Need input on my barley wine all grain recipe

Thinking of brewing this on Memorial day in order to have it ready by the holidays. I am thinking I may have to add champange yeast after primary in order to bring the gravity on down, if needed.
What do you think?
Also Might throw in 2oz of medium toast oak cubes soaked in bourbon when i secondary.


19-C American Barleywine
Date: 5/24/10

Size: 5.5 gal
Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 410.47 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.121 (1.080 - 1.120)
Terminal Gravity: 1.030 (1.016 - 1.030)
Color: 19.98 (10.0 - 19.0)
Alcohol: 12.18% (8.0% - 12.0%)
Bitterness: 113.0 (50.0 - 120.0)

Ingredients:
15.0 lb 2-Row Brewers Malt
2.0 lb American Munich
1.0 lb Carapils®/Carafoam®
.5 lb Crystal Malt 60°L
.33 lb Chocolate Malt
1.0 lb Light Brown Sugar
3.0 lb Dry Light Extract
2.5 oz Chinook (11.5%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
1.0 oz Fuggle (5.1%) - added during boil, boiled 15.0 min
1.0 oz Fuggle (5.1%) - added during boil, boiled 3.0 min
1.0 oz Chinook (11.5%) - added during boil, boiled 3.0 min
1.0 ea Danstar 3767 Nottingham

Ditch the chocolate malt. Up the crystal to 5%.

maskednegator said:

Ditch the chocolate malt. Up the crystal to 5%.

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Why ditch and up the crystal?
I have never made a barleywine and would like to hear your reason.
Thanks!

My guess is he meant it cuz dark malts aren't typical for barleywines. From BJCP description:
Ingredients: Well-modified pale malt should form the backbone of the grist. Some specialty or character malts may be used. Dark malts should be used with great restraint, if at all, as most of the color arises from a lengthy boil. Citrusy American hops are common, although any varieties can be used in quantity. Generally uses an attenuative American yeast

You can certainly still use it if you want, but personally I think I'd use C120 or special B instead. Also, if you use 2 packets or make a starter I think you'll be fine without the champagne yeast.

Thanks.
I do plan to make a big starter and will evaluate the need for another yeast once it ferments out.

one reason for not using dark malts is that Barleywines use so much malt as it is that they tend to end up dark regardless, especially given the long boil noted above (and you should plan a 90 minute to 2 hour boil). I second using a small amount of dark crystal (120L or special B) just to add a little touch of character depth, but if you do this you will end up with plenty of color, should turn out a nice rich amber.....

...I brewed a barley wine that I fashioned after I tried, and loved, SN's Bigfoot barleywine, and went this route and it turned out fantastic. I don't think it will last me a year....need to make another one now.

also, I think the carapils is superfluous. You don't need to add body to this thing...it will have plenty.

Don't make a starter if you are using dry Nottingham. Just pitch two packets instead of one. And you want have any attenuation problems with the Notty. I almost always get 80% attentuation when I use it.

+1 to ditching the carapils, this thing will have plenty of body. Mash in the mid 150's if you want the body.

Ichthy said:

Don't make a starter if you are using dry Nottingham. Just pitch two packets instead of one. And you want have any attenuation problems with the Notty. I almost always get 80% attentuation when I use it.

+1 to ditching the carapils, this thing will have plenty of body. Mash in the mid 150's if you want the body.

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I 2nd that notti will do the trick. especially given that you have some simple sugar in there...in fact, I would mash low (150 range) because no matter what you do, with that much malt you are going to have a ton of body with all that grain. I did not use any sugars in mine, mashed at 149 and ended up with a full sipping beer. I wish I could offer a taste of this BW, because I think it is one of the best beers I have ever made....and I lost the recipe when my laptop died...(damn)

what's your thought process on the hops/schedule?

snailsongs said:

what's your thought process on the hops/schedule?

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I'd lose the 3 min additions if this beer is being aged. All the aroma from those additions will be gone with any significant aging (>6 months).

Also, I don't think I'd plan on 75% eff., but maybe you can??

Personally, I would move more of your hops to late in the boil, plus add some to make up for the lost IBU's You are going to get nothing but bitter from where you are at now...this is mainly if you want hop flavor in there as well.

You can dry-hop after all of your bulk aging and you'll end up with some aroma, plus that will add more character to the mouthfeel believe it or not.

Like mentioned above just pitch two packs of notty and also dry hop when you bulk age if you want hop aroma. I also pitch a little bit of yeast at bottling if it has aged a long time just to be on the safe side.

I think I'd ditch the carapils too, most extracts have some in it anyway. If you're using it for head retention, maybe swap in some flaked wheat for it instead.

and I'd definitely go with the dry hop, but how do you feel about using FWH as well?

Thanks for all the input, but why plan to do a 90 min boil? I thought this was mainly used for driving off DME from pilsner malts?

Lando said:

Thanks for all the input, but why plan to do a 90 min boil? I thought this was mainly used for driving off DME from pilsner malts?

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You're going to be mashing with 6 gallons of water, plus whatever (likely high amount) you need to get to your recipe's planned 75% efficiency.
You'll end up with 9+ gallons in the kettle, so you'll need a long boil. This is a good thing with barleywines, as you'll get some awesome kettle carmelization and melanoidin flavors.

How big is your mash tun? You may want to redo your recipe so that you get your preboil volume without a sparge. This will save you a lot of time for like 10 bucks in grain. Just set your efficiency to 60% or so, and see what you get.
After your barleywine is done, sparge for a small beer.

mash tun is 48 quart cooler. Boil kettle is 8 gallons.

Might be a bit tight....

Trying to figure out what happened here. I did roughly 6.3 gallons of mash water and roughly 9 gallons of sparge. I kept adding to my 8 gallon boil kettle until I condensed about 6 gallons down to the OG I was shooting for before adding brown sugar and DME, which was 1.083. I ended up dumping about 2 gallons of wort that I did not need.

BeerTools recipe has my gravity listed at 1.115 once the DME and brown sugar is added.

So I got my gravity to 1.083, added the DME and brown sugar and did my hour long boil with hop additions, cooled the wort and prior to pitching.

I took another reading and it was around 1.071 and this was after boiling 1.083 wort for another hour and adding 3lbs of DME and 1 lb of brown sugar.
I used an online hydrometer calculator for the temp conversion so that it was accurate.

WTF? Why would my gravity just before pitching be a lower reading than it was before adding 4 lbs of fermentables and boiling for another hour?
Could the 5-6oz of hops have anything to do with the hydrometer reading?

Did your hydrometer stick to the side of the tube? Is it calibrated?
There is simply no way that your wort density dropped. Something is fishy with your measurements.

My thoughts as well.
I took the reading three times and it was the same. I have heard of sugar settling into the bottom of the container if it sits for a period of time. (Stratification?)
If this can happen it may be the culprit. I let the wort sit in a bucket overnight before i took the final reading and pitched. If some of it settled into the bottom then that could account for the strange reading i guess, but not for sure on what is going on.
Either way, when brewig my gravity was where it needed to be so if I get a good FG then no worries.

I did oversparge my grain and ended up with too much wort, but that doesn't sound like it is related to this issue. I know next time to adjust my sparge water and not use .5 gallon per grain with a large grain bill like this one.

Yeah, adjust your efficiency down so that you design your recipe around knowing that you'll only sparge half of what you normally do. That's one way to make sure you get the sugars you need without performing a 4 hour boil.