Planning for an american barley wine

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eppo

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Going to brew the american barley wine from being classic styles in june. I'm wondering about the yeast, should I brew something that uses wlp001 and use that cake, our just use dry yeast? I will probably enter this in some competitions, and I want to make the beer closest to style.
Thanks
 
A lot of people will tell you not to pitch directly onto a yeast cake and that you need to wash your yeast first. I've only brewed one barleywine, but I pitched directly onto an American Amber cake, and it's probably the best beer I've ever brewed.
 
i plan to wash, but, was hoping to brew a 2.5 gallon batch first, but i think i might have to brew a 5 gallon. was going to stay away from the american amber, because it was more hoppy that brewing, say, a blonde ale. But i do love ambers, so i may brew a 5 gallon batch of amber, and choose something else to do 2.5 gallons.
I have 2 mr beer fermenters that i'm itching to use. (might brew two beers that use WLP001 in the mr beer fermenters, and have plenty of yeast to work with)
 
I second the pitching on a cake idea, brewed a pale ale with WLP090 then tossed a 1.085 barley wine on top of it and it is tasting great
 
BW is a beer that can chew up a cake like no other. Make sure you have it temp controlled and enough room in the fermenter to minimize the blow off.
 
Think I'm going to bake 2.5 cream ale, 2.5 amber ale. Wash the yeast, and use it for the BW.
 
I've brewed that exact recipe before and pitched directly on about one third of a US-05 cake from 5 gallons of pale ale. It came out very nicely and won a silver in a local competition. Someone else mentioned it already but definitely keep your temps under control. With that much sugar, temps can easily get out of control and give you an ester/fusel alcohol bomb.
 
Another suggestion that I might make is rousing your yeast into suspension for a few weeks after it visually appears primary fermentation is done. Just lightly swirl your carboys a couple times a day to do this. For my Barleywine I brewed early this year I let fermentation go for a couple of weeks and then roused the yeast for another two and got it down to 1.018.
 
I would also do a forced fermentation test to determine your FG. If you have a flask or something for a yeast starter you can use this, otherwise a 20oz bottle should work (just don't seal it), dump in a bunch of yeast and then fill it with enough wort for a couple hydrometer readings. Put it somewhere warm and shake it periodically. It should ferment out all the way in a few days and then you can cold crash it in the fridge and take a hydrometer reading to determine your FG and use that as a reference for the full batch.
 
I brewed Biermuncher's Centennial Blonde (using US05) and then dumped the Old Monster from BCS on top of that yeast cake. This was about a month ago and I haven't taken a hydrometer reading yet but it seems to have done the job. I've been rousing the yeast every day or so since it dropped. Oh, and I had blowoff like never before.
 
I cant wait to brew this beer now! I'm going to use a washed slurry of WLP001.
Now i'm thinking of other things that i might have to do to brew this...
Currently i have a 10gallon Home depot cooler mash Tun, was thinking of making one out of a keg for this beer, but, i feel real comfortable with my current system, so i may just use as much grain as i can with my system and substitute some DME for whatever is missing...
not sure what would be the better solution. does Austin homebrew or northern brewers DME or LME have good fermentability? would i be better off changing my mash tun for this recipe?
questions questions....
 
I should have mentioned that I took JZ's recommendation of substituting DME for half of the 2-row so I didn't have to worry about maxing out my equipment. If I had it to do over again I would mash thicker, I think, and not use so much sparge water. I'm not sure how long the boil went but I know I spent over an hour boiling down before I began my "official" 60 mins.
 
I mashed insanely thick when I did mine, so I was still able to hit 75% efficiency with a split batch sparge on a 1.110 OG and only a 60 minute boil.
 
Think i'm going to go with my setup and use 5lb of DME.
Hmm, now i see there is a shortage of Amarillo hops....
should i just use more Chinook to substitute?
 
Btw, i just did a hydrometer test today & it's at 1040! Yikes, brought the temp up & will rouse the yeast daily in hopes of getting it down. The good news is the sample was delicious. A little hot on the alcohol side but still quite tasty.
 
hogwash said:
Btw, i just did a hydrometer test today & it's at 1040! Yikes, brought the temp up & will rouse the yeast daily in hopes of getting it down. The good news is the sample was delicious. A little hot on the alcohol side but still quite tasty.


As long as your fermentation temps were good, that will age out.
Hope you can get the gravity down a bit. How long has it been fermenting?
 
It's been about a month but I haven't been that disciplined on keeping the yeast active. I got a little cocky with my new oxygen set up and the yeast cake & thought that would be enough for it. I might just dump a fresh pack of yeast in there to finish it out, haven't decided yet but with 20ish points to go I think that might make the most sense.

My temps were good and I'm sure the hot flavors will mellow. My plan is to secondary for a couple months, then bottle and let sit until early January.
 
My recent barley wine with wlp090 cake and only bucket shaking came out tasting great out of the 3 week primary, it went from 1.085 to 1.012. I did add a touch of corn sugar on day 2 of the ferment to hopefully dry it out and that seemed to work quite well. Just pitch a 1.113 imperial stout on a s-04 cake last night and it was fermenting within the hour. I love re-using yeast.
 
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