg, place one-half bag of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey Wood Smoking Chips. These are sold by the bag, and each bag contains 210 cubic inches. They are available at many WalMart stores, Osh Hardware stores, and also at many of the chain BBQ stores, such as Barbecues Galore. The chips need not be washed or sanitized before placing them in the keg, because the next step is to pour the entire contents of a 750ml jar of moonshine into the keg on top of the wood chips. You can find "moonshine" at many upscale liquor stores. Look for the type that comes in a Mason jar and looks like water. Before you pour the moonshine into the keg, taste a little and take note of how harsh it is. Now seal the keg, and pressurize it with CO2. Over the course of the next few weeks, the wood will impart an amber color and vanilla flavor characteristics to the moonshine. During this period, occasionally shake the keg to mix-up the contents.

After twelve weeks, pump out the moonshine. It will be amber in color, and it will have taken-on flavor notes of oak and vanilla. Drink it, but not all at once! What you have now is whiskey, not moonshine. Note how smooth tasting the moonshine has become.

When the keg is empty of whiskey, and the wood is still damp, you may fill it with beer from the primary fermenter.

If you don't care to experiment with turning moonshine into whiskey, you may instead use a bottle of bourbon in place of moonshine. If you choose to do this, the dry wood chips need only be soaked in bourbon for a week. Remove the bourbon and rack the beer into the keg and onto the damp wood.