High IBU Barley Wine

[bgrayson726]

So I'm going to brew big tomorrow (making yeast starter today). I plugged my DME into a calculator and it should come out to ~10.6% abv. The next thing I did was plug my hops into an IBU calculator. I actually plugged it into 2 calculators. One said it would have 100.65 IBUs, which is ideal for what I want. However, the next one said I would have 282+ IBUs. That is not ideal.

So which one is right? I am doing a partial boil (3 gallons) and will add water to my fermenter to bring it up to 5 gallons. 1 hour boil.

Here are the hops I am using:

3 oz 14.4% AA - 60 Mins
2 oz 9.1% AA - 60 mins
1 oz 9.1% AA - 30 mins
2 oz 6.1% AA - 30 mins
1 oz 6.1% AA - 15 mins
1 oz 6.1% AA - 5 mins

This seems like a lot of hops to me, but I had to keep adding to make it 100+ IBUs, which is what I am going for.

http://www.brewersfriend.com/ibu-calculator/ is the website that I used to make these calculations. Am I using way too many hops or is this site correct about my estimated IBUs?

 

[larrybrewer]

The higher the gravity the lower the hops utilization. The Brewer's Friend calculator accounts for this correctly. You can get more bang for your buck in terms of hops bitterness if you add 50% of the DME in the last ten minutes.

What is the OG you are shooting for?

 

[bgrayson726]

I'm shooting for 1.100-1.110 OG. I was thinking about doing that, 6 lbs of DME for 60 mins, and the 6 lbs for 30 mins. Would this still give me my ideal OG? I'm also using 0.5 lbs of crystal 90L, 0.5 lbs of rye malt, and 0.5 lbs of chocolate malt.

 

[bgrayson726]

I'm essentially shooting for a 10-11% abv with 100-120 IBUs

 

[a10t2]

The solubility of iso-alpha acids in wort is ~100 IBU, so if you're doing a 3 gal boil and topping off to 5 gal, you'll never get anything higher than 60. You can still get more flavor and aroma from adding more hops, but not more bitterness.

Calculation-wise, Tinseth's formula using a boil gravity of 1.090 puts that at ~200 IBU.

 

[VTBrewer]

Without plugging that into my calc, i'm pretty sure Daniels and Rager would be around 200. Tinseth maybe a little lower, but it doesn't really matter. 100 IBU is pretty much as high as any of the scales are meant to go to. ie: there is no more bitterness really added after that, just aroma.

 

[larrybrewer]

So your boil gravity would be around 1.16 if you add everything at the start! Then you dilute it down to 1.10 with 2 gallons of water.

If you cut your boil gravity in half by adding half the DME at the start, and half towards the end, you can also cut your hops additions in half to get the same IBUs. Try the BF calculator with 1.10, and 1.05 in the target OG box. With 1.05 that will trick it into using the correct boil gravity. Your boil volume is 3 gallons, and your batch size is 5 gallons (5.25 more like it since you want to end up with 5 gallons and there is losses to trub, yeast cake, etc). This isn't perfect because when you add the DME towards the end, the boil gravity will essentially double, and the efficiency will be lost. You might do a 60 minute boil, then add the DME and bring it back to a boil for 10 more minutes, and call that good.

 

[larrybrewer]

The solubility of iso-alpha acids in wort is ~100 IBU, so if you're doing a 3 gal boil and topping off to 5 gal, you'll never get anything higher than 60. You can still get more flavor and aroma from adding more hops, but not more bitterness.

That's an interesting point. A full wort boil would involve starting with 7 gallons and boiling that down to around 5.5. It would require a good size kettle and heat source. Ideally use a kettle with a ball valve to make draining easy. That could become your all-grain kettle down the road. Good excuse to upgrade!

 

[bgrayson726]

Really interesting stuff here. Thanks for the feedback.

That being said, if I boil the 12 lbs of DME for 60 mins, won't I also lose fermentable sugars due to carmelization (sp?)? So if I did the 6 lbs up front and 6 lbs ~midway through the boil, won't I gain more fermentable sugars as well as hop IBU efficiency? That seems like a better way to go if this is true

 

[bgrayson726]

Especially because I want a 10+ % abv beer.. more fermentable sugars is a good thing imo