Barley wine first running, comments welcome

[eastendershomebrew]

Hello fellow homebrewers,
I have long wanted to brew up a big ass american baleywine, typically i would just grab a proven recipe and go with it, but lately i have been trying to be at least mostly responsbile for the recipes i brew. Anyway, this is what i came up with, please let me know what you think

Type % or IBU
20.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 72.07 %
3.00 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 10.81 %
1.00 lb Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 3.60 %
0.75 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 2.70 %
3.00 oz Centennial [10.00 %] (60 min) Hops 46.5 IBU
1.50 oz Zeus [14.00 %] (60 min) Hops 32.5 IBU
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (20 min) Hops 10.3 IBU
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (6 min) Hops 4.0 IBU
2.00 lb Brown Sugar, Dark (50.0 SRM) Sugar 7.21 %
1.00 lb Sugar, Table (Sucrose) (1.0 SRM) Sugar 3.60 %
1 Pkgs Super High Gravity Ale (White Labs #WLP099) Yeast-Ale

Beer Profile
6 gallons
Est Original Gravity: 1.135 SG
Measured Original Gravity: SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.024 SG Measured Final Gravity: SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 14.63 % Actual Alcohol by Vol: %
Bitterness: 93.3 IBU Calories: 43 cal/pint
Est Color: 18.6 SRM Color: Color

thanks in advance; Doug

 

[smiller]

This looks pretty good, the only thing I would suggest would be to make a big yeast slurry.

 

[dcp27]

I'd cut back on the sugar, thats a ton for a barleywine. also, i'd go with something like 007 or 1056 for yeast, 099 is a pita and not that great of a primary strain.

also, make sure to save some hops for a dry hopping since this should be laid down for awhile and you'll want ot preserve some hop aroma

 

[eastendershomebrew]

not sure what a pita is, i certainly plan on dry hopping, but i appreciate the advice. here is a couplke of changes.":::"

Barely Wine
American Barleywine


Type: All Grain
Date: 7/27/2012
Batch Size: 6.00 gal
Brewer: DOUG ASHE
Boil Size: 7.97 gal Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 60 min Equipment: Brew Pot (15 Gal) and Igloo/Gott Cooler (10 Gal)
Taste Rating(out of 50): 35.0 Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00
Taste Notes:

Ingredients

Amount Item Type % or IBU
20.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 73.39 %
3.00 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 11.01 %
1.25 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 4.59 %
1.00 lb Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 3.67 %
2.00 oz Zeus [14.00 %] (60 min) Hops 45.3 IBU
2.00 oz Centennial [10.00 %] (60 min) Hops 32.4 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (Dry Hop 5 days) Hops -
1.00 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (60 min) Hops 21.0 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (20 min) Hops 5.4 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (6 min) Hops 2.1 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (1 min) Hops 0.4 IBU
2.00 lb Brown Sugar, Dark (50.0 SRM) Sugar 7.34 %
1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) Yeast-Ale



Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.130 SG
Measured Original Gravity: 1.010 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.030 SG Measured Final Gravity: 1.005 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 13.21 % Actual Alcohol by Vol: 0.65 %
Bitterness: 106.6 IBU Calories: 43 cal/pint
Est Color: 20.2 SRM Color: Color

 

[pstrohs]

Pita...pain in the ass

 

[Copbrew133]

If your normal efficiency is 75%, expect it to be much lower with this large of a grain bill.

 

[eastendershomebrew]

im thinking 60% so i guess i will up the grains... to make it work.

 

[Copbrew133]

The imperial stout I did had around 22 lbs of grain. My system looks to be very similar to yours and my average efficiency is around 75-77% normally since switching to batch sparging, however on this larger brew I dropped to 62% so you're probably on the right track.

 

[hogwash]

Won't the benefits of dry-hopping be nullified by the extended aging this beer will need? Just curious, I've only done one barleywine and did not dry hop. It had lots of bittering hops & flameout hops though.

 

[eastendershomebrew]

thats a good question, my plan is to dry hop a bit right at the end of a long secondary ageing and just before bottleing of course. im playin it by ear, how was your barely wine?

 

[Hopelesst]

In a similar line of questioning, will you be able to taste any of those carefulky stepped hop additions? Seems like could save a ton of hops with more at the start, some at the end, and nothing in the middle. By the time a brarleywine is drinkable more than half the bitter and most of the aroma will be gone. But if this fixes things do tell!

 

[hogwash]

I just bottled July 6th and won't open one until Jan 6th, my 40th bday. The samples I've had have been quite good though hot on the alcohol. But that's why we age them.

I did mine as a partial mash and used quite a bit of dme. Jamil Z. Says you can replace up to half of your base grain w/ dme & you won't notice a difference in a beer this big.

You might also consider doing a low gravity beer (biermuncher's centennial blonde is a good one) first then dump your bwine onto that yeast cake. Also, if you don't have an oxygen set up, you might want to look into it. A beer this big will need lots of yeast and the yeast will need lots of oxygen. I did all of this and mine still didn't attenuate as well as I would have liked.

 

[eastendershomebrew]

i plan on using a yeast cake from a smaller batch, probably my apa, and i always use my oxygen, i also plan on a few rounds of rousing the yeast throughout the primary, i am pretty sure that the 2-row is actually cheaper for me to use than the DME- i buy 50# sacks of 2-row for about 60-65$ locally, so it is cheaper for me to use all grain, as far as the hop additions, i am considering like 3-4 oz of bittering and 2 oz at 5 min to flame out,? Would love some suggestions., I am also planning a 90 minute mash at 150 and a 90 minute boil, . Should i still add the bittering at 60 or at 90?
Thanks all.

 

[Nyrkki]

This is the recipe of a barneywine that I made a few months back.

Grain bill:
7 lbs pale malt, SRM 3
4 lbs pale liquid extract, SRM 10
2,2 lbs munich malt, SRM, 9
1,1 lbs wheat malt, SRM 2
1,1 lbs light dry extract, SRM 8
0,4 lbs crystal, SRM 40
0,4 lbs cara-pils, SRM 3
0,2 lbs special b, SRM160

Hops:
1,49 oz. Magnum, 14,9%, 60 min
0,7 oz. Cascade, 7,7%, 30 min
0,88 oz. Cascade, 7,7%, 15 min
1 oz. Cascade, 7,7%, 5 min
0,7 oz. Cascade, 7,7%, 1 min
and 1,76 oz. Cascade for dry hopping

Yeast:
Wyeast London ESB ale 1968 (with a starter)

OG: 1,113
FG: 1,020
IBU: 84.5
IBU/GU: 0,72
ABV: ~12 %
Color: 14,8

You should focus in the dry hopping and in the late additions. I don't think that the 30 min addition will bring much. My barleywine has a really great aroma, though it will decline as time goes by. If I would do it again, I would drop the 30 min hops and adjust the 60 min so that I get enough IBUs and throw the rest to the 5 min addition. I feel like I dry hopped enough. Actually I don't think that it would have benefited from more dry hops. In the end the hops ended up soaking so much beer and wort that it was almost sad. I ended up collecting something like 15 liters when I expected closer to 19.

 

[GarageBeerGarden]

Won't the benefits of dry-hopping be nullified by the extended aging this beer will need?

I was wondering the same thing. It's my understanding that dry hopping doesn't allow the alpha acids to fully isomerize with the beer, making them more volitile and therefore useless with extended aging. I might have misunderstood what I read about all that though, and might work differently in practice. I have yet to do much dry-hopping.

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

OK. That's a pretty big beer. Having made a barleywine that came out around 18% with reasonable attenuation (FG was about 1.01, IIRC), I concur that pitching onto a preexisting yeast cake makes a lot of sense. Think of it as a massive starter.

Also, consider adding a later DME addition once the first fermentation starts to slow down. So make like a 3.5 gallon batch.. then boost it with a 2 gallon batch of straight DME and your later hop additions when the first ferment starts to ease. Hit it with another round of O2 at this time and perhaps some yeast nutrient to keep it going.

If you are one of those All Grain dogma brewers, then the DME addition can be replaced by designing a fairly strong beer recipe in a month or two, and just taking a short first runnings from the grain to feed your barleywine before pulling out the rest of the wort for your next beer a month or so down the line.

Then once your ABV is nice and lofty, rack it to a secondary for aging and do your aroma hops in secondary. You'll have a crazy ABV by this time, so risk of infection should be quite low.

By my rule of thumb (1 month aging for each percent ABV over 4), you'll need about 11 months after fermentation for it to get really good.

 

[hogwash]

i plan on using a yeast cake from a smaller batch, probably my apa, and i always use my oxygen, i also plan on a few rounds of rousing the yeast throughout the primary, i am pretty sure that the 2-row is actually cheaper for me to use than the DME- i buy 50# sacks of 2-row for about 60-65$ locally, so it is cheaper for me to use all grain, as far as the hop additions, i am considering like 3-4 oz of bittering and 2 oz at 5 min to flame out,? Would love some suggestions., I am also planning a 90 minute mash at 150 and a 90 minute boil, . Should i still add the bittering at 60 or at 90?
Thanks all.

I used the DME because it was only my 3rd or 4th "all-grain" batch (which, of course, it wasn't since I used the DME) and didn't want to deal with the issues of maxing out my mash tun with 25 pounds of grain + water. Sounds like you are on it. If I had it to do over again, I would add yeast nutrient to the boil as well and probably do another shot of oxygen after the first 24 hours in primary.

I think you're hopping sounds good. The Old Monster from BCS was 99 IBUS of bittering and then 3.5 ozs of flameout hops. I added another half ounce of some homegrown hops at flameout as well so mine was 4 ozs. I'd be interested to see how dry hopping would hold up after aging. It would be cool to split a batch into 2 fermenters and dry hop one and leave the other alone and see what happens after 8 months or so in the bottle.

I would also recommend listening to Jamil's podcast on American Barleywine on the Brewing Network, If you haven't already. I can't remember if they talk about dry-hopping or not.

 

[dcp27]

I was wondering the same thing. It's my understanding that dry hopping doesn't allow the alpha acids to fully isomerize with the beer, making them more volitile and therefore useless with extended aging. I might have misunderstood what I read about all that though, and might work differently in practice. I have yet to do much dry-hopping.

alpha acids don't have anything to do with aroma/flavor. with the OP's plan of dry hopping at the end of a long secondary, this beer will most certainly benefit from it.