The barrel is in a insulated wooden box which is bolted to a fridge. There are 2 holes, one at the top, the other on the bottom, connecting the fermentation box and the fridge. These have louvers and fans controled by a thermistat to keep the box at a steady tempurature. The box was built as ales were excessively fruity and estery and the barrels wouldn't fit into the fridge.
A Belgian style wheat beer, WIT. Made with 2 row canadian malted barley, malted wheat, whole wheat flour for the whitish tinge, sazz hops, and wyeast belgian wit yeast. Spiced with bitter orange peal, coriander and a pinch of cumin. The recipe is one out of Belgian Ales, with tweaking done on the spices.
The latest was made with 2 row canadian pale malt, 40L hugh bairds crystal malt, belgian special B malt. Mashed single step infusion at 67C for 1.5 hours. Boiled for 1.5 hours. Hopped with perle for bittering, goldings and cascade for flavor, and cascade and goldings for finishing (aroma) and dry hops.
We could never seem to keep barley wine for more than a year. So we decided to do one huge batch for three of us... Filled 220L mashtaun right full, 50kgs of barley, mainly 2 row canadian malt, with some crystal and munich. Mashed this for 2 hours then ran in to kettle. Got around 140L or so. Boiled with hops for an hour. Simmered over night. Next day mashed in again with same amount of grain. Sparged that mash into kettle added kg's of hops and boiled for 3 hours. Needless to say it came out rather caramel flavored from the extended boil. Ended up with around 280L into the fermentors. The OG was 1.126, but with the addition of the yeast starter it ended up around 1.118. A rather huge syropy beer.