Corn sugar in barley wine

Hello all. I really want to make a high ABV barley wine but Im not a big fan of the super crazy sweet barley wine. I have seen many Double IPA recipes that involved using corn sugar to raise alcohol content but Ive looked around and didnt see much about corn sugar in barley wines. Does any1 use corn sugar in their barley wine recipe?

You can use table sugar in small percentages also. Two pounds in 5 gallons is no big deal.

I used 1.5 pounds in my 1.101 barleywine last year. Mashed at 150F for 75 min and it finished at 1.022. Its still sweet because its an English barleywine but I'm sure if were more bitter the sweetness wouldn't be as prevalent.

I personally wouldn't add sugar to a BW. I typically add candy sugar to my quads, etc... but I figure "barleywine" should be barley. You can control attenuation and balance other ways such as hop schedule, mash temperature, mash duration, mash thickness, yeast pitching rate, pre-fermentation oxygen addition, servomyces yeast nutrient, and fermentation temperature control. I've done, and use all of these techniques to obtain high attenuation regardless of the OG.

If you are making an American BW, you will need a littel residual sweetness to balance the extra hops added. If you are making an English BW, you will be using a lot of crystal and specialty malts, so you can do your best at dropping the FG.

You certainly can add sugar to help drop the FG, but I personally think its cheating yourself out of some extra barley flavor.

+1 to what ^^^ said. I think that Barleywine should be barley. I made up mine to 1.120 and it finished at 1.025 with US-05. It isn't that difficult. I hopped to 100 IBU's, so even though there is sugar, it isn't sweet by any way of thinking. Good luck.

Thanks alot guys.

Sirsloop, Im still kind of a newb and dont 100% know what you mean by attenuation. Im figuring it means something along the lines of finishing the fermentation all the way through. The recipe I found called for 2 packets of yeast would this mean to not add them both when first pitching. But instead pitch one when primary begins and then the other a few days later?
Thanks for the help

Exactly... attenuation is the percentage of sugar that ferments starting when you pitch to when it stops fermentation. Typical beers ferment somewhere between like 65-80%. The trick with these high gravity ales is to shoot for higher attenuation because the percentage of the sugars left would be excessive with anything less.

For dry yeast, I typically pitch in one packet up to like 1.075 beers, two packets up to 1.100 beers, and three packets up to like 1.130. Once you get over 130, you are entering fairly extreme territory. My barleywines typically get three packets, pitched right in as soon as the wort is cooled.

Matt Up North said:

+1 to what ^^^ said. I think that Barleywine should be barley. I made up mine to 1.120 and it finished at 1.025 with US-05. It isn't that difficult. I hopped to 100 IBU's, so even though there is sugar, it isn't sweet by any way of thinking. Good luck.

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Uh oh, is this like the Reinheitsgebot for Barleywine? Sirsloop is the last person I'd expect purist idealism from.

Less about purity and more that with Tripel and IIPA getting sugar, we have to differentiate in order to have different beers. A Barleywine to me is an attempt to make a high to extreme gravity beer that is made from malt. Adding sugar just seems to lessen something about it. Still beer, still high gravity and high abv, though strangely not as much a barley driven beer that screams malty deliciousness!

Make a belgian barleywine by doing all the same things, but adding sugar, belgian yeast and getting a 13% abv. Seems like a good plan.

yes, if you add anything except barley to a barleywine you immediately get banned from HBT and the batch of beer will get infected with lacto.

Whats the motivation to add sugar to the recipe?

i have used 3 to 4% of sugar to keep things dry or because i couldn't fit anymore in the mash tun. i didn't notice any off or cider like flavors.

No real motivation, Im new, Ive never really made my own beer before (Ive never made one that wasnt a kit). And the last kit I got was a holiday ale and it added corn sugar. So Im thinking its time to grow up and stop using kits. I wanted to make a barleywine. Noticed that there were many high alcohol beer recipes with corn sugar as an ingredient but there wasnt any barleywine recipes with corn sugar. But dont worry I learned my lesson. No sugar in barley wine. Got it

There will not be cider flavors. That is a myth. I used 20% sugar in a 1.090 IIPA and there is no off flavors. We are just saying that with adding sugar to a barleywine, there are other ways to achieve the result. Use DME if you are worried about the amount of volume. I just make a smaller batch. I made a full 50lbs of grain into a Keggle to get 6 gallons into my fermenter. So if you are making 5 gallons, just go three or four instead. Point is, I was talking with a brewer friend who loads his mash tun to capacity and takes only what runs out of it, so a half batch and that becomes his barleywine. It may seem like a "waste" to some, but if good beer comes out then is it really? It definitely means that I am spending twice the amount on a batch of beer, but it is still less than I would buy a 10oz pint of barleywine at any bar, let alone a bottle at a store.

I think mash tun volume restrictions, and drying out a DME barleywine are two good uses of sugar. You can always replace the sugar with DME, but its obviously mush cheaper and more readily available. Honey is another cheap and easy sugar adder.

I agree that in a pinch or if money is dictating your brewing, sugar will give you a beer in the end that you could be proud of. That said, I still say to stick to grain if you can

I guess I'll take the hit on the table sugar addition. I had a perfectly good 1.100 barleywine and I went and screwed it up with a pound of sugar for 1.107. The judges are going to have a field day with my score sheets and rip it for all the adjucts they taste.