My inspiration comes from a paragraph in Randy Mosher's book,
Radical Brewing, where he mentions a Barley Wine Solera. Basically, brew up a lot of beer, not just any beer, but a big one, put it in a big fermentation vessel (I am thinking a sanke keg) and only pull a bit a year, replacing it with new wort.
I had my own idea for this...even have a name for the beer that I want to brew.
1. Obtain a sanke keg.
2. Have a coney keg lid welded to the top of your sanke keg that is air tight. Drill a hole for the air lock. Add a ball valve at the very bottom where the keg is convex and yeast would settle. Add a second valve on the side towards the bottom.
3. Brew up a batch of beer (5 gal.) and put it into primary fermentation in a glass carboy. Make sure the beer weights in around 1.090 O.G. Ferment for a week or so with a yeast that can handle big beers.
4. After a couple weeks in primary, rack the first beer off to secondary, leaving a good supply of yeast in the bottom of the primary fermentor.
5. Brew up a second batch of similar quality and character brew. Put it in the primary fermentor with the yeast from the previous batch.
6. After a couple weeks, start brewing a 3rd batch of beer. Again, similar quality and character.
7. Put all three batches in the sanke keg fermentor that you built in step 2.
8. Let it sit for 6 months, then pull off 4 or 5 gallons of beer, leaving 8-10 gallons in the sanke keg fermentor. You will remove the beer using the ball valve you put into the side of the keg, close to the bottom.
9. Bottle with 1/2 the priming sugar. This is a Barley Wine, so you don't need/want big head. You might also have some sugar unattenuated that will provide some carbonation. Tough to say, trial and error.
10. The valve in the bottom of the keg should allow you to remove dead yeast cells periodically. Best to do this at least every 6 months, perhaps more.
11. Brew up enough beer to replace what you removed from the sanke keg, again high gravity beer. Put it directly into the sanke keg fermentor. The yeast will have a field day with the fresh sweet wort.
The goal would be to pull 5 gallons of beer off 2 times a year and each time, immediately replace it with 1/3rd fresh wort. Except for the first pull, the beer would have an average age of 1 year old.
If something like this were to work out well, I could see doing a solera fermentation on a big stout beer, but perhaps not as big as a barley wine. Something in the 1.075-1.080 range. Perhaps it would be something that could be brewed and bottled quarterly since it wouldn't be as big as the BW? If I can do 2 solera's, why not a 3rd with a Big Belgian Triple?
