Recipe Critique: English Barleywine

Looking for some feedback on this recipe

Malt Bill:
Maris Otter 8lbs 8oz (40%)
Golden Promise 8lbs 8oz (40%)
C120 2lbs 5oz (10%)
Munich 2lbs 5oz (10%)

Hops:
2oz Magnum (12.5%) @ 90 minutes
2oz Fuggles (3.6%) @ 20 minutes

Yeast:
Wyeast 1968 London ESB

Primary 5-6 weeks (assuming no stuck fermentation) then rack to secondary with a small amount of port soaked oak cubes. Age to taste, and then bottle.

OG 1.100 (assumed 65% efficiency)
FG 1.031
ABV 8.91%
IBU 60

Looking for feedback on just about everything, especially yeast choice and amount/kind of oak. Only thing that's fairly set in my mind is the 50/50 split between MO and Golden Promise as a base malt. Cheers!

My suggestions are to just use British pale malt and eliminate the dark crystal and Munich. The high OG combined with a long boil, try 120 minutes, will get you a very nice deep amber color and rich, malty body. You also want to maximize the fermentables as there will still be lots of sweetness left after fermentation. I wouldn't be afraid to use more hops. Even with very high IBUs this type of beer will still be malt dominated. Try adding some additional Brit noble hops (Fuggles, EKG, WGV) throughout the boil to add more IBUs, flavors and balance.

Revised recipe:

Malt Bill:
Maris Otter 11lbs (50%)
Golden Promise 11lbs (50%)

Hops:
2oz Magnum (12.5%) @ 90 minutes
2oz Fuggles (3.6%) @ 20 minutes
2oz EKG (7.2%) @ 20 minutes
1oz Fuggles @ 10 minutes
1oz Fuggles @ 10 minutes

Yeast:
Wyeast 1968 London ESB

Primary 5-6 weeks (assuming no stuck fermentation) then rack to secondary with a small amount of port soaked oak cubes. Age to taste, and then bottle.

OG 1.104 (assumed 65% efficiency)
FG 1.031
ABV 9.43%
IBU 81.5

I forgot to mention in the OP, but I did plan on batch sparging a bit heavy and shooting for like a 2-2.5 hour boil

looks great to me. what mash temp are you thinking?

You might want to read up on WLP007 for fermenting barleywine - people love that yeast for big, English beers...

dcp27 said:

looks great to me. what mash temp are you thinking?

Click to expand...

I was thinking 150-152, a little low since I know the yeast I'm planning on using attenuates on the low side.

As far as the yeast strain, I've been burned a few times lately by yeast over-attenuating my beers (1056 went into the mid 80s on a couple extract brews), and I'm trying to keep this one on the rich, malty side. I still could switch to a higher attenuating English strain (in which case I'd probably tone down the IBUs), but we'll see.

Bumping this thread...

I thought I was basically all set on my recipe, then when I went and entered it into Beersmith I noticed that one method of calculating IBUs (Garetz) gave me about 80, which is fine, but the other two options, Tinseth and Rager, gave me 130 and 146 respectively. Now that is *definitely* a bit more bitter than I'm looking for, so I'm thinking of cutting back on my Magnum addition and making it 1oz at 90 or even 60 minutes. Thoughts?