37 Plato Brandy Barrel Barleywine Recipe

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tmains

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I'm looking to revamp a recipe a played around with before. I'm interested in your critiques. Inspired by Midnight Sun's M.

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 34.50
Anticipated OG: 1.167 (Plato: 37 plato)
Anticipated SRM: 36.7
Anticipated IBU: 79.9
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 240 Minutes (4 hours)

Grain/Sugar
-----------
[18.0 lb] Pale Malt (Dingemans) - 51.4%
[9.0 lb] Munich Type I (Weyermann) - 25.7%
[2.0 lb] Caramel 90L (Briess) - 5.7%
[3.0 lb] Caramel 60L (Briess) - 8.6%
[2.0 lb] Special B - Caramel (Dingemans) - 5.7%
[.5 lb] 2-Row Chocolate (Briess) - 1.4%
[.5 lb] Dark Candi Sugar - 1.4%

Hops
-----
1.5oz Fuggle (4.8%AA) @90m
.5oz Fuggle (4.8%AA) @50m
2.0oz East Kent Goldings (5%AA) @35m
1.0oz Wilamette (5%AA) @25m
.5oz Wilamette (5%AA) @15m


Yeast
-----
1728 Scottish Ale/1056 American Ale/3522 Belgian Ardennes
Then pitch 3787 Trappist High Gravity when the other strains start crapping out

Mash Schedule
-------------
Saccharification Rest Temp : 152 Time: 60

Age in a 5 gallon brandy barrel until it tastes right.

FG is almost unpredictable here, as I've never brewed anything this big. It will either crap out around 13-14 or if the 3787 goes all the way, then we could work up to 17.06%. I'm not concerned either way about that, whatever happens, happens.

My concerns are on recipe balance. Does this sound tasty?


-Tyler
 
Tweaked it a little after some advice over at BeerAdvocate.

[22.0 lb] Pale Malt (Dingemans) - 62%
[7.0 lb] Munich Type I (Weyermann) - 19.7%
[1.0 lb] Caramel 90L (Briess) - 2.8%
[2.0 lb] Caramel 60L (Briess) - 5.6%
[2.0 lb] Special B - Caramel (Dingemans) - 5.6%
[.5 lb] 2-Row Chocolate (Briess) - 1.4%
[1.0 lb] Dark Candi Sugar - 2.8%
 
sooooo having 14% crystal malt/unfermentables in a beer that is this big is going to lend itself to one big diabetes bomb. The yeast is going to have a hard enough time as is attenuating with a 1.16ish gravity and 2.8% of a candi sugar is not going to balance this.

Personally I find the bill too busy and way to dark (36 SRM is deep into stout territory). I would ask myself why I am including each of these ingredients and what do I want out of each of them. 5% special B may not be too much in a smaller beer but in a beer this big that same 5% may be twice the amount for a 5 gallon batch - i.e. flavor thresholds of ingredients will be met by smaller amounts in a beer this big.
 
sooooo having 14% crystal malt/unfermentables in a beer that is this big is going to lend itself to one big diabetes bomb. The yeast is going to have a hard enough time as is attenuating with a 1.16ish gravity and 2.8% of a candi sugar is not going to balance this.

Personally I find the bill too busy and way to dark (36 SRM is deep into stout territory). I would ask myself why I am including each of these ingredients and what do I want out of each of them. 5% special B may not be too much in a smaller beer but in a beer this big that same 5% may be twice the amount for a 5 gallon batch - i.e. flavor thresholds of ingredients will be met by smaller amounts in a beer this big.


Thanks for the input. Would you suggest bumping up the 2-row and taking away even more specialties?

I'm not too concerned about the color, as a lot of these huge barleywines are pretty dark. M, the beer that inspired this, is very dark dark brown.
 
Well I looked up some info on M just to get an idea what you are shooting for. On BA and RB its abv is listed at 11.6% - having a starting gravity of 37 P means the FG would have to be 1.080ish, which I find extremely hard to believe - this makes me think there is a mistake somewhere - maybe they meant 27 P? That seems more along the lines of a barely wine in OG/FG. It would also help you lighten the beer up - I know it's a dark beer but 36 SRM is opaque and black - not quite the dark brown the reviews say its at.

I like the idea of 4 yeasts, 2 being Belgian. Your recipe seems to reflect this half Belgian malts half American, which I like, but I would personally try not to exceed 10% of the bill with crystal malts. The candi sugar looks good and will help keep this dry, and for me drier is better than sweeter - especially in a big beer like this that's already not too easy to drink a lot of. Hope this helps!
 
Well I looked up some info on M just to get an idea what you are shooting for. On BA and RB its abv is listed at 11.6% - having a starting gravity of 37 P means the FG would have to be 1.080ish, which I find extremely hard to believe - this makes me think there is a mistake somewhere - maybe they meant 27 P? That seems more along the lines of a barely wine in OG/FG. It would also help you lighten the beer up - I know it's a dark beer but 36 SRM is opaque and black - not quite the dark brown the reviews say its at.

I like the idea of 4 yeasts, 2 being Belgian. Your recipe seems to reflect this half Belgian malts half American, which I like, but I would personally try not to exceed 10% of the bill with crystal malts. The candi sugar looks good and will help keep this dry, and for me drier is better than sweeter - especially in a big beer like this that's already not too easy to drink a lot of. Hope this helps!

Yeah, thanks for the suggestions.

One thing to note though. I spoke with Gabe Fletcher, the brewer, and he confirmed both final ABV and the OG of 37 plato. Gonna be tricky, but I won't complain if it ferments beyond that. This isn't a clone after all
 
Update on this:

I changed the grainbill to the following:
#22 Pale Malt, Briess
#6 Bonlander Munich, Briess
#1 Caramel 90L, Briess
#.5 Caramel 60L, Briess
#1 Belgian Special B
#1 English Chocolate Malt
#1 Belgian Candi Sugar (Dark)

Hops:
1 oz Fuggle @ 90min
.5 Fuggle @50min
2 oz E.K. Goldings @ 30min
1 oz Willamette @ 20min
.5 oz Willamette @ 10min

I had a pretty significant gravity shortage though. Should have been a post boil target of 1.159. Instead I got 1.110. Let me outline my process and see if you can spot my error.

2:27pm mashed into 8 gallons of water
Held at 152 degrees until 3:40pm when I started recirculating wort to clear
Drained and added 3 gallons of 155 degree sparge water
By 4:20pm I had collected 8 gallons of wort (Pre-boil gravity of 1.072)

5:30 Boil start (4 hours)
followed hop schedule

Wrapped it up by 10pm. Added the 1728, 1056, and 3522.

My 5 gallon OG was 1.110. I was .049 off.

What did I do wrong?


My solution is to feed the wort dextrose until I hit my target. I'll be pitching the Trappist High Gravity mid way through my feedings.

According to this calculator, http://merrycuss.com/calc/gravityadjustmentextract.html, I need to add 6.62 lbs of dextrose to achieve my target OG.

Any glaring holes in my brew day or in my plan to fix the beer? (samples taste amazing so far)
 
I see in your first post you calculated the efficiency at 70%. Big beers take HUGE tolls on your efficiency. It looks like the real world was around 48%. This is pretty normal so you didn't do anything wrong. The only way to correct it would be to run a few more gallons of hot water through when sparging and boil it down further(You would have needed 11 Gallons of 1.072 wort to hit 159 11* 72 =792. 792/5 =158.4). With decreasing returns on the sparging process though it would be hard to get that. More than likely you would get 11 Gallons at a lower gravity than 1.072. So you have to decide when to quit.

In playing with the numbers it looks like your Final volume was incorrect as well at least by a quarter of a gallon to low. 8*72 =576. 5*110=550. 5.25*110=577. So based on that you measured the volume wrong.

Your plan to fix it will thin the body dramatically and will give it more of a Cider like flavor. Otherwise it will work fine. If you want to avoid thinning the body you can use DME, or LME.
 
With your grain bill, I would have still expected a higher OG, especially after a 4 hour boil. Perhaps your crush was less than optimal? What is your typical efficiency for a 5g batch of ~5% or ~6% abv?

My last barleywine was almost that gravity, and I only did a 90 minute boil and had a lighter grainbill. True, efficiency suffers with bigger worts since there is proportionally more grain to water than with lighter gravity worts, but I think yours could have been much higher. A 4 hour boil in my system would have needed almost 9.5 gallons of wort to get down to 5.5 gallons post boil. Perhaps your boil off was impaired because of a weak heat source or a lid on the kettle?
 
Yeah it's definitely an efficiency issue. One way I help to meet my expected numbers on efficiency is to brew the beer at a gravity/efficiency that I know is achievable and sub the extra base malt out with some DME. It will not be as fermentable as my mashed wort but there are always a few things you can do (like increase simple sugars, pitch a little heavier depending on the yeast strain, or aerate more than usual) to hit the correct attenuation.

You could also sparge more and boil longer or more vigorously - this will in turn increase maillard reactions and increase melanoidin formation, which if excessive, could introduce more unfermentables into your beer, and subsiquently limit its overall attenuation. I've also heard/read a little bit that there can be a melanoidin threshold, where at a certain point such high concentrations of melanoidins take on very undesirable flavors - however I have not heard any actual boil time amount that will cause this. That being said, scotch ale's characteristic flavors are produced in this manner and I've seen proven recipes that call for 2+ hour boils, so it may be just worth experimenting!

Most likely the makers of M are using similar techniques to the ones we've mentioned in order to achieve such a high gravity. Even brewers like Avery use DME (in the case of their Maharaja IIPA and their demon series) to make up for the loss of efficiency in their system when tackling such high gravity beers.
 
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