First Barleywine

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TycoRossBrewing

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So I will be attempting my first barley wine in the next couple of weeks. I am shooting for an english variety and need help determining if my hops schedule is balanced for an english barley wine. I based my recipe off of another I found online and just tweeked in a bit.

19# English Two row
1# crystal 40
1# crystal 80
1# munich malt
.25# roasted barley

1 oz Magnum 13-15% for 90 minutes
1 oz Kent Golding for 15 minutes
1 oz Kent Golding for 5 minutes
1 oz Target at flameoff

2 packets of S-04 in a starter with yeast nutrient, adding champagne yeast if the batches becomes stuck before it reaches the secondary.

How does this look...since im only using 4 ozs total for an OG around 1.1 should I go with pellets to increase the hoppiness? Should I increase the hops? I also plan on aging this in the secondary for three months with oak chips and bottling conditioning for about a year, any help here would be appreciated.
 
I would add more hops to the flame out maby add some ekg an oz or so. Also since ur try for english maby oull some twro out for marris otter. Just my opinion.
 
That's kind of a lot of crystal for a barley wine.

I would definitely use a base malt with more character than 2 row. MO is perfect for this. Generally, with barley wines, you get your complexity of flavor from long boil times (2+ hours is not uncommon), which is often needed to get your volume down to hit your target OG.

I would keep the recipe simple...~95+% maris otter, with the remainder made up of some british crystal (50-60L), and maybe some aromatic or pale chocolate.

For hops, I would just do your bittering addition, and a 2 oz or so of EKG at flameout (you can even skip this if you want)

Also, I would recommend oxygenating before pitching, and again around 12 hours in.
 
OG, FG, IBUs?

Champagne yeast will not do anything for you, except add problems. It will not work on the complex sugars that remain in the beer, and since it is a killer yeast, it makes it difficult to add another beer yeast after it.

Champagne yeast is a good choice for bottling, but not for trying to finish a big beer.
 
Yeah i actually changed the recipe to marris otter after posting this. Do you think if I am aging so long the aromas from the finishing hops are going to last?
 
So all in all....longer boil, two hours. Toss out most of the crystal and go with mosty MO. Dont even add the target but add more EKG and also add it a little earlier in the boil...perhaps 20 minutes till flameoff?
 
I think with the aging time, you're definitely going to lose some hop aroma...but not all. My suggestion would be to do your bittering addition (60 - 90 minutes), and then a flameout addition of whichever hop you prefer (or both).
 
Drop the crystal, replace roast barley with chocolate malt or patent malt. Lots of British barley wines (about half the ones I've seen) are golden in colour (Banks Barley Gold, Otley O8, etc.).
 
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