English Barleywine Fireside Barleywine

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KingBrianI

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 23, 2008
Messages
3,513
Reaction score
156
Location
Wake Forest, NC
Recipe Type
All Grain
Yeast
Nottingham
Yeast Starter
no
Batch Size (Gallons)
4
Original Gravity
1.097
Final Gravity
1.021
Boiling Time (Minutes)
150
IBU
104
Color
20
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
30
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
30
Additional Fermentation
Bottle condition as long as possible!
Tasting Notes
Warm blanket of campfire smoke envelops rich malt and caramel.
Amount Item Type % or IBU
9.00 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 54.55 %
3.00 lb Smoked Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 18.18 %
2.00 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 12.12 %
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 3.03 %
0.25 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 1.52 %
0.25 lb Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain 1.52 %

2.00 oz Newport [9.30 %] (60 min) Hops 86.5 IBU
1.00 oz Fuggles [4.30 %] (20 min) Hops 12.1 IBU
1.00 oz Fuggles [4.30 %] (7 min) Hops 5.4 IBU

1.50 lb Sugar, Table (Sucrose) (1.0 SRM) Sugar 9.09 %

2 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-) Yeast-Ale

I experienced very low efficiency on this beer due to a poor crush. Please adjust base malt amount to hit OG based on your efficiency.

Mash at 150 for 90 minutes. Depending upon your sparge volume, you may not have to boil for 150 minutes like I did to get down to volume, although you do want a fairly long boil to give the beer rich caramel flavors. Add sugar with 10 minutes left in the boil. Ferment at 66 degrees for a month. Rack to secondary and let bulk condition for another month or two. Bottle and let condition for at least 3 months before trying it. Six months is better and a year is perfect.

This was my version of the 999 barleywine. I went English with it instead of American and added the bit of smoked malt for a little more interest. The funny thing about the rauchmalt is that it takes a while to really come through. During the mash and boil, I didn't detect any smoke at all. The wort didn't taste at all smoky. I began to question whether the online store that put my grainbill together forgot to add the rauchmalt (they crushed it poorly so I was already worried). Then after several months in the bottle I began to notice a little smoke right in the background. And every month after the smoke became more pronounced right up to about a year after brewing where it became a big part of the flavor, but in a way that blended with the whole to be perfectly in balance. I describe it as a warm blanket of smoke and it is fitting. The smoke wraps around the palate flowing through the rich malt and caramel and cutting it's sweetness. Tart cherry and dark fruit flavors catch a ride on the smoke to mingle around the palate. It's really a great combination. The firm bitterness keeps the sweetness without either becoming overpowering. This is a beer to sip by the fireside with a good book and a dog at your feet, or to enjoy with powerful meat dishes like steak or game. Just be patient with it and let it age to it's full potential. I thought it was good when young. Well it's great when aged.

This beer took second place in the strong ale category (though it had the same score as the first place beer!:p) in the 2009 HBT BJCP competition.
 
I was thinking of doing a big beer sometime soon so I could have it ready for next winter. Just by looking at the grain bill of this guy I am thinking it'll be in the running.

I am a little nervous of 3 pounds of smoked malt, but if it worked for you, I am sure it'd work for me.
 
Now is the perfect time to make this beer for next winter. As long as you use beechwood smoked rauchmalt, 3 pounds won't be too much. It is very subtle. Like I said above, it took a while for the smoke to even become noticeable. Just don't accidentally use peat-smoked malt or something, it is muuuch stronger!:D
 
Just a quick question..... do you use O2 absorbing caps when you age this long? I tend to use them for IPAs and for extended aging to prevent oxidation and flavor stability. Not sure if I'm wasting my time and money.
 
I don't use them because I'm paranoid the oxygen absorbing chemical in the cap will cause off-flavors or something. I'm sure it's an unfounded worry but I stay away from them. I haven't had any bad flavors from oxidation although very subtle sherry-like flavors do show up, which I like and are to style.
 
I'm interested in this recipe but I do not see one key piece of information. What is your boil volume? Talk about bumping an old thread. :)
 
I'm interested in this recipe but I do not see one key piece of information. What is your boil volume? Talk about bumping an old thread. :)

Never worry about bumping a recipe database thread. That's what they're here for after all.

As for boil volume, that will vary widely for each person. I tend to get lots of evaporation with my setup, way higher than most people, so my boil volume will be larger than others. Each person will have to take their boiloff rate into account when figuring out their pre-boil volume. You want to boil this beer for at least 2 hours to develop flavor, but you don't necesarilly need a 150 minute boil like I did. Just adjust the time/volumes based on your system.
 
recently at the homebrew store I popped a few Briess cherrywood smoked kernels into my mouth. They were tasty. How do you think that would work in this recipe?
 
So since I have never had a barley wine, and since KingbrianI's pumpkin ale turned out so well, I decided to give this one a shot.

The recipe came out very well, I ended up with just over 4 gallons at 1.095, but unfortunately, my yeast washing experiment failed miserably, and so I ended up pitching a single packet of US-05 into the wort. I did rehydrate the yeast, so hopefully it works out.

It kind of pained me to leave sugar in the mash tun, since the grain bill was this large, I decided to try to pull a small beer out of it as well. I added 3.5 gallons to the tun, and so ended up post boil with a 2.5 gallon 1.040 beer. It got .5 oz of styrian goldings (which was all I had) and a couple of cups of trub from my failed yeast washing experiment. I didn't add the sugar that went into the barley wine because I figured that it would be thin enough without that.

I'm hoping that if 'Son of Fireside' works out, it will help to keep my greasy mitts off of the main event for the 6 months it will take to finish!

Here is a picture of the second run.

007.JPG
 
So about 4 months in (two months into bottle conditioning) I thought I'd post a quick update.

I undershot my mash temps a little initially, and I don't know if my lack of a mash out caused this, but this beer dropped from 1.095 to 1.010 on me. I know its only been in bottles for a couple of months, but I had to try one. The alcohol is kind of noticable (of course because its young....and 11%) and it seems just a little phenolic (which could be the first signs of the smoked malt trying to poke through), but I think that this has the signs of being really good despite my attempts to ruin it. It is just a little unbalanced towards the bitter side, because it lacks a little of the malty sweetness that my mashing too low cost it. I think it really would have been great if I wouldn't have messed that up.

Now that its carbed, I'm going to hide it in the crawlspace until christmas and see how it turns out, but I am pretty stoked, this really seems like something that is going to age really well.

On a side note, the partigyle turned out well. Much of the malt character ended up being fairly muted, but it was still interesting. Then the wife 'accidentally' poured one when she was going for a centennial blonde. They disappeared shortly after that. Meh, you win some, you lose some.

Thanks for a great recipe, I'm sure I will be trying it again with a little more attention to mash temps!
 
Thanks for the update! I noticed that in this beer the smoke character seems to peak at a little after a year old, then starts to diminish again. It will be interesting to hear if you experience something similar.
 
Thanks for posting the recipe. My local club will be coming over to my place on March 6th to brew 20 gallons (2x10 gallon batches) of this! We're planning on making 2 small beers (5 gals each) and are still debating what they'll end up as.. I'm leaning towards either a Bitter or EPA or maybe both!

I'll let you know how it goes
 
20 gallons!!:eek: That's awesome. That's what I need to start doing with beers like this that keep getting better year after year. By the time it has a couple years on it you're down to just a few bottles and it kills you to drink one. But they're so good! :D Good luck!
 
Forgot to mention.. part of it is going to be aged in freshly emptied whiskey barrels (I'm thinking 10-15 because we'll either be getting two or three 5 gallon barrels - the distiller hasn't let us know how many he'll part with).
 
Thanks for posting the recipe. My local club will be coming over to my place on March 6th to brew 20 gallons (2x10 gallon batches) of this! We're planning on making 2 small beers (5 gals each) and are still debating what they'll end up as.. I'm leaning towards either a Bitter or EPA or maybe both!

I'll let you know how it goes

How did it go?!:D
 
Brew day was 3/6/11 and it went well. I think our crush was less than ideal though, which led to an OG of 1.094. According to BeerSmith we should have been around 1.110 OG. I racked it to secondary on 3/20/11 and the gravities were a little varied 1.020, 1.016, 1.014, and 1.018. I didn't record it, but my pantry has been around 65-68 for the past month or so.

We did have to tweak the recipe a little because of the offerings at our LHBS. We used

27lbs Maris Otter
2.6lbs Briess Cherrywood Smoked Malt ( only to find out it has a very dominant flavor)
5lbs Munich Malt
1lb UK Crystal 60
0.5lb Caramel 120L
0.5lb Special B
2lbs white table sugar

3 oz Northern Brewer @ 10% for 60 mins
1.5 oz Fuggles @ 4.2% for 20 mins and again at 7 mins.

Yeast we had to change also, we used Wyeast 1728 (Scottish) and 1968 (London ESB).

We're planning to bottle in the next week or two. Hopefully the cherrywood smoke character backs of a bit. Other than the smoke flavor being prominent at racking, there was a nice dark fruit flavor with along with ethanol warming at the finish. I think it'll turn out really nice!

Also, the club decided not to buy another barrel to age it in.
 
Sounds good. If the smoke is too dominant now it will probably mellow a lot with some age. I've heard that the cherrywood smoked malt is much stronger in smoke character than traditional rauchmalt, which has a very mild smokiness. The yeast changes are most definitely for the better. Can't wait to hear more updates!
 
Really digging the look of this recipe. Camping season starts in May so I am thinking if I brew it near the end November it should be ready for the long weekend.

Quick question about using the smoke malt; If I make a lower gravity version (say around 1.080-1.085) should I use less smoked malt? I was considering doing 2 lbs of Beechwood Rauchmalt. I was also considering the use of Demerara sugar instead of table sugar. Thoughts?
 
Really digging the look of this recipe. Camping season starts in May so I am thinking if I brew it near the end November it should be ready for the long weekend.

Quick question about using the smoke malt; If I make a lower gravity version (say around 1.080-1.085) should I use less smoked malt? I was considering doing 2 lbs of Beechwood Rauchmalt. I was also considering the use of Demerara sugar instead of table sugar. Thoughts?

If you brew in November it should be really good by May. For the smoked malt, I don't think it is necessary to reduce it for a lower OG recipe since it is so mild. If you go with 2 lbs it should still be really good. Demerara sounds like a great substitution for the table sugar! Definitely go with it! If you brew it let me know how it turns out.:mug:
 
The beer turned out really great with the smoked malt. The first few months in bottles it was almost overpowered with smokiness. Today it's great & very enjoyable.

If you drop the gravity, I would certainly recommend you reduce the amount of smoked malt. Your best bet is to determine what percentage of the original total grain bill is smoked malt and keep it constant as you reduce your recipe's bill.
 
If you drop the gravity, I would certainly recommend you reduce the amount of smoked malt. Your best bet is to determine what percentage of the original total grain bill is smoked malt and keep it constant as you reduce your recipe's bill.

Good point!

Thanks for the advice guys and I will update when I brew it next month.
 
Brew day is done! Altered the recipe a touch to fit what the LBHS has in stock.

Grains/Adjunts (14.25 lbs/1.50 lbs) -
8.0 lbs CMC Pale Ale Malt
2.0 lbs Munich Malt
3.0 lbs Smoked Rauch Malt
0.5 lbs 120L Crystal Malt
0.25 lbs Special B Malt
1.5 lbs Demerara Sugar

Hops (4.0 oz) -
2.0 oz Super Galena (US) @ 60 min
1.0 oz Fuggles (UK) @ 20 min
1.0 oz Fuggles (UK) @ 10 min

Yeast/Misc -
1/2 tsp Irish Moss @ 10 min
2 packs Nottingham Yeast

OG - 1.092 (4.5 gallon batch). A bit stronger then I was going for due to a better then expected efficiency, but nothing wrong with that. May long weekend camping in Alberta almost always has snow or freezing rain so this is going to warm my belly.

The house smelled like hickory smoke when I was brewing it. Yum.
 
Brewed up a batch of this on 1/5/2013, and it went great. Got 1.098 assuming 60% efficiency on the setup I had to work with, and everything went flawlessly.

Excited now! Can't believe I need to wait until after Christmas 2013 for this one. :smack:

-Rich

[Edit: Well, almost flawlessly. I should have grabbed a muslin bag for the hops: trub was an enormous pain when straining from the boil kettle.]
 
Well, it'll still be beer! I tried to brew this on January 1st to ring in the new year with new equipment (BeerSmith and eBay hop filter) and my first all grain (BIAB). It wasn't until after my final gravity reading of the day (at 1.070) that I noticed this was a 4 gallon recipe... I'm not sure that I can call it a barleywine at this point anymore; any suggestions?

Cheers!
 
Well, it'll still be beer! I tried to brew this on January 1st to ring in the new year with new equipment (BeerSmith and eBay hop filter) and my first all grain (BIAB). It wasn't until after my final gravity reading of the day (at 1.070) that I noticed this was a 4 gallon recipe... I'm not sure that I can call it a barleywine at this point anymore; any suggestions?

Cheers!

You're right, it'll still be beer. You could call it a barleywine, of course, though it would be on the weaker end. BJCP guidelines suggest a minimum og 1.080 but they're just guidelines. Calling it an old ale would work if you wanted to fit within stylistic guidelines. I'm sure it'll be delicious whatever you call it.

:mug:
 
Tomcat0304 said:
Well, it'll still be beer! I tried to brew this on January 1st to ring in the new year with new equipment (BeerSmith and eBay hop filter) and my first all grain (BIAB). It wasn't until after my final gravity reading of the day (at 1.070) that I noticed this was a 4 gallon recipe... I'm not sure that I can call it a barleywine at this point anymore; any suggestions?

Cheers!

You could of added some dme to bring it up but I wouldn't recommend doing it now. But if you had done it at high Krausen that would of worked.
 
Tomcat0304 said:
Well, it'll still be beer! I tried to brew this on January 1st to ring in the new year with new equipment (BeerSmith and eBay hop filter) and my first all grain (BIAB). It wasn't until after my final gravity reading of the day (at 1.070) that I noticed this was a 4 gallon recipe... I'm not sure that I can call it a barleywine at this point anymore; any suggestions?

Cheers!

The dumbest part of it, is that I added a gallon to bring it up to 5.25 gallons once it was cooled and in the fermenter. Oh well, lesson learned. Read the recipe more completely, and don't brew after a 16 hour workday after a few homebrews!
 
I found this thread while looking into a recipe for my first barleywine... In a potential lapse of common sense, I scaled the recipe back up to 5 gallons from the 4 the recipe calls for — more beer is better, right?

I'm now realizing that the "missing" gallon of room in the carboy may be needed for the extra-excited fermentation caused by the high OG, and that my little blowoff tube may not be able to handle the reaction from a 1.100 OG beer. Should I expect an insane fermentation such that I shouldnt pitch 5 gallons into a 6.5 gallon carboy? I think I have two 5 gallon carboys I may be able to split it into, or split it into a 3 gallon and a 6.5 gallon...

Any words of wisdom? Thanks!
 
Splitting the batch between two vessels is a very good idea; I've done it several times.

You might also look into Fermcap or a similar product for future batches. For many yeasts it can make a dramatic difference reducing kraeusen height.

-Rich
 
This may be a rookie question, but I don't see how he hits 104 IBUs with the hops listed in the recipe. I'm thinking more like 30-40? Or am I missing something?
 
I'm brewing this recipe in a few days. The changes I've made are listed below, which I think maintain the original intent of the recipe:

Wyeast 1028 London ale with a starter per Mr. Malty (familiar English yeast that attenuates well)
Corn sugar instead of table sugar (adjusted the amount by assuming corn sugar is 42 pppg vs 46 pppg for table sugar)
Scaled malts for 65% mash efficiency, water volumes for 90 minute boil
Horizon bittering hop
 
I'm brewing this recipe in a few days. The changes I've made are listed below, which I think maintain the original intent of the recipe:

Wyeast 1028 London ale with a starter per Mr. Malty (familiar English yeast that attenuates well)
Corn sugar instead of table sugar (adjusted the amount by assuming corn sugar is 42 pppg vs 46 pppg for table sugar)
Scaled malts for 65% mash efficiency, water volumes for 90 minute boil
Horizon bittering hop

Sounds like it will make a great beer!
 
This beer is fermenting at 67F (temperature control chest freezer). I scaled the recipe for 65% mash efficiency and got 72% (double batch sparge). I cut back on the corn sugar to give 8 gravity points instead of 12 per the recipe and the OG came in at 1.097.

I mashed at 152F for 90 min, checked conversion with an iodine starch test, and measured the mash pH (room temperature) at 5.45. I'll post back when I know the final gravity using Wyeast 1028. It's going to be a long time to get to try this one.

[Edit] Final gravity is 1.017
 
Adjusted for my equipment, 10.5 gal batch size, the AA of the hops in my freezer (Ted Hausotter @ Hop Heaven), left coast malts (Country Maltster Group, notably Great Western, Best Malz and Briess). Never brewed anything quite this large, so I've estimated mash efficiency on this one at 70% (I'm typically 84-86% at 1.060 and below, 80% at 1.070).

Anyhow, here's how it looks on my end of the country:

BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Fireside Barleywine - 2013.12.01
Brewer: Thadius Miller
Asst Brewer: Pops
Style: American Barleywine
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 14.12 gal
Post Boil Volume: 11.02 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 10.50 gal
Bottling Volume: 10.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.097 SG
Estimated Color: 16.7 SRM
Estimated IBU: 104.0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 70.8 %
Boil Time: 120 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
20 lbs 8.5 oz Pale Ale Malt, Northwestern (Great Weste Grain 1 54.6 %
6 lbs 13.5 oz Rausch (3.5 SRM) Grain 2 18.2 %
4 lbs 9.0 oz Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 3 12.1 %
1 lbs 1.8 oz Crystal 60, 2-Row, (Great Western) (60.0 Grain 4 3.0 %
8.9 oz Crystal 120, 2-Row, (Great Western) (120 Grain 5 1.5 %
8.9 oz Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain 6 1.5 %
3 lbs 6.7 oz Sugar, Table (Sucrose) (1.0 SRM) Sugar 7 9.1 %
3.85 oz Newport [16.30 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 91.3 IBUs
1.92 oz Fuggles [5.20 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 9 8.8 IBUs
1.92 oz Fuggles [5.20 %] - Boil 7.0 min Hop 10 3.9 IBUs
4.0 pkg Nottingham (Danstar #-) [23.66 ml] Yeast 11 -


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 37 lbs 9.4 oz
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 43.21 qt of water at 166.2 F 150.0 F 90 min

Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun, , 7.55gal) of 168.0 F water
Notes:
------


Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Grains are milled and strike water is passing 140F. Having to add a third pot for strike the first time, as my current setup is limited to 38 qt (2x 5 gal Polarware pots on an NG range) and mash-in is over 42 qt.

Edit: Mashed in. The mash comes within 2" of the rim of my 70 qt tun. Wow! Had to stir it up pretty slowly to avoid splashing.
 
I don't have access to beersmith right now but if you divide everything by how ever big the batch size is (like the 11 gallon recipe just above just divide everything by 11) that works. That is how I used to do it for all of my 1 gallon batches. Worked really good. Obviously you need to factor your efficiency and go from there.

image-13200278.jpg

This is a PM version I was playing with just sub out the Light DME with about 1.5 lbs of 2 row. Then add 4oz of sugar.
 
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