Denny's Favorite or Cali Ale for Barleywine

Denny's Favorite 50 fans... what do you think of using this on a barleywine? I'll be kegging up a beer that used Fav 50 this week, so I have plenty of yeast ready to roll. I have some Cali Ale yeast on hand too, but am scared my barleywine will end up more like a Double IPA considering this beer will get about a half pound of hops when all's said and done. Not to mention I'd have to step up a big starter.

The only thing that scares me a little is the alcohol tolerance. I'm usually about 75% efficient on my mash/sparge but am thinking 22 lbs of grain will net me a good 10 points less, or more on my efficiency... so I'm not entirely sure where this will end up. I've pushed Cali Ale yeast to 12% with no issues. Thoughts?

You could split the batch and pitch them separately with plans to recombine in a large secondary. Taste each before recombination to see what you think. Might simplify your step-up operation, too.

Hummm... I like that idea... if the fav falls short the 1056 will handle the rest in secondary if I decide to combine them

Hey Bams, did you do this? If so how did 1450 work out? I kind of use Denny's as my "house" strain, and I'm about to get a new pack to propagate and freeze. But I think my next brew day will be a BW, and I want to know if this is a good yeast to use for it.

I did use the 1450 and bottled it last night after a month in primary and a couple months in secondary. Took my BW from 1.103 to 1.023. Took about a week to get to 1.030 in the low 60s and another 2 weeks to go the last 7 gravity points after letting the beer come up to room temp. I'm confident that it fermented out completely. That puts the beer around 10.5% abv. Given time it could probably push a beer to 12ish% but Id use it without hesitation on anything around 10% abv.

I did use a healthy amount of slurry from a fresh beer and oxygen from a tank, so take that into account. Just as a little insurance, I added a teaspoon of Cali Ale slurry at bottling, but I'm sure this would have carbonated just fine without.

On another note, I'm very excited about this beer. The sample at bottling was awesome and hardly any noticeable alcohol. Tasted like it's been maturing since last winter. Used a pile of hops but the gravity, carmel malts and marris otter base malt were more than enough to balance it out. I'll try to hold out till winter to crack one open...

Great thanks for the update.

What was your recipe?

Almost all marris otter as I wanted to avoid an overly sweet beer and keep it fermentable. 22lbs marris otter, a lb of c60, and an ounce of roasted barley for color. Sparged till my 9 gallon pot was as full as I dared and boiled until I could collect around 5.5 gallons accounting hop loss. 2 oz nugget at 60, 1 oz centennial at 30 and 3 ounces each of williamattee and cascade mixed and added from 15 to flameout. Dry hopped with 2 oz each cascade and willamattee