How about this for a Wee Heavy?

I'm designing a wee heavy recipe in the traditional style for this beer and had a couple questions. First the recipe:

5 Gallon batch

16# Golden Promise malt
1.5# Flaked Barley (for head retention)
.5# Roasted Barley
1.5 OZ Kent goldings @ 60 mins
1 OZ Kent goldings @ 30 mins

OG 1.093
IBU 31.5
BU:GU .336

Here's the plan and questions:

I'm going to take 1 gallon off the mash and boild that down for about an hour to 1 qt/1 pt. Overall I'm thinking a 2 hour boil starting with 7 gallons, does that sound about right?

From what I can gather, this process should give me the carmelly, malty flavor that this style represents. I might even take 2.5 gallons off the leftovers and make a small beer.

/Bump

So no one has made a wee heavy with kettle carmelization only?

I made a wee heavy last fall using only kettle caramelization. Your recipe looks good but make sure to use a Scottish ale yeast. I used nottingham yeast @56F and it didn't quite turn out right. Still a good beer, just did not give the right flavor profile for a wee heavy IMO.

BenS said:

I made a wee heavy last fall using only kettle caramelization. Your recipe looks good but make sure to use a Scottish ale yeast. I used nottingham yeast @56F and it didn't quite turn out right. Still a good beer, just did not give the right flavor profile for a wee heavy IMO.

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Yep, scottish ale yeast all the way! I ferment an amber with that at about 64f.

Are you suffering from foam retention? You shouldn't, not with an all-malt grist.

Cheers,

Bob

I did exactly what you are planning on doing. I think I ended up doing 8 gallons to 5 gallons...I think. But i definetly did 1 gallon of first runnings and boiled that down to the pint, it was like syrup. Beer turned out real good. I put it on some whiskey soaked oak cubes for about 5 weeks. I just put it into a competition and should know the results in a couple of weeks.

Here was my ingredient list.

9.00lbs Golden Promise
0.50lbs American Crystal 60L
0.13lbs American Roasted Barley
Scottish Ale Yeast

I'd cut the roasted barley in half, were I brewing this, but it ought to be good either way. I guess it depends how roasty you like it, and whose malt you use. Crisp's comes in at nearly 700L for example, and 8oz of that would practically make this a stout. Other maltsters' products may be less intense. Still, 8oz is a good amount, in any case.

GuldTuborg said:

I'd cut the roasted barley in half, were I brewing this, but it ought to be good either way. I guess it depends how roasty you like it, and whose malt you use. Crisp's comes in at nearly 700L for example, and 8oz of that would practically make this a stout. Other maltsters' products may be less intense. Still, 8oz is a good amount, in any case.

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Good point. The LHBS has Briess Light Roasted Barley 275-325L so I may be ok with that. Not sure when I'll be able to brew this, but hoping soon!

I completely missed the Roasted Barley, too. I'd cut that waaaaay back, to no more than 2 oz just for color. BJCP calls for "hints" of roasted character; a half pound will put that over the top. Don't forget you'll get color from the kettle caramelization too.

I still don't really understand why for you're using the flaked barley. If you've suffered with foam problems in this recipe in the past, use 4-8 ounces; if you've never brewed this recipe before, you're overcompensating, as 4-8 ounces is plenty to improve foam without adding undue haze precursors. A pound and a half is too much.

Cheers,

Bob

Bob said:

I completely missed the Roasted Barley, too. I'd cut that waaaaay back, to no more than 2 oz just for color. BJCP calls for "hints" of roasted character; a half pound will put that over the top. Don't forget you'll get color from the kettle caramelization too.

I still don't really understand why for you're using the flaked barley. If you've suffered with foam problems in this recipe in the past, use 4-8 ounces; if you've never brewed this recipe before, you're overcompensating, as 4-8 ounces is plenty to improve foam without adding undue haze precursors. A pound and a half is too much.

Cheers,

Bob

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I put in the flaked barley purely since my other recipes suffer from head retention, and I started adding that for that reason. I'll have to cut that back then.

Ok. looking at the color in beersmith, with 8 oz roasted barley at 300 srm, I get a color of 17.7 srm. But if I take that down to 4 oz, then it shows srm below style.

So... I'll have less roastieness, but will the color be darker due to the boild process?

My neighbor and I brewed a wee heavy last Black Friday (still in secondary).
We used:
23 lbs 2.4 oz Golden Promise (2.6 SRM) Grain 99.00 %
3.8 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 1.00 %
15.52 gm Northern Brewer [8.90 %] (45 min) Hops 15.1 IBU
19.28 gm Northern Brewer [8.90 %] (35 min) Hops 13.1 IBU

We pulled a couple gallons of the first running’s, then boiled it down to a thick syrup. We also boiled the rest of the wort for 3 hours (yeah, we overshot of volume a bit). At the end of the boil we had 6 gallons of 1.126 wort!

Samples of it now taste awesome! :rockin:

Twofox said:

roasted barley at 300 srm

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I think that's only Briess. Roasted barley is significantly darker with any other maltster. Boiling your wort down will also darken it considerably, and no brewing software that I know of takes that into account. What do you want to be "correct to style," the color or the taste? 8oz of roasted barley is way more than any commercial product uses (corrected for volume, of course). I don't want to dissuade you, if that's what you want to do, but I do want you to know you're well on your way to making a stout.

DeadHead_Brewering said:

My neighbor and I brewed a wee heavy last Black Friday (still in secondary).
We used:
23 lbs 2.4 oz Golden Promise (2.6 SRM) Grain 99.00 %
3.8 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 1.00 %
15.52 gm Northern Brewer [8.90 %] (45 min) Hops 15.1 IBU
19.28 gm Northern Brewer [8.90 %] (35 min) Hops 13.1 IBU

We pulled a couple gallons of the first running’s, then boiled it down to a thick syrup. We also boiled the rest of the wort for 3 hours (yeah, we overshot of volume a bit). At the end of the boil we had 6 gallons of 1.126 wort!

Samples of it now taste awesome! :rockin:

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WOW! Just what I was looking for... and not lol. I'll be happy with about 1.094 and 9% when all is said and done. BUT, this does tell me I should stick with the 4 oz of roasted barley

Thanks for a great example of the process!

Twofox said:

I put in the flaked barley purely since my other recipes suffer from head retention, and I started adding that for that reason. I'll have to cut that back then.

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If all your other recipes suffer from head retention, there's a solution which doesn't involve adding ingredients to your grist. Something in your chain from grain to glass is off. There's no real reason an all-malt brew should suffer from foam problems.

If you want to take it off-thread, that's fine; I think we should get to the bottom of this.

Bob

EDITED TO ADD: Keeping in mind, of course, that I'm about to skip off to Missoula, MT for work this afternoon.

when you boil that first gallon down it's like adding a quart of motor oil to the beer, color wise. plus if you go from 7-5 gallons or so you'll darken. don't worry about the color!