English barleywine recipe feedback

Hey guys--

I'm still a fairly new homebrewer, but my buddy and I now have two carboys and were hoping to do a brew that we can leave sitting around for a little while as we experiment with some shorter-lifecycle American-style ales. I have christened it "Great Voyage," for two reasons: it represents a melding of English and American styles; and my brewing buddy will be heading to a different coast after we bottle it but before it ages.

I'm hoping to make an English-flavored, but American-influenced, barleywine, something along the lines of Her Majesty's Pleasure, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f74/her-majestys-pleasure-fusion-barleywine-awards-123451/. I'd like to go in a higher-alcohol, somewhat hoppy direction, but rely on English grains and hops. I'm also influenced by this recipe for John's Red: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f74/johns-red-english-barleywine-97485/.

So I have an estimated partial mash recipe for a 5gal batch, but I'm a bit of a noob here (edits applied, thanks everyone!):

OG 1.101
FG 1.029
ABV 9.42%
IBU 53.03
SRM 14.96

9 lb Maris Otter
3.3 lb Munich liquid malt extract
2 lb DME (light, 4L)
.75 lb caramel 60L
.25 lb Special B
1 lb flaked barley

4oz East Kent Goldings @ 60 min
4oz EKG @ 5 min

For the mash, I'd probably aim for the higher temperature range (say, 154) to keep the body and sweetness up without going overboard.

I'm going to repitch some Wyeast 1728 (Scottish ale) from a Scottish that we're bottling the same day. It has a very high alcohol tolerance, even though it's listed as having an attenuation rate that's a little lower (71%) than some barleywine-recommended yeasts. I'll ferment in the primary for a month or more at around 70F before bottling. The idea is to age most of it in bottles all the way through the summer and crack into it in the fall.

How does this look to people? As I said, I'm really quite inexperienced, so any input is appreciated!

Being that you're new to brewing I'd suggest a simpler recipe which would get you closer to style. What follows is Jamil's recipe for an English Barleywine found in "Brewing Classic Styles," which if you don't already have I'd highly recommend. It's around the same ABV that you want but has more IBU which aids in balancing the beer from being overbearingly sweet. You can, and I suggest, add more finishing hops at the end of the boil than the recipe calls for; especially given the fact that the hop bitterness, flavor, and aroma will all fade over time if you intend to age this.

OG: 1100
FG: 1024
IBU: 63
ABV: 10.2%
Boil: 60 minutes

15.5 lbs English Pale Ale LME
10 oz CaraMunich 60 L (must be steeped)
10 oz Crystal 120 L (must be steeped)

1.4 oz Horizon (13% AA) @ 60 mins
0.6 oz Kent Goldings (5% AA) @ 20 mins
0.6 oz Kent Goldings (5% AA) @ 0 mins

Yeast: WLP013 London Ale or Wyeast 1028 London Ale. If not using a starter you're going to need to pitch 4 vials or smack packs given the high OG.

Mash at 150 F for 60 minutes. Ferment at 68 F. Carbonate to no more than 2 volumes.

Thanks. Yeah, I've heard good things about Jamil's book, and I think I'll probably pick up a copy. But I'm kind of wedded to the idea of using the Maris Otter for decent portion of the fermentables, since I want this to be really deliciously malty. Assuming I have the technical expertise to make the recipe I gave there, would you make any suggestions?

As I think about it, we'll actually be bottling a Scottish ale on the same day we brew this, so we should have a lot of Wyeast 1728 (Scottish ale) on hand from the bottom of the primary. So maybe it's best to use that, since there will be a lot of it and it's about right for the style (including a high alcohol tolerance).

I can't argue with that, Maris Otter makes for a superior malty beer. Looking at your grain bill, a few questions come to mind. Two pounds of Crystal 60 seems like too much imo; I would scale that down to no more than 0.75 lb, especially if you want to add the molasses. I can't say I see the necessity for adding flaked barley to a barley wine; if it's for the purpose of body and mouthfeel, there will be plenty of unfermentable sugars left over which will supply that. As for the Scottish Ale yeast I've never used it before, but I think repitching that would work quite well. Just make sure you don't underpitch; I know you stated you want a sweeter style barley wine but even with a healthy, vigorous fermentation I doubt the FG will dip below 1020, leaving you with more than enough residual sugars.

If you don't already use a recipe calculator try this free one out http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/. You just plug in your ingredients and it spits out some useful calculations (e.g. IBU, SRM, OG, efficiency, etc.). Hope this helps

Yeah, the flaked barley was to increase body and mouthfeel, but given what I expect to be a high level of unfermentables left over, especially from mashing at 154F, maybe that doesn't make any sense. I'll cut the barley out.

As for the crystal, I guess I was thinking I wanted some medium-caramel kind of flavors and the reddish color from it. What if I cut it back to, say, 1 lb of 40L and 1 lb of 60L to layer it a bit more? The molasses was to add a little dark flavor but also get the OG up without adding much body (similar to a technique I read about in Radical Brewing for boosting the gravity in Belgian trippels).

Thanks for the link. I had been using that very calculator! I think I'll post a slightly modified recipe to the first post.

You might get a bit more molasses flavor than you expect. IMO, leave it out.

2lb of c60 is way too much IMO. You're also pretty low on IBU's. The combo of 39ibu and 2lb of c60 will give you a crazy sweet beer.

I'd suggest upping the bittering addition so you end up with 60ish ibu's, cut the crystal in half, and leave out the molasses entirely. Maybe try .75lb of c60 and .25lb of c120 for a bit of dark caramel flavor in there.

Definitely keep the marris otter. Maybe even keep the flaked barley. Keep in mind that alcohol thins out the mouthfeel and 154F isn't all that high.

seabass07 said:

You might get a bit more molasses flavor than you expect. IMO, leave it out.

2lb of c60 is way too much IMO. You're also pretty low on IBU's. The combo of 39ibu and 2lb of c60 will give you a crazy sweet beer.

I'd suggest upping the bittering addition so you end up with 60ish ibu's, cut the crystal in half, and leave out the molasses entirely. Maybe try .75lb of c60 and .25lb of c120 for a bit of dark caramel flavor in there.

Definitely keep the marris otter. Maybe even keep the flaked barley. Keep in mind that alcohol thins out the mouthfeel and 154F isn't all that high.

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I will definitely increase the bittering hops to 3oz of East Kent Goldings, which will boost the IBUs into the low to mid 50s.

Yeah, the 2lbs of C60 will definitely come down. I like the idea of .75 lbs of C60 and .25 lbs of either C120 or Special B. I will also cut the molasses out--too dark--but I might want to add some brown sugar back in to keep the OG and alcohol up.

Any other thoughts on the flaked barley? I could also mash the Maris Otter at a higher temperature (156-158?) to get more body.

One last thought: the BJCP guidelines suggest that some dark color may come from a long boil. In the Scottish ale we just brewed, the recipe suggested boiling a smaller quantity of wort down to a syrup and adding it back into the main batch shortly before the main boil ended. Should I consider that?

I think .75 lb of C60 and up to .5 lb of C120, C150, or Special B would work quite well. I agree with Seabass, IBU would definitely need to get higher in order to support the residual sugars; I'd go north of 60+ imo. Adding sugar is definitely a good option to spike up the OG and ABV. As for the flaked barley I still think that with a FG of 1020 and higher you should have plenty of body, but adding 8 oz flaked barley isn't going to make or break the beer. I've never done that technique of boiling down wort to a syrup; personally I'm a strong advocate of "KISS" and I'd just go with a 90 minute boil, or even 2 hours if you'd like

If you're concerned about body, I'd drop the brown sugar. That will be counter productive. You could make up for it with more extract if you're at your grain limit. I'm all for throwing in a LB of flaked barley. A little extra body never hurt anything. It's not going to make the beer too heavy either.

I wouldn't caramelize the first runnings unless you were going to get rid of the crystal malt completely. It will give you some buttery toffee kind of flavors as well as some residual sweetness. It might give you more sweetness than you plan for if combined with a significant amount of darker crystal malts. You might want to save that extra work for a recipe that will make it noticeable. Such as all marris otter and ekg.

Okay, I have made a few more edits. The idea here is to layer the malts a bit, with smaller quantities of more roasted malts.

I'm still torn about the brown sugar, but I think I've decided to substitute DME. I want something full-bodied here, but given the quantity of fermentables, I also want to make sure that my FG isn't over 1.030. But in the end, I do want this to be more malt-forward, and I think the brown sugar could muddy that flavor. For this reason, I'll also leave the first runnings alone.

The attenuation is up to you. If you want a well attenuated barley wine, you need to make sure you hit your mash temp and pay close attention to yeast health. Underpitching and underaerating will give you problems. There's no reason a 154 mash would give you a 1.030 FG. It should be closer to 1.020, if not a little under. Scotch ale yeast is a good choice for a first barleywine. It's pretty forgiving. But even at 70F, you probably won't get much yeast character if you're using a whole yeast cake. Are you using the whole cake or measuring out your pitch from a calculator?

seabass07 said:

The attenuation is up to you. If you want a well attenuated barley wine, you need to make sure you hit your mash temp and pay close attention to yeast health. Underpitching and underaerating will give you problems. There's no reason a 154 mash would give you a 1.030 FG. It should be closer to 1.020, if not a little under. Scotch ale yeast is a good choice for a first barleywine. It's pretty forgiving. But even at 70F, you probably won't get much yeast character if you're using a whole yeast cake. Are you using the whole cake or measuring out your pitch from a calculator?

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The 1.030 FG was based on a guess from Brewer's Friend assuming an attenuation of 71%. My dilemma here is that although I'd like body, I don't want the beer to be overly sweet. That's why I decided on balance to put the flaked barley back in and keep the mash at 154.

I confess I'm a bit out of my depth here on your point about the yeast, but let me try to see if I understand. I was planning on pitching most of the yeast from the Scottish ale, except for the very top layer. When you say that won't yield too much yeast character, is that because pitching a lot of yeast won't stress it (which produces more esters, etc) and 70F isn't high enough to cause a lot of ester production either? I hadn't given much thought to the desired level of esters in the finished product, to be honest, but it would definitely be possible--easier, even, given my inability to control the temperature in my apartment in the winter--to ferment at 72-74F, especially during the very exothermic beginnings of fermentation. Do you think that would work better with the style?

Oh yeah, and by the way, thanks again for all your help here!

70 is on the high end. Normally it would give you a fruity character with the scotch ale yeast. I think that would be great for an english barleywine. I personally wouldn't go over 70. Overpitching by a lot will give you much less character than if you pitched a proper amount. According to mrMalty, you should be using between somewhere between 100 and 400ml of slurry depending on how thick it is. It's only a ballpark since it isn't easy to quantify how thick it is. But it will at least show you that 400ml of very thick slurry is already significantly overpitching.

To make it easy, if you use slurry that is compact and too thick to pour, use around 200ml. If it pours easily but is still thick, use 300-400ml. A full cake could easily be 2000ml.

This one is chugging away in the carboy, still bubbling a bit 9 days in. Following some stuff I read in Daniels, I've been disrupting (that is, briefly shaking) the carboy a little to rouse the yeast. My impression is that the gas in the carboy headspace at this point is almost totally CO2, so oxidation isn't a problem for this method.

I haven't done a secondary before, but I'm considering moving this to my second carboy once a pale ale in there finishes in about nine more days. Any thoughts on whether it makes sense to do a secondary? I could potentially age it in the carboy for months, or I could go to bottles and let it condition there.

A secondary is unnecessary imo. Just go ahead and bottle it and let it age for several months. Since your abv will be quite high, the yeast will have a difficult time consuming the priming sugar you'll be adding so come bottling time it would be best to add some new, fresh yeast.

seabass07 said:

70 is on the high end. Normally it would give you a fruity character with the scotch ale yeast. I think that would be great for an english barleywine. I personally wouldn't go over 70.

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You should see the temperature Eldridge Pope fermented Hardy Ale at - it got up to 85º F.

Same yeast? I doubt they started it out at that temp. Probably raised it towards the end to ensure attenuation. But as I said, 70 would give a fruity character which is nice in a barleywine. But the one time fermentation temp got away from me with the scotch ale yeast, I didn't like the result.

I like the way this recipe looks. I'm subscribed to hear the end result. I did the John's Red English Barleywine recipe you posted and I wish I had done a late hop addition and maybe even upped the IBU's a bit. I think the EKG hops are going to make this beer fantastic!

Sippin37 said:

I like the way this recipe looks. I'm subscribed to hear the end result. I did the John's Red English Barleywine recipe you posted and I wish I had done a late hop addition and maybe even upped the IBU's a bit. I think the EKG hops are going to make this beer fantastic!

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Thanks! I'll let you know, though obviously it'll be a while before I have the finished product.

Brew day yielded some surprises for the recipe. My efficiency was a bit low, so I had to substitute in some more pale DME (about 2#) for some of the maris otter in order to get up to the OG. I also wound up doing a 70-minute boil to reduce the volume a bit more to get to 5 gallons. (The final hop addition was still with 5 minutes, but the 60-minute hop addition wound up being a 70-minute addition, so slightly higher IBUs there.) As for fermentation, the temperature was right around 71 for the first few days, but swung up to around 72 briefly and is now more like 67 (very cold in New York right now, even in my apartment!).

I imagine I'll get a taste of the rather green, unconditioned beer in two weeks or so when I either bottle or go to the secondary (still undecided). So I'll post again when I have some empirical data.

seabass07 said:

Same yeast? I doubt they started it out at that temp. Probably raised it towards the end to ensure attenuation. But as I said, 70 would give a fruity character which is nice in a barleywine. But the one time fermentation temp got away from me with the scotch ale yeast, I didn't like the result.

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85º F was the temperature it reached. I was surprised at how hot the fermentation was.

This is the full fermentation record:

January 1981

12th 17:00 Pitched 63.25º F
13th 06:00 71º F
13th 11:00 74.5º F
13th 16:00 77º F
14th 06:00 82.5º F
14th 20:00 85º F
15th 11:00 85º F
15th 20:00 82.5º F
16th 06:00 79º F

Not just hot, but also short.

Just a minor update on this. After another sample reading about 1.040, I decided it was really a bit too sweet, so I decided to take matters into my own hands in the following way. I made an English bitter with a very simple malt profile (10 lbs Maris Otter, .75 lbs 60L crystal, .25 lbs special B) and an OG of about 1.050 for a 6.5ish gallon recipe. Then I took a little over a gallon of that, hopped it with some EKG, and let it boil for an hour. I pitched the entire slurry of WLP 001 from the carboy of an APA I had made. Thus, the 1-gallon batch served as a "starter" for the massive slurry, but it will also dilute the original barley wine slightly. After 24 hours I dumped the "starter" into the secondary for the barley wine, so it's now a primary again I guess. Been bubbling happily for a few days.

As long as this thing finishes below about 1.035, I'll be happy. We did bottle four samples of the original 1.040 recipe to see how it ages, though.

Another update. Primary fermentation is done, and we needed the carboy space, so into bottles it went. The FG on the blend was 1.022, far better than the initial 1.040. Tasted flat and at room temperature, it was still notably sweet, and extremely thick and viscous in mouthfeel, with a good malt base and some mild cherry/ester sort of flavors.

I will now cellar it for the summer and see how it tastes this fall. I have high hopes!

Tasted a bottle with my brewing buddy on 5/25. It failed to carbonate, unfortunately. I will probably dump the bottles into a bucket and pitch some new dry yeast for bottling purposes.

What temp was it at for carbonation?

I had it in my back closet, so I don't think it was too cold for carbonation--just a few degrees below room temperature on average.

There's got to be a better way to do that than dumping the bottles in a bucket. That is just going to give you a whole lot of oxygen, which I can't imagine is good.

I've never tried this, but has anyone opened a bottle, dropped a couple grains of dry yeast from a sachet, and then recapped right away? Any reason this wouldn't work or wouldn't be advisable?

Yeah, I was concerned about oxidation, but on the other hand, if yeast goes in there, it will use the oxygen in the process of bottle conditioning. It's not really so different from just bottling the beer initially, right?

motorneuron said:

Yeah, I was concerned about oxidation, but on the other hand, if yeast goes in there, it will use the oxygen in the process of bottle conditioning. It's not really so different from just bottling the beer initially, right?

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Siphoning from bulk versus pouring through a small opening like a bottle has? I'd have to think that's pretty big. Like siphoning and holding the line at waist height to pour into the bucket, rather than submerging the line and letting it transfer without excess splashing and such. But, maybe I'm being overly fearful.