When to bottle a barley wine

[Bizoune]

This is my first shot at a barley wine. So I came in at 1.100 and I'm at 1.026 about 2 weeks later. Everything went perfectly. The question is should I bottle next week or wait out until begin. of Sept? I'm away all of August.

How do you do it?

 

[Revvy]

At the beginning of sept I would rack it to a secondary, and leave it there til march, then bottle it, and leave it alone for another 6 months. This is a barleywine you're talking about, not a mild with a low gravity. It's going to take months, if not years to come into it's own.

With a beer like this, we're not talking weeks here....Lazy Llama came up with a handy dandy chart to determine how long something takes in brewing, whether it's fermentation, aging, carbonation, bottle conditioning....

 

[Bizoune]

Should I worry about yeast off flavours if it's in primary for another 6 weeks?

 

[slowbie]

Should I worry about yeast off flavours if it's in primary for another 6 weeks?

I wouldn't worry but you can if you want to. I've heard of people going twice that long in primary without off flavors though.

 

[Revvy]

Should I worry about yeast off flavours if it's in primary for another 6 weeks?

Uh, no.....That "off flavors from yeast" prattle is old thinking. Now we find our beer tastes better when we leave it. The yeast actually eats the stuff that leads to off flavors, rather than causing it......I leave all my beers in primary for a month.

Even palmer has changed his tune in newer editions of how to brew,

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/secondary-not-john-palmer-jamil-zainasheff-weigh-176837/

But in this case, you are going to be secondarying AFTER you've let the yeast do it's thing.