How much priming sugar for barley wine?

[Gtrman13]

I'm doing my first all grain big beer right now :rockin: I'm doing a 2.5 gallon batch of a barley wine. Anyway, I typically keg but I'll be bottling these to sit on the shelf for at least a year. I really don't have much experience drinking these, so I don't know how carbonated they should be so I need to know how much priming sugar I should use. Keep in mind I'm somewhat new to all-grain and my final volume tends to vary a bit each time. If anyone can help, I'd much appreciate it! Oh, and the beer should be carbonating at around 70 or 71 degrees.

 

[bayareabeer]

you may wan to think about adding a little fresh yeast as well because there is probably not that much active yeast left to carb with

 

[Gtrman13]

Hmm, thats a good point. Lemme know what you think about this. I'll be pitching the wort onto a yeast cake from an ESB which used a nottingham ale yeast (also a 2.5 gal. batch). I'm considering also pitching half a packet of US-05, and then using the other half of the packet with the priming sugar. I've never done anything like this so maybe it's all wrong...

 

[Gtrman13]

Noone has any thoughts here? My boil has only ten minutes left!

 

[wyzazz]

1.3 to 2.3 vols or CO2 is to style. Around 2oz of priming sugar should be at the high end of that & that's where I like mine. If you want them to carb quickly you can add fresh yeast (I add dry wine yeast to carb my bigger beers.) at bottling, just drop 1/8th of a sachet of the yeast in after you start to siphon the beer and you should be good to go! If you don't add fresh yeast (depending on how long you let it age in bulk) you'll still carb, it will just take a lot longer to do so.

 

[Gtrman13]

Thanks for the reply. If all the extra yeast does is speed up the process, I think I'll just stick with the priming sugar. I'm not planning to open one of these until next christmas!