marqoid

Recipes 

Just looking for any input for my first English Barleywine. I am using mostly extra grain that was lying around. Boiling 180' as the technique from Hair of the Dog.

13# Pils
6# Vienna
3# Munich
1# Sucrose
2oz Target @120'
1oz EKG @120'

Mash at 152 for 60', then sparge.
Collect ~6 gallons.
Boil 180' for caramelization and protein conversion.
Top with water to make 5.5 final gallons.
Ferment with Wyeast Scottish Ale
Age with bourbon soaked medium toast oak spiral ~1 month.
OG: 1.105
IBU: 56
Abv: 10.5%

Nateo

Recipes 

Looks good. I'd probably let it soak with the spiral for longer, maybe 2-3 months.

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mlg5039

Recipes 

If I boiled 6 gallons for 3 hours, I'd have 3 gallons lol. I would sparge more and boil 8 gallons down to 5.5 if you can. You will get better efficiency, and you will still get kettle caramelization.

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Secondary:Oud bruin (2), Raspberry melomel
Bottled: Oktoberfest, Imperial Punkin
Kegged: Wild Ale, Dark Mild
Gallons to date 2012: 47

BeerLogic

Recipes 

That sounds tasty, but it isn't remotely an English style barleywine. From the BJCP:

"Well-modified pale malt should form the backbone of the grist, with judicious amounts of caramel malts. Dark malts should be used with great restraint, if at all, as most of the color arises from a lengthy boil."

Sugar also doesn't really have a place here. If you mash low and pitch a big enough starter, you'll have no problem hitting a reasonable barleywine FG.

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marqoid

Recipes 

That's interesting, I hand't looked at the BJCP guidelines.
JW Lee's is made entirely from Marris Otter.
I'm not sure what makes this not an English style Barleywine. The only malt that is not pale is munich which is still rather light and no caramel or dark malts.

Is Scottish yeast the right choice or should I use S-04? Would S-04 be tolerant of 10-11% and still be able to bottle condition?

Nateo

Recipes 

Unless you're trying to win medals, brew to taste, not to style. Big beers can be cloying if underattenuated. A bit of plain sugar helps them along. British brewers use a lot of sugar adjuncts in many styles. If you can't taste the sugar in the glass, and you still have plenty of malt backbone, who's going to care?

I've gone up to 13% ABV with S-04. You just need a lot of it. I brewed a special bitter first, then used the yeast cake for the barleywine. Turned out great.

__________________
To paraphrase Dr. England - "Off-flavors smooth with time. So do mountains. Brew it right from the start!"

My blogsite: http://nateobrew.blogspot.com/

BeerLogic

Recipes 

By "pale malt", I'm pretty sure they mean English pale ale malt, not just any old malt that is pale. That would be what makes it not an English style barleywine.

I agree that sugar can help, but in my experience it isn't necessary. I've never put sugar in a barleywine and I almost always go from 1.100 to 1.018 with Wyeast 1968 of all things (my favorite yeast for all English styles, including barleywine), which is supposed to underattenuate.

I definitely second using the yeast cake from a special bitter or ESB, regardless of which yeast strain you use. Much easier than trying to get a big enough starter of the Scottish ale yeast and probably more reliably attenuative than just pitching a bunch of S-04 packets.

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