Barley Wine advice for a beginner

[ScrawnyOgre]

I am a relatively new brewer (second batch in the fermentor as I type this) and I have been looking into brewing a barley wine to celebrate my nephew being born. The thought is to bottle and store it giving my sister and my brother in law one 750 ml bottle every year on the nephew's birthday. This would make about 25 bottles, of which they would receive 21 over 21 years (gotta have a stash for Uncle Ogre). I currently am an extract brewer and this kit from morebeer seemed like a good fit

www.morebeer.com/products/barley-wine-extract-beer-brewing-kit-5-gallons

I would also like to use 3 to 4 oz of these bourbon cubes to give it a bit more character that could develop over the years

https://www.morebeer.com/products/bourbon-oak-cubes-2-oz.html

So my question is would there still be viable yeast for bottling after racking off to a secondary and aging on the oak cubes for 3 or 4 weeks? Repitching a yeast starter before bottling doesn' feel beyond my knowledge but at this point everything is still theory based for me. Could have posted this without the whole backstory but thought I'd share my idea anyways! Cheers!

 

[biochemedic]

To answer your question, yes. You may want to "accidentally on purpose" pull up a little bit of the yeast cake into your bottling bucket so you have a little extra.

Looking at the recipe (your link is broken, but I found it...), 7.8% ABV is a bit marginal for extended aging. Others may disagree, but I tend to start thinking of a beer as being ageable at 8% minimum, and 9 to 10% or higher is even better. If it were me, I would scale up the recipe a bit and go a little bigger...yes, you will need a bigger yeast starter to have a healthy fermentation.

Oak can go a long way...I would start with less oak, and give it a taste after a couple weeks, and add more if you really think it needs it...

Seriously though, you need to have a 22nd bottle saved for the nephew himself for his 21st birthday!!!

 

[cactusgarrett]

3-4 weeks? Absolutely. If you were aging for a year or more, I would suggest using a neutral yeast to bottle with, as there would not likely be any viable yeast left from the original pitch. Something like Danstar's CBC-1 i have found to work well. Just rehydrate the yeast in the sugar water you'd otherwise use to bottle with, and you're good to go.

 

[AZBeer]

So...is this a thing? Can you do that? My wife and I are expecting our first baby in Dec, and I love this idea. Would it work with a RIS? Cause I make a great 1.10ish OG RIS, but I have never made a Barley Wine.

I love the idea of my wife and I having a beer to split on our future son/ daughter's born day for the next 20 years, and then splitting one with my wife and my son/ daughter on their 21st (yikes!).

My thought is I could brew a RIS, bulk age it for 6 -9 mos, then bottle & store. Would the beer still be good 20 years from now?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

So...is this a thing? Would the beer still be good 20 years from now?

The technical term for it is a Majority Ale, the landed gentry of Britain would brew a very strong beer (1.120-1.150) to celebrate the birth of an heir and stash it away in a barrel until he turned 21. The heyday of it was in the mid 19th century, but it died out after the Free Mash Tun Act of 1880. See eg http://zythophile.co.uk/2011/09/23/the-lost-art-of-extreme-aged-cask-ale/ and Ron Pattinson has found Younger's brewing it for their family until 1960. http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2017/06/majority-ale.html

I'd say that this is an ambitious project for an inexperienced brewer - there's lots to go wrong, and it's difficult to make a beer that last well for more than a couple of years.

 

[biochemedic]

So...is this a thing? Can you do that? My wife and I are expecting our first baby in Dec, and I love this idea. Would it work with a RIS? Cause I make a great 1.10ish OG RIS, but I have never made a Barley Wine.
...
My thought is I could brew a RIS, bulk age it for 6 -9 mos, then bottle & store. Would the beer still be good 20 years from now?

I'll let you know in 10 years...granted this is a commercial brew, but I have been aging bottles of DFH World Wide Stout from my kids' birth years, and my daughter is 11 now. I think this is one of those things where oxidation is your enemy, and maybe some of the low oxygen brewing techniques such as closed transfer, etc would be helpful. I have read that bottle conditioning can help attenuate oxidation and improve shelf life, as the yeast metabolizing the priming sugar should use up the oxygen in solution.

Another issue is storage, I think if you have a nice consistently cool basement, you're going to be way better off than if you store it in a place where temps fluctuate more.

I do still think the ABV is an important point too...World Wide Stout is rated to be bewteen 15 and 18% depending on the year. I think that's going to stand up better over time than a 7.8% beer. Unfortunately, the ability to reliably bottle condition can be decreased at higher ABV's. You would maybe want to consider pitching some really tolerant yeast, perhaps champagne yeast, in the bottling bucket.

I have to admit, my very first thought on this thread agreed with Northern Brewer that this is a tough brew for a less experienced brewer, but I figure that the worst thing that could happen is that the bottles start being crummy after a few years, and maybe at that point you re-brew to continue the process. At this point, you only have one chance to try and brew that batch at the time of the kid's birth...it's not like you can wait until you get more brewing under your belt to brew a true birth-day beer!

Edit: P.s. AZBeer, you changed your avitar!

 

[AZBeer]

I figured I would use a cask yeast. But no idea where I would store it...there are no basements in AZ. I could throw it in a closet somewhere, but not sure if it would get too hot. House stays in the mid 70's during the summer. I may give it a go, may not.

Yeah, your post about the avatar reminded me, I throw together a logo for my labels, and I figured I should use it.