Considerations on a barleywine

[waldzorn]

Hello everyone,

I've decided to take on a bit of a length project. I want to brew a barleywine this christmas and then store it until next christmas as a gift. I don't want to take on such a project and then make a mistake ruining months of work so I am going to lay out what I am doing and hopefully you have some advice. Thanks!

The Beer:

11lbs of DME
0.5lbs special B
0.5lbs crystal 40L
0.5lbs chocolate malt
1.0lbs vienna malt
0.5lbs dextrin malt

5oz northern brewers (30minutes)
2oz willamette (20minutes)
1oz fuggles (10minutes)
1oz saaz (10minutes)
1oz cascade (10minutes)

yeast: dry champagne yeast

Primary: 1month at about 65F
Secondary: 3months at about 60F

I also plan on dryhopping with 5oz of willamette in the secondary. Also, I will be adding 3oz of toasted oak cubes to the secondary. I will be soaking them in bourban for a couple days to sanitize them. Then after the secondary is done I will bottle them for the 8months until christmas and then give them out. I plan to use wine bottles, cork them, and then twist on cages. I'll probably also add an extra dose of yeast in the priming bucket. Are there any tips, or steps I should include/remove?

 

[Suthrncomfrt1884]

Use champagne bottles. Wire caps won't fit on wine bottles, and you will end up having bottle bombs anyways.

I thought I could get away with botting an apfelwein in wine bottles, but now I've got about 15 bottles (the ones that didn't blow up) in my fridge taking up room because I don't want them exploding.

 

[Limited Visibility]

Yeah do not use wine bottles, they will explode on you. They are not meant to take the pressure from carbonation

 

[alexdagrate]

You could brew this with a high-gravity tolerant ale yeast (even safale 05) instead of champagne yeast. Is that something you specifically want?

 

[craven_morhead]

What is your target abv? I've seen a lot of barleywine recipes using standard beer yeasts and weighing in at around 10%, why the champagne yeast?

 

[babalu87]

You could brew this with a high-gravity tolerant ale yeast (even safale 05) instead of champagne yeast. Is that something you specifically want?

THIS

Add at least a pound of sugar to that recipe, table sugar will be fine.

Use LIGHT malt extract as well.

 

[maida7]

seams like a lot of hops.
.5 of chocolate seams like alot but could be wrong. I'm not really good at recipes.

I would not use champagne yeast. champagne is much too dry and barley wine is supposed to be a sweet malty beer.

Use American ale yeast like WLP001, WLP051, or WLP060 or the super high gravity English ale WLP099 would work well. You will need to make a starter. I'd recommend stepping the starter up a 2nd time. Maybe a quart the first time then a half gallon for stage 2. Or brew a smaller ale and pitch the barley wine on to the yeast cake from the smaller ale. Attach a blow off tube, take a few steps back and watch that sucker rock n roll.