Help me come up with my 50th Birthday (or my Memorial) 5 year aged Barleywine recipe.

[Revvy]

Well I'm using a 71 quart cooler. And they were the ones who were thinking the rices hulls would be good insurance. Although i prolly won't be using a full pound, I tend to just stir in a couple of fistfuls.

 

[DKershner]

Well I'm using a 71 quart cooler. And they were the ones who were thinking the rices hulls would be good insurance. Although i prolly won't be using a full pound, I tend to just stir in a couple of fistfuls.

Consider my advice null then, and it is probably worth doing if you have that much extra room.

 

[Revvy]

Well, Barleywine IPA, but your's works too.

Basically very similar to a Barleywine, but with less specialty grains and is dry hopped liberally AFTER the aging period is complete. I have the recipe around here somewhere...

I was just going to ask you about this. I was considering dry hopping it waaaay down the line when I was getting ready to swtich from bulk aging to bottling. Dryhopping just before that.

 

[Freezeblade]

I'd love to age a big-ol English barleywine for 5 years, maybe toss a little brett b in there.

If I were do do that, I'd totally make it a smash: Marris Otter (or golden promise) and EKGs. something around 1.100. Maybe use that VSS "Old ale" strain from wyeast (I think it's from wyeast) oak it just a little. that'd be tasty.

 

[DKershner]

I was just going to ask you about this. I was considering dry hopping it waaaay down the line when I was getting ready to swtich from bulk aging to bottling. Dryhopping just before that.

Well, I haven't tried out my theory, but it seems sound. All the benefits of aging, but with most of the hop flavor of a fresh beer. Oh, and I keg, but my strategy was going to be dry hopping right before introducing it to the serving keg, about 3 weeks before drinking.

I do a similar but less radical thing for my birthday every year where I make 10gal and drink 5 the following year and 5 the year after that, cascading upwards in aging times (1 & 2 for the first beer, 2 & 3 for the second, etc) I was saving the BWIPA for a 3 or 4 year period.

Feel free to steal my idea, neither of us is going to know if it works until 2015 or so.

 

[DKershner]

Freezeblade reminded me, have you thought about Oak? Just cubes or something, not a barrel.

 

[Memorex88]

Feel free to steal my idea, neither of us is going to know if it works until 2015 or so.

Wait sec... isn't the end of the world in 2012?

Anyway Revvy, I really like the recipe and am waiting to see how it comes out.... not in 5 years but how it mashes and ferments.

p.s. I'm having a Samichlaus while typing this

 

[DKershner]

Wait sec... isn't the end of the world in 2012?

And 2000, and 2001. Either way, my beer should survive for some lucky bastard. I will leave a note for him/her/it to dry hop it, if hops survive.

 

[Revvy]

Freezeblade reminded me, have you thought about Oak? Just cubes or something, not a barrel.

I'm thinking about it....I guess I have a couple months to think that part out.

 

[BlackBearForge]

Revvy, I haven't been on this board long and have only brewed two batches so far (and not tasted either one yet) but I have learned an awful lot here thanks in large part to many of your highly informative posts.

I'm afraid I haven't any useful input for your barleywine other than the thought of aging it on some kind of oak which had already been brought up (are there brandy barrel oak chips perhaps?), it sounds like it will be a monster!

So here's to you drinking this monster on your fiftieth at which time it will be renamed "Revvy's Rumors of My Demise are Greatly Exaggerated Barleywine!" So stick around, I have a lot more to learn!

 

[Revvy]

Thanks Blackbearforge!

Actually I've been doing a lot of talking about this beer. And a lot of folks I know think that oaking this may be a bit too much. There's going to be so much going on with it, with the double yeasting, with the decoction of a couple gallons at mashout and everything else, that oaking will be unnecessary, esepcially if it fades out so far into the maturing...I haven't decided either way yet, I figure I have a long way to go before I have to decide on that.

But anything's possible.

Those on my facebook may have notices that I just decided that I'm going to do a bit of a "partyguile on the fly" with the grain...After I mash and sparge I'm going to give the grain a third running and see what I get out of it. I'll take a pre-boil grav of it and hop it with some leftover cascade and centennial.

The prediction is that it will be a hoppy brown ale with a surprisingly moderate gravity.

SO it should be fun.

 

[Revvy]

Well in 24 hours I'll be in the thick of things with this!

Any Metro Detroit brewers who want to hang out during the brewing of my Barleywne/partyguile/Brochet (burnt mead) "brewapalooza" or even want to bring gear and brew as well, message me and I'll give you the address and my cell phone number. It's all day tomorrow (from around 10 am) in the 17/van dyke area. If you decide to come, consider bringing some of your beer and maybe a dish or something to pass.

 

[Revvy]

12 hours til brewday!!! I feel like it's Christmas Eve and I'm 7...I want to fall asleep so morning comes...but I'm also too keed up to sleep. This is going to be a blast. A Barleywine Partyguile, and a Brochet...along with whatever anyone decides to come out a brew.

 

[Memorex88]

Glad to see your spirit is back! If I wasn't a 10+ hour drive away, I would have like to come and see the session and trade a homebrew or two!

Have a good one tomorrow and report back will ya

 

[eibbor]

Hopefully lots of pictures will be taken for those of us that cant actually be there. Me I will be slaving away at work while you guys are having a grand time, so tip one back for me.

 

[Hannable1975]

7:am here East Coast time - Just wanted to drop back in and say good luck and have fun !

 

[jpoder]

Good luck and best wishes (with the brewday and otherwise).

 

[Revvy]

Thanks everyone!!! I'll probably be posting pictures as I go on my facebook page. If I could figure out how to easily upload directly from my Android Phone to this thread or my gallery on here I would.

SO I'll probably have to add photos here when I get home.

 

[SAMPLER]

Thanks everyone!!! I'll probably be posting pictures as I go on my facebook page. If I could figure out how to easily upload directly from my Android Phone to this thread or my gallery on here I would.

SO I'll probably have to add photos here when I get home.

Happy Brewing .... Cheers!

PS... the easiest way to upload from the Android is to download an app like photobucket.com. A few quick clicks on the phone and your pictures are quickly on the web for you to access and then input into the forum. This is the method I use on a regular basis.

Hope it help

 

[Revvy]

I'll post the pics and right up info tomorrow (I'm tired an in pain) but if you cant wait and are my friend on facebook, or want to be. I posted pics there throughout the long day. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=620469066 (Look in mobile uploads)

10 Gallons of beer (The Barelywine, and a 1.066 brown ale or something,) and 5 1 gallon batches of mead were the end result 2 batches of brochet, 1 gallon of mead made with the rest of the 50 year old honey, and our host also made 2 batches of habanero mead.

 

[Justibone]

... 1 gallon of mead made with the rest of the 50 year old honey, and our host also made 2 batches of habanero mead.

50 year old honey?

Habanero mead?!?

Wow, what a day!!

 

[Revvy]

50 year old honey?

Habanero mead?!?

Wow, what a day!!

It was awesome, but this morning my lower back still aches. Carrying a lot of heavy things, plus squatting just took a toll.

The honey was a gift from one of my brew buddies. We actually don't know how old it is, it could be anywhere from 35 years or older. His father, who died 35 years or so ago, was a hobby bee keeper in Ohio for years, and every harvest would just stuff the honey into whatever glass jars he could lay his hands on. Then, since he had more honey than he knew what to do with, he would squirrel them away all over his house. In closets, the space between rafters, on top of beams, you get the picture. Whenever he goes down to see her he literally just reaches his hands up into a rafter or someplace and pulls down a jar of this black gold.

It is so rich and so dark, it's amazing.

Well this morning, after about 8 hours of fermentation or so, I went downstairs and hit it with another 2-3 minutes of oxygen as per the recommendation of Chris White of white labs, give high grav beers more O2 within no more than 12 hours of yeast pitch.

The beer was vibrating with fermentation goodiness and had a huuuuge rocky head of krausen on it. And it smelled amazing. Like bready, caramally spicy goodness.

I think it's going to be a killer beer.

I'll be posting pic in here throughout the morning.


(pic test directly from facebook)

MustangJ and TerrapinChef getting setup. Heating Strikewater.

 

[Revvy]

The Grain, the pound of ricehulls and my shoe.

The grainbill,
1 lbs Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM) Adjunct 3.42 %
18 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 61.54 %
3 lbs Briess Carabrown® Malt (55.0 SRM) Grain 10.26 %
2 lbs 4.0 oz Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain 7.69 %
2 lbs 4.0 oz Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 7.69 %

Ed "Smitty" O'neal, my vintage base ball buddy and protege brewer (and host of the day's festivities) soaking wood chips for the smoker (lunch was amazing sausages smoked).

Doughing in in MustangJ's 72 quart cooler. We were aiming for 150 degrees and got really close.

Even with the rice hulls, the mash was really dense and thick. And smelled amazing.

As we neared the end of the 60 minute mash I pulled out a couple gallons of mash and brought it to a boil for about 10 minutes as a decoction which we then used as a mashout. The stuff was like porridge. (It was so think that it was difficult to clean the pitched I had used to get it out of the tun hours later, it was like a thick sugar glaze.)

 

[Revvy]

We started the Brochet (burnt mead) on Ed's firepit. We didn't realize what a nightmare that would be. Do not try this at home, or if you do have silicon fire gloves and a back up plan. Or at least use a bigger cast iron pan. The honey is just warming up. Still honey colored.

Here's why you need to have aback up plan and heat retardent gloves so you can lift the pan off the heat.

Adding the decoction back to the tun for mashout.

After too many boilovers we switched to something with more temp control for the mead. It STILL required constant attention. Which luckily Terrapin put his chef skills on the line to be the man of the (several) hour to stir that puppy and keep fiddling with the gas. This was a lot like making roux at long time consuming process. But hopefully worth it. As you can see it is starting to change color.

First wort hopping with;
0.55 oz Galena [13.00 %] (90 min) (First Wort Hop) Hops 15.2 IBU
0.55 oz Centennial [10.00 %] (90 min) (First Wort Hop) Hops 11.7 IBU
0.55 oz Warrior [15.00 %] (90 min) (First Wort Hop) Hops 17.6 IBU
0.55 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (90 min) (First Wort Hop) Hops 6.4 IBU

Brochet getting darker.

For Terrapinchef, this WAS a working lunch.

 

[Reno_eNVy]

Just happened upon this thread... very cool. I can't wait to see the rest of the pictures from yesterday!

 

[Revvy]

90 minute hop addition.
1.66 oz Galena [13.00 %] (90 min) Hops 41.6 IBU
0.55 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (90 min) Hops 5.9 IBU
0.55 oz Warrior [15.00 %] (90 min) Hops 16.0 IBU

As you can see the mahogany color of the honey is starting to come out, the colors that we saw were undescribably beautiful. Like fiery sunsets.

Happily boiling away.

This is what 50 year old honey looks like. The top half was liquid, but the bottom was crystalize. I used about 1.5 pounds in the beer.

The final minutes of the Brochet, deciding at what point we wanted to pull the plug on the color, and halt the boiling was difficult, we wanted to see how deep it would go but we really wanted not to scorch the honey.

Everything we used so far. Smoker, firepit (later for the corn) two burners, mashtun and 4 different kettles.

 

[Revvy]

Jay Chilling and keeping me company while I measure out hops.

As we neared the end of the 90 minute boil we decided to drain the cooler for the second beer (the third runnings of the partyguile) We had added water and let it mash for another hour. We ended up with approximately 3.5 gallons of 1.080 wort to which we added 2 gallons more of water which gave us 5.5 gallons of about 1.050 preboil gravity wort to boil for an hour.

Chilling the Barleywine. We sort of missed out gravity by a bit. We were aiming for 1.150.....we ended up with 1.170. I had created the recipe expecting 75% efficiency, but Jay's barleycrusher and mashtun, did much better than we anticipated.

Smitty and Jay whipped up a couple habenero meads.

Yes I did say habenero.....

Aerating the wort. About 5 minutes.

One of my facebook friends who was following all the pics I was posted, wanted a pic of me in there...

Yeast starter, 3/4 of a gallon with 2 tubes of cali ale yeast, fed over several days with 1 pound of dme, and crashed at full krausen and pitched. (I left about a half cup or so for beer two)

The two gallons of Brochet, being aierated. Look how dark it is, and that is after topping off with water and a little bit of one of the other meads. The taste was insane.

Due to the caloric intake of all the alcohol we were making, plus the ribs for dinner. Smitty decides to do a pre dinner workout...or is he genuflecting before the mead gods?

 

[Revvy]

Speaking of the ribs.

And fireroasted corn.

The meads;
2 burnt honeys. 2 habenero and 1 made with the rest of the 50 year old honey.

The two beers. We hopped the second beer on the fly, iirc 1/2 ounce each of warrior and galena at 60. 1/2 ounce of cascade at 30. 1/2 ounce centennial at 15, 1 ounce of whole cascade at flameout.

The beers, safe at home in Marybeth's basement. Note the blowoff tube (I didn't have hose that would fit my airlock tube design, so I went with the shove in the hole version. And like I said I aerated it this morning. And the fermentaion was rocking

I am so grateful to my friends Ed Carpus, Ed and Kerrie O'neal, and Jay Campau for making an awesome day of good friends, good food, and brewing. And all of your help and support in putting this together.

This was a greatbirthday/end of summer gift.

Oh and speaking of gifts, I'll have to post the birthday gift I got from Smitty and his wife Kerrie. A beautiful walking stick to use for umping vintage base-ball. With a big brass handle.

We're talking about doing a 5 or 10 gallon batch of brochet, maybe even demoing it at Natl Homebrew Day in November. (I think the 7th) at Cap n Cork's.

Hope you enjoyed the pics. I will update this when I re-yeast and then rack to secondary and add the belgian yeast.

 

[IslandMike]

Not only am I thirsty but now very, very hungry.

It all looks awesome. Really excited to hear how things progress.

Mike

 

[Reno_eNVy]

That brochet looks amazing. What color!!! Also, the habanero mead sounds fantastic. Great pictures, damn good looking food. Looks like it was fun!