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This is some awesome info guys. Thanks. Glad I joined.

What else can you tell me about oak barrels? I haven't really been paying that much attention to that until recently.

And how has your experiences been with kegging vs. bottling? Thinking of kegging this year. Heard some nightmarish stories.

Thanks in advance.

Well, we bought our oak barrel from the Jack Daniels distilery. About $100 plus shipping. My local beer supply store was selling them but I'm not sure if they still do.

You use the oak barrel as a secondary or, in our case a tertiary fermentor. As the beer sits, it sucks out the bourbon that has soaked into the barrel. It does not change your final ABV but does change the nose and flavor of your beer. A local micro brewery out here does this with a couple of their brews. This is where we got the idea. Ours stayed in the barrel for over one year, so you can't be in a big hurry to drink it.

Kegging vs. Bottling:

I have not had any nightmares with either method, however I have my preference.

Kegging is great if you are in a hurry to get drinking your latest brew. This is because you can force condition the beer in a keg and make it "ready" within a day or two compared to a couple of weeks or so. It is a lot less work to keg because you are only transferring your beer into the keg instead of two and half cases or more of bottles.

But, if you really want the best tasting beer you can make, bottling is the only way to go. Home brew out of a keg has always tasted less.... lively to me. It seems to lack the proper amount of "fizz" compared to a properly conditioned bottle of beer. Maybe it's because I haven't found the right amount of CO2 to put into the keg or something else I don't have quite right. But even beer from other brewers has the same result for me.

Bottling takes more time and effort but the final product, I think, is much better. Plus, if you are like me, you have a lot more bottles than kegs so it is easier to keep a variety of your brews for longer periods of time. the only issue I have every had with bottles is i had one batch that erupted every time you opened one. I just had to remember to place the bottle in a bowl before I opened it so I didn't waist any beer.

Either way, home brewed beer is better than anything else you could buy and drink.

Be sure to use brown bottles as the green and clear let too much light get to the beer which will make it skunky.

Excellent advice. I'll keep that in mind. I have been bottling (brown bottles) but wondered if kegging would be best. Didn't invest in kegs yet. But I do want to "experiment" with aging. But if kegging makes it less 'lively' it may not be a good idea?

More questions to come!

Hi everyone, I'm new to this group and have been home brewing beer for almost 3 years now. I've made (with greatest success) a red ale as I am a fan of Kilian's Red and prefer ales to lagers. I also made a cherry wheat this past summer because I like the taste, but the Sam Adams' is just a little too sweet - tastes almost like a Luden's cough drop. My brew came out pretty good too for my first time brewing a beer with fruit. I also made a golden lager that came out a little "hoppier" than what I was going for, but it was drinkable and went very well with grilled meats (I'm a grill/smoked meat enthusiast also).

I'd love to grow my own hops. I currently use pellets from my supply store, so the thought of growing and using fresh hops in my home brew is pretty exciting.

And just to throw in my 2 cents, I use brown "Grolsch" style bottles - the ones with the white tops. Saves you money on capping AND comes highly recommended by John Palmer; a well-known brewer who wrote one of the bibles of home brewing called "How To Brew". Check out his website www.howtobrew.com

Looking forward to reading more posts and hey, even swapping recipes. Cheers!