English Barleywine Advice Needed

[TheDPR]

First post, been lurking a while and I figure it is time for me to get more interactive.

Also, full disclosure, I need advice. I want to start doing 1 gallon batches of stronger beers (brew more frequently too). I'm not ready to jump into AG yet even though I know I probably could for a small batch.

All that said, I have fallen in love with Barleywines and want to brew one up.

Here's the 1 gallon extract recipe I've come up with:

2.5lb Extra Light DME
.2lb Maris Otter Malt
2oz Crystal 120
1.5oz Munich Malt
1.2oz CaraMunich Malt
1oz Northern Brewer for bittering
.5oz Kent Golding for aroma (10 minutes)
.5oz Kent Golding for dry hopping secondary
London Ale Yeast?

What yeast should I use? I assume I need a starter of some sort.

Any other issues?

 

[Hex23]

Even though technically you would probably have enough cells with a single smack pack of 1028, you probably should build a 1 liter starter to ensure the yeast are healthy. Unfortunately with such a small batch you probably should also cool and decant that starter. I've never used it for a barleywine, but I've heard that Nottingham can be a good choice if you can keep the temps below 70F. Then you wouldn't have to worry about a starter.

The only significant thing about the recipe that I see is that a whole ounce of NB at 8.5%AA will put you over 100 IBU. You're probably better to scale that back to 1/2 ounce if you really want to keep it in the English style and not American.

Couple of other more minor things: NB is a German hop, not English. If your looking for a high AA bittering English hop, Horizon is probably a good choice. I'm not sure what good the 0.2 lbs of MO will add as a steeped malt. If you want some stronger MO qualities, some of the major online stores carry a MO malt extract, or with such a small batch it would be pretty easy to do a partial mash or even AG, with BIAB.

I like doing small batches for experiments. It's how I'm testing the qualities of my first harvest of Fuggles w/o potentially ruining a full 5g batch. But I've found that measurement and other technical process issues at this scale can be trickier. I ended up buying a scale with 0.1 g precision because my hops quantities were so small. And forget about weighing out something like supermoss. At 1 gallon, you'll need something like 0.1 to 0.2 g! And in other 1 gallon batches, I've used liquid with no starter or dry yeast.

 

[TheDPR]

Awesome, good info Hex.

I swapped the NB for Horizon as you mentioned and cut it down to 1/2oz.

Also took out the MO and didn't really effect anything.

Thanks for your help!