barley wine, wyeast 1945 or safale us-05, other ?

Hello all my brothers,

Im planning on doing a 5G extract barley wine kit I got from northern brewer. Ive never cooked up this one and got a few questions for those that have "been there done that."

Should I go to the lhbs and buy the liquid yeast, or just use the "alternative" dry yeast thats sitting in my fridge.

I read that this recipe needs BIG yeast. If I go liquid I will make a stir plate starter....but how big and how long before pitching? And if I go dry yeast should I do a starter ? Two packets right into the wort? Other ?

I guess basically Im asking how should I approach this recipie in reguards to all things yeast

If this kit is going to be sitting for 6-12 months I dont want to screw it up with something silly and avoidable.

Thanks for any help, it is appreciated.

give www.mrmalty.com a read, there's a calculator on there too to help with pitching rates. also, starters are for liquid yeast, not dry.

edit: so with dry yeast, you just use more packets if you need more yeast... and i think dry yeast makes really good beer. that's what i've been using anytime i don't need a special type of yeast. S-04 and S-05 are my go-to yeast these days.

Would you be against making a quick, lower gravity brew first, and then using a portion of the yeast slurry to ferment your BW? This is what I usually do for very big beers.

thanks for the mr malty link. very helpful.

re-use slurry huh... never thought of that. Ill have some thinking to do.

Thanks for the quick responses too

Bronco1500 said:

thanks for the mr malty link. very helpful.

re-use slurry huh... never thought of that. Ill have some thinking to do.

Thanks for the quick responses too

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Right. Any carboy of beer is essentially a massive yeast starter. If you pitched onto the whole cake it would probably be an overkill, but using half of the slurry into your new clean carboy would light your Barleywine off like a rocket.

bottlebomber said:

Right. Any carboy of beer is essentially a massive yeast starter. If you pitched onto the whole cake it would probably be an overkill, but using half of the slurry into your new clean carboy would light your Barleywine off like a rocket.

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I just made a Barleywine with an og of 1.120 and this is what I did. I used the 1945 to make a stout and then washed and used that for the BW. It took off right away. once that stopped I did pitch some champange yeast. and it took off again.

Frodo said:

give www.mrmalty.com a read, there's a calculator on there too to help with pitching rates. also, starters are for liquid yeast, not dry.

edit: so with dry yeast, you just use more packets if you need more yeast... and i think dry yeast makes really good beer. that's what i've been using anytime i don't need a special type of yeast. S-04 and S-05 are my go-to yeast these days.

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Frodo, I have used both dry and liquid yeasts and made starters for them. I get very good results. Any reason you don't do a starter for dry yeast?

DanaDana said:

Frodo, I have used both dry and liquid yeasts and made starters for them. I get very good results. Any reason you don't do a starter for dry yeast?

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I'll paste some references below. I believe a big part of it is that dry yeast is cheaper to buy than to create more with a starter. Also, yeast health is apparently at it's best when starting out dry and simply rehydrated prior to pitching.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter6-5.html
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/why-not-make-starter-dry-yeast-207995/

Frodo said:

I'll paste some references below. I believe a big part of it is that dry yeast is cheaper to buy than to create more with a starter. Also, yeast health is apparently at it's best when starting out dry and simply rehydrated prior to pitching.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter6-5.html
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/why-not-make-starter-dry-yeast-207995/

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Also, the spec sheets for dry yeast often recommend against using a starter.

I just used S-05 in a RIS that will be a hair above 10%, I've used it to close to 10% ABV before, no issues. It is supposed to be good up to 12% ABV. I use dry yeast for almost all my beers, S-04 or S-05. Cheap (even 2 packs), easy, very good results.

Thanks for all the help guys ! the helpfull attitude of this board is awesome !

I got a question about re using the slurry. Do you wait the 2-4 weeks in the primary, rack to botles, THEN take the slurry. OR, after 2-3 days in primary rack to secondary and use the slurry then. My concern is about viability of the yeast, if you wait to long does it die off ? What would be the ideal method ?

It sounds like you got your answer but I'll just chime in with one other little tidbit of experience I have from that kit.

I made that kit a while back and it finished with a pretty high final gravity leaving it a bit sweet for my taste. I often found that to be a problem with some of my extract kits, especially the bigger ones. With that in mind, if I were to do the Barleywine again I think I would add some dextrose to it to lighten the body up a bit. No more than a pound, maybe just a half a pound. That will completely ferment out and thin out the beer a tad and IMO their Barleywine kit is a bit low for my taste in terms of ABV% so that will also help in that regard.

Just a thought, I'd be interested to what others think on this advice because I understand it's a matter of personal preference.

Bronco1500 said:

I got a question about re using the slurry. Do you wait the 2-4 weeks in the primary, rack to botles, THEN take the slurry. OR, after 2-3 days in primary rack to secondary and use the slurry then. My concern is about viability of the yeast, if you wait to long does it die off ? What would be the ideal method ?

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option A - wait 2-4 weeks for primary to be done. the yeast won't die off in that time. they'll be dormant at the bottom, having recently had a big feast. they'll quickly wake up once they're plunged into fresh wort.

again, you can use mrmalty to estimate how much yeast to use, if you wash it (if you don't know what that is, search for "yeast washing" on this website - use the Google search function, not the default search). if you don't wash, a quarter of a yeast is cake will be plenty - probably even too much, but don't worry about it too much.

awesome ! I think Im twice as excited to brew the barley wine now, because I get to try this slurry recycle thing.

I pitched a fresh batch on top of about half of the yeast slurry from a previous batch and it worked out really well.

I left the first batch in the primary for about 2 weeks, then transferred to a secondary. I sloshed around the bit of beer I couldn't siphon out to loosen up the yeast that settled to the bottom, poured out about half of it, then poured the new batch right into that same fermenter. The time it took to siphon and then pour out some of the yeast also helped me to be more patient in getting my new batch chilled down to pitching temperature, instead of rushing and pitching too warm.

There was a little bit of lag time. It took about 24 hours for real activity to start. That might have been because the first batch was already relatively high gravity (about 1.075 OG). Regardless, once it started it took off and fermented super fast. I just cracked open a couple bottles this past weekend and it is delicious (a simple belgian dubbel).

Bronco1500 said:

Thanks for all the help guys ! the helpfull attitude of this board is awesome !

I got a question about re using the slurry. Do you wait the 2-4 weeks in the primary, rack to botles, THEN take the slurry. OR, after 2-3 days in primary rack to secondary and use the slurry then. My concern is about viability of the yeast, if you wait to long does it die off ? What would be the ideal method ?

Click to expand...

I've had good results with waiting until the original has just finished, usually like 3-4 days, rack that to secondary, then rack the new wort onto the cake, and rigorously aerating by shaking the whole thing - you might want to check the original with a hydrometer sample to be sure it's done or mostly so. With an RIS that big, I would just use the whole cake assuming it's from a beer in the OG 1.040 vicinity - but that's up to you of course.

Frodo said:

I'll paste some references below. I believe a big part of it is that dry yeast is cheaper to buy than to create more with a starter. Also, yeast health is apparently at it's best when starting out dry and simply rehydrated prior to pitching.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter6-5.html
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/why-not-make-starter-dry-yeast-207995/

Click to expand...

Thanks for that Frodo I read the information and makes a little bit more sense why people do it, although that probably won't stop me from doing a starter with dry yeast just because that's what I do. But knowing is half the battle!