Brewed a biiiig barleywine today, question...

[Gtrman13]

My goal was to make a very very big barleywine. I've never attempted such a brew, so I didn't know what kind of efficiency to expect. I based my grain bill on a 65% efficiency thinking that I'd add 2 lbs of table sugar to boost the ABV and dry out the end result. I'd planned on adding the sugar in a few stages after fermentation had already been going. But I finished up a loooong brew day about an hour ago and I clocked in at an efficiency of 75%! My measured gravity even before adding the sugar was a whopping 1.126! Now I'm thinking I should only add 1 lb of sugar. I don't want my yeast to crap out on me (1762), but I don't want an overly sweet end result. If it matters, I plan on making a big starter with some washed US-05 and pitching that at the time of the first sugar addition (probably about 24 hours after fermentation has begun).

Any opinions on how much sugar I should add? I'm in uncharted territory here... Also if my methods don't seem quite right, feel free to correct me. Thanks all!

 

[hercher]

OG at 1.126 - you are already going to have a huge beer. I wouldn't add any sugar -- especially table sugar. It will tend to thin out your beer, though it will boost ABV, provided your yeast can tolerate the alcohol, and it won't add any flavor to the beer. The difficult part of making such a high alcohol beer is maintaining balance: you don't want the alcohol to become too prominant a flavor component.

 

[ETCS]

+1 to not adding any table sugar. Unless you are just going for all ABV and nothing else.

 

[Gtrman13]

Thanks guys, I'm definitely not trying to boost the ABV. I was just hoping to dry out the end result a bit. Should I still pitch the US-05?

 

[jaycount]

Table sugar will also give off a cidery flavor.

Just wait on repitching. See where the 1762 takes you and sample it then decide if it needs to go further.

 

[ciphin78]

Table Sugar causing cider flavors has been shown to be a myth. Just do some searching on the forum and you'll see a bunch of discussion.

 

[Revvy]

Table Sugar causing cider flavors has been shown to be a myth. Just do some searching on the forum and you'll see a bunch of discussion.

Yup, it's not as much a generalization as folks who just post the sentence "Adding sugary causes cidery flavors" thinks it is. It's about how much sugar in relation to the rest of the grainbill. If you're a frat boy using 6 pounds of sugar and 6 pounds of extract, then yes, quite possibly it could be cidery.....but as long as you don't exceed 30% of the grainbill with sugar there's no reason to think your beer will be cidery.


We use sugar in Belgian beers all the time, are they cidery?

In a big beer like this, if you are using a highly tolerant yeast strain, and want to boost the og and dry out the body, adding sugar is fine.

In my OG 1.170 Barleywine I used about 3 pounds of sugar and 50 year old honey combined in a grainbill that had 26 1/2 pounds of grain....

Oh and it's finished at 1.040.

 

[Bmorebrew]

If you get ~75% attenuation, that will put your FG around 1030. Even if you put in more simple sugars which can ferment out completely, it won't cause previously unfermentable sugars to become fermentable. Only if you were to replace some of the malt sugars with simple sugars would you get a drier product.

Also, the cidery off flavors is not true.