ADIDAB: Contemplating a simple Barely Wine recipe

[Bradinator]

I had a barely wine a few days ago and thought to myself "Ah you sweet malty godess. You bring a warmth to both my tummy and my heart. Why on Earth haven't I brewed one of these yet?"

I scanned over some of the popular recipes on HBT and found them a tad more complicated then my liking. You see I am a poor, stupid man who likes simple recipes. Six different grains? What do I look like? Some kind of mathemagician?

So I decided to try to come up with my own recipe. After playing around with BeerSmith and reviewing my dwindling supplies I came up with this:

5 lbs 2-Row
5 lbs Pilsner (its remaining grain from my last bulk buy and I would love to get rid of it)
2 lbs 60L Crystal Malt
0.5 lbs Brown Sugar @ 20 min
3 oz Fuggles @ 60 min (they sell hops at the LHBS in 2oz packs now)
1 oz Fuggles @ 20 min

1 pk Nottingham Dry Yeast

90 minute boil (may shorten to 75 minutes)
Single Infusion, BIAB, 150F for 90 minutes

Est OG: 1.072 (70%)
Est FG: 1.013 (7.7% ABV)

I like simple, but if anyone thinks this could use some serious tweaking let me know.

Is 2lbs of 60L Crystal too much?
What about the Fuggle only hops? Do you think it would benefit from some more variety?
Would this recipe be improved by the use of additional grain types?

 

[peterj]

I've been looking into making a barleywine lately too (meaning i've never made one either, so take this advice with a grain of salt). I think your OG is a little low for the style. I think they're usually around 1.100. Also, I have read that barleywines should have pretty simple grainbills, so that fits for what you want. I think 2 lbs of crystal malt may be a bit much. The sweetness is going to come from the high FG so too much crystal could leave it cloyingly sweet and hard to drink. Your hop and yeast choice look like you're going for an english style instead of american style. I've been reading up on american styles so I'm not really sure about the hops, only that english barleywines emphasizes the malt more than the hops. Have fun brewing it and let me know how it goes!

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

Might help add flavor complexity to shift around the crystal malts to include a darker malt, like english 75 or standard crystal 80. You could also sub in small amounts of chocolate, biscuit or munich. However, you would be ok with the crystal 60. Maybe toast some of the base malt as well.

I know you said you want to use up the pilsner malt but I don't think this is the place for it. Pilsner malt won't give you the body or malty sweetness of 2-row that an english barleywine needs.

 

[Bradinator]

I did some more reading last night and decided that a good barelywine needs complexity. I started poking around again through more recipes and found KingBrianI's Fireside Barely Wine. Looks fantastic so I have decided to do a recipe very closely based on it (I will most likely need to tweak it based on the LHBS supplies and my want of something on the lower end OG for the style).

You make a very good point on the pilsner malt, so I am going to save it for another recipe down the road.

Thanks for the help!