A-B's Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale

The most recent of Anheuser-Busch's specialty ales is Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale. You may be sensing a theme here.

According to the press release, the beer is brewed with "dark roasted caramel malts and all-imported hops and aged on toasted bourbon oak casks and whole Madagascar vanilla beans" and will be about 6% alcohol.

According to Charlie Papazian's The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing, this could be an American Brown Ale. Sooo...

• 6 1/4 lb light malt extract
• 1/2 lb Crystal 90 malt
• 1/4 lb chocolate malt
• 2 oz Cascade Hops (~6% AAU) 60 minutes
• 1 oz Cascade Hops 5 minutes
• 1/4 tsp Irish Moss (last 15 minutes for clarification)
• Wyeast 1056 American Ale/Chico yeast

Papazian's recipe used black patent malt. I replaced it with Crystal malt for the Caramel malt. This should result in a beer with about 6.3% ABV. Now for the interesting part.

Recall, if you will, my recipe for Bourbon Stout. In it, I soaked 4 oz of toasted oak chips in 8 oz of Tennessee sippin' whiskey (If it had been made in Bourbon County Kentucky, it would have been called bourbon) during primary fermentation. Recall also my recipe for Holiday Beer, where I used three vanilla beans, added at the end of the boil and steeped as the wort cooled. However, in this recipe, the beer "aged on toasted bourbon oak casks and whole Madagascar vanilla beans."

So, in this aplication, I will soak the oak chips with chopped vanilla beans while the beer ferments in primary. Then I will transfer the beer to secondary, and add the chips and vanilla beans. I will age for one month in secondary, then keg and age another couple of weeks.

Any comments?