J.W. Lees Harvest Ale (Barley Wine) All-Grain

I found a recipe in a book for J.W. Lees Harvest Ale (Barley Wine). This will be only my sixth all-grain beer. The recipe in the book is way too basic so I need some help.

Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: Wyeast 1084 Irish ale yeast
Yeast Starter: Big
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.00
Original Gravity: 1.117 - 1.120
Final Gravity: 1.027 - 1.030
IBU: 70
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color: ?
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): ?
Additional Fermentation: ?
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): ?

Size: 5
Efficiency: ~70%
Attenuation: ?

Ingredients:
21 lb Maris Otter 2-row pale malt
0.675 lb British crystal malt (specialty grains)

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My questions:

Mash Questions:

Would mashing 150^F for 90 minutes sound about right? How much water should I use for my strike water?

I don't have a sparge arm, so I was planning on just dumping in my sparge water. Would that work or would I be better off making a sparge arm? Would 170^F water work?

Hop Questions:

I have 8 ounces of English Kent Goldings in the freezer. I'm obviously not planning on using all of it. What would you recommend on the hop additions (time and amounts)? Would you do a pre-boil hop addition? Dry hop?

I've heard of increasing the length of the boil to 90 minutes or even longer when you're going for that biscuity/bready taste, which I like in a Barley Wine. Would that be a good idea on this?

Thanks in advance!

You're going to need to mash and sparge with something like 6 gallons each, so your boil time is going to be well over 2 hours.

doggage said:

Would mashing 150^F for 90 minutes sound about right?

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That will probably work out fine. If it were me, I would go with 148-149 to make sure it attenuates well. You don't want a sweet barleywine.

doggage said:

How much water should I use for my strike water?

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That might get interesting depending on the size of your mash tun. Typical volumes for strike water are 1-1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain. I usually go with 1.25. That would make 6.77 gallons for your recipe.

doggage said:

I don't have a sparge arm, so I was planning on just dumping in my sparge water. Would that work or would I be better off making a sparge arm? Would 170^F water work?

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That will work. It's called batch sparging and many people do it with good results. Some people use a double batch sparge method. John Palmer has a good way to calculate what temperature the water should be before its added to the grains:
http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter16-3.html
I usually use 185-190F water.

doggage said:

I have 8 ounces of English Kent Goldings in the freezer. I'm obviously not planning on using all of it. What would you recommend on the hop additions (time and amounts)? Would you do a pre-boil hop addition? Dry hop?

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If you're using all EKG, you'll need a large amount of bittering hops, so you'll want to pass on the late additions (since your bittering addition will give you some flavor and aroma). Using the Tinseth method and 5.3% AA EKG, you would need 5.5oz. at 60 minutes to hit 70IBUs. Using the Rager method, you would need 3.6oz.

doggage said:

I've heard of increasing the length of the boil to 90 minutes or even longer when you're going for that biscuity/bready taste, which I like in a Barley Wine. Would that be a good idea on this?

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That is correct. It will also help boil off some volume to help with hit the high gravity.

A couple of suggestions:
You may want to consider using a different yeast or adding corn sugar. The 1084 doesn't attenuate very well, and you don't want a sweet barleywine. A typical amount of corn sugar is about 5-10% of the grain bill. If it were me, I would do about 7%. Also, 1098 is a high attenuating yeast good for the style.

I can't emphasize the proper pitching rate enough. Those yeast will be seriously stressed, so you'll want to make sure your starter is sufficient. Use the pitching rate calculator at mrmalty.com. Also, ramp the temperature up a couple of degrees near the end (finishing at about 70F) to make sure the yeast finish up.

You may want to consider a higher AA hop for the bittering addition. Something like Challenger or Horizon (clean American hop) would work well. If you did that, then you might think about adding small flavor and aroma additions (~0.5-0.75oz).

Edit - Here is a good website for tips on brewing big beers:
http://beerdujour.com/Howtobrewabigbeer.htm

And here's a pretty good podcast which covers some of the hops, boil, and fermentation topics:
http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/The-Jamil-Show/English-Barleywine-The-Jamil-Show-07-16-07

Thank you for your help. There's a lot of great information there.

I already bought the 1084 yeast, so I'm trying to decide if I should go ahead with it or make an Irish Stout with it instead. If I'm doing everything correctly on the Mr. Malty yeast pitching rate calculator, I'll need a 1.5L starter. I have a stir plate and I've made some big starters, but does that mean I'll need 1.5L of yeast?! That's going to be a bit tough.

Make the Irish stout, then pitch half of the cake or so onto your barleywine.

jescholler said:

That will probably work out fine. If it were me, I would go with 148-149 to make sure it attenuates well. You don't want a sweet barleywine.

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That seems like it will be drier than Harvest Ale. Both vintages I have had were VERY sweet.

Hmm...true. I'm getting psyched to brew this.

I just snuck a smell of this as I was racking into a "secondary". It smells incredible. I wish I'd made twice as much! I can tell it's going to be amazing.

...and now the wait . It's times like these I'm glad I do beer and not wine. The occasional barleywine is fine, but the wait sucks. I'm sure it will be worth it.

Update? Just had a Harvest for the first time and loved it. This is probably a n00b question, but any chance I can pull this off with extract?

Also, like mentioned, Harvest is pretty sweet. The ones I had were barrel aged though so there were some dynamics there I'd like to try to mimic. It tasted very peaty so I was thinking of adding peated malt. Maybe oak chips too? Or oak chips soaked in something (scotch, sherry, port...)

This is the best beer I have ever made, and one of the best beers I've ever tasted. We just drank the last beer at a tasting party where more than 25 very nice beers (think Avery Anniversary I PA, several aged Sierra Nevada's 30th Anniversary beers, Dogfish Head, some rare Stone beers, etc) were. Everyone said that this was by far their favorite, and I agreed. It was without a doubt the best. Can't recommend it enough. Can't recommend aging it for any less than 2 years before even cracking a bottle. If you do, you'll kick yourself for not waiting longer. Going back to my brewing notebook and post my notes as soon as I can.

doggage said:

This is the best beer I have ever made, and one of the best beers I've ever tasted. We just drank the last beer at a tasting party where more than 25 very nice beers (think Avery Anniversary I PA, several aged Sierra Nevada's 30th Anniversary beers, Dogfish Head, some rare Stone beers, etc) were. Everyone said that this was by far their favorite, and I agreed. It was without a doubt the best. Can't recommend it enough. Can't recommend aging it for any less than 2 years before even cracking a bottle. If you do, you'll kick yourself for not waiting longer. Going back to my brewing notebook and post my notes as soon as I can.

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I just bought a Harvest Ale from 2011 and....holy cow!!! This stuff is absolutely phenomenal!!! I really hope to brew this at one point. I'm still doing PM batches...not sure if it's feasible to do a PM batch of this stuff. Maybe when I make the jump to AG, which will happen after I finish my keezer build, I can make some. How big of a bk do you need?!? I don't even know if a keggle would be able to handle that much would it? I only have a 5 gallon bk I'd love to hear more about your process and your notes though!!

I mashed at a low temp (149) for about an hour and a half and boiled for 3 hours. I pitched on top of a yeast cake from an ESB that I had just bottled while this was boiling away. It truly is a magnificent beer from the brewery, and by far the best beer I've made. I'm getting ready to make it again, which is an investment in time and money. I let it sit in primary for a solid month and then dry hopped on some EKG for about 6 weeks. I'm going to fish through my brewing notebooks to try to find my notes so I can type exactly what I did...will update...

Here are my notes.

Sorry, late to the party. I haven't had the real thing and wanted to try a recipe similar to the OP's. I've read some wildly different IBU numbers for this beer, ranging from 30 here to 148 in Mitch Steele's IPA book. According to Steele, they add all the hops at the beginning of the 3.5 hour boil and the grain bill is 100% MO. What do y'all think about those IBU numbers?

Hey doggage,

Your notes are no longer working, would you mind sharing directly on the forum? I'm quite interested in your recipe and your process. Did this result in a beer close to JW Lees?

Thanks