Dryhopping a Barleywine?

So I have this barleywine that's been aging in carboy for about 2 months now. I was planning on bottling soon...then I read Daniels' section on barleywines, and according to him, it's common to dryhop barleywines. What do you guys think about this? Is it risky to do such a thing so late in the game?

And once and for all, what do you guys do for sanitation? I've been just tossing the hop leaves into the carboy, but I worry about sanitation sometimes. Is there anything you can do to sanitize leaf hops before adding them?

no point... the hops have naturally occuring antiseptic properties. toss em in for a week or two then bottle

I re-hopped one keg of barley wine after about 12 months. Just sanitized the bag and added them.

Just a couple quick notes on your BW. You should remember that barleywines need long aging. Mine seem to reach peak quality at about 2 years. The longer you age the BW, however, the more the hops will fade. That's why with a 1.100 BW you will go for about 100 IBU. 12-18 months out, that 100 IBU will fade back to more like 60 IBU leaving the beer balanced heavily towards the malt side.

The aroma hopping (dry hopping is aroma hopping) will fade even faster. I would go ahead and age the barleywine as long as possible in the carboy (assuming you have another carboy to use in the meantime for other beers) before dry hopping and bottling. Bulk aging works great for barleywines. I normally rack to a corny keg, hit it with enough CO2 to seal the keg, and shove the whole works into a closet and forget about it for a year or so. When ready to bottle, I then dry hop for about 2 weeks and then bottle. Bulk aging takes up much less storage space than bottles, plus you aren't quite as tempted to drink it too young.

As far as sanitation goes, the combination of high alcohol and the antiseptic properties of the hops negate any need to sanitize the hops beyond making sure there is no obvious dirt and that your hop bag is clean.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

A barleywine is so alcoholic, you neednt worry about sanitation as much.
But yes, dry hop that bad boy.

Excellent. You all confirmed my age-old suspicions. I've dryhopped tons of times; unfortunately, the two infected batches (out of 33) have come from dryhopped beers, so I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't some secret out there for sanitizing dryhops.