NoIguanaForZ
Well-Known Member
The Imperial Black Barleywine Saga:
I. Background
Once upon a time, I formulated a tentative high-gravity original recipe which was really trying to be two different beers. Realizing this upon reflection, I went and brewed one of them, and aside from coming out thicker and less attenuated than I really wanted it to (next time I make that recipe I'm mashing at, like, 148) I was quite happy with it.
This is The Story So Far of the other beer my original recipe was trying to be.
In February of this year, the longer-term of my two then-local partners moved to Las Vegas to live with her other partner, due to, among other things, him having some serious health issues. The day she left, after...seeing her off...going home, taking a shower, and going right the hell to bed, to sleep off the time I put in helping her pack around work, for most of the day, I spent some time in the evening pondering, and my thoughts drifted across the other basic beer concept. I sat down, pulled up the Grains section of my LHBS' catalogue page and Beersmith, and planned out a recipe for a Black Barleywine, which I dubbed "Till It Be Morrow."
I pulled together a grain set in the vein of my original musing of
, originally targeted Galena hops based on the description of a smooth/clean bitterness and "blackcurrant" aroma, and...
...appear to have posted on this already, actually.
Well, no need to repeat myself. However, it turns out my LHBS no longer carries Palisades, and with a bit more digging it turns out by "fruity" they mean "peach and apricot." Which...wouldn't work here. I did go with the pale 2-row for a range of 5 gallon test batches, except for the Vienna and Munich batches, determining that a Vienna-Galena SMaSH is a recipe worth brewing again, and the others...gave me a sense for the malt flavor. Also, I wound up brewing a (warmish-fermented) variant of the Test Drive Porter at that link with different hops (Magnum and Fuggles) and with Maris Otter for a base malt, which I dubbed "Ivy Mike" and was extremely happy with. I still have a few, actually...time to throw another in the fridge.
I refined the recipe through that batch and the set of 1 gallon malt samples, settling on Galena, East Kent Golding, and Willamette hops in part because of how it meshed with my other batches and what I had on hand, and sticking to the Maris Otter base, and with some minor tweaks, came out at an estimated 66.6 IBU and 16.6% ABV, which I considered too amusing to pass up. It also required two pounds of candi syrup ("D" and "D2"), a pound (I think?) of molasses, and the assumption that those affected the gravity of the beer but not its volume, which becomes significant later. I had planned to brew it in late April, the weekend after my calendar-birthday originally, but that wound up being the weekend my formerly local partner came to visit :3 and various other things happened that resulted in the brewing date getting pushed off by nearly a month. In the mean time, I discovered that my LHBS no longer stocks the brand of candi syrup on which I based the selections, the one that comes in plastic jars, and instead stocks the one that comes in plastic pouches. Whose product descriptions reference "toasted bread" and the like, which are not really the flavors I wanted to emphasize here.
Then, while searching for more detailed information on Candi Syrup, I found this thread and knew I had a winner.
I reformulated the recipe and finally brewed in mid-May. The batch is still going, as detailed below.
II. Recipe
I settled on the following recipe, for a nominal 5 gallon batch, dubbing the style an "Imperial Black Barleywine" since the target gravity is about half as strong again as a typical barleywine, and, you know, the color.
Grain Bill:
-18lb Maris Otter
- 2lb Caramunich 40
-1.5lb Crystal 120/"Double Roasted Crystal"
-1lb .5oz Golden Naked Oats
-1lb .5oz Special B
-1lb .4oz Midnight Wheat
-12oz Melanoidan Malt
-1 lb rice hulls
Except for the Maris Otter, all of these are measured to 2 decimal places, in the process of sorting out the grain I had on hand due to buying supplies for several batches at once (in the process determining that my LHBS tends to add an extra ounce or two to every pound >.>). This should have given me a 1.134 OG with my 80% extraction assumption, and fit in my mash tun with about a quart to spare assuming a relatively thick mash of 1.125qt/lb grain. However, I wound up with about 71.4% efficiency and about 5.86 gal with an OG of 1.120 per my measurements; and had to skimp a little on the water to get the lid on, due to, I suspect, some combination of eyeballing the rice hulls and Beersmith possibly handling their absorption by weight like other grains. These may be related. I targeted a mash temp of 153 F, overshot a little I think, and let it sit for several hours.
Hop Bill:
-2oz Galena (14.5%) boil 45min
-1oz Galena (12.8%) Boil 10min
-2oz East Kent Goldings (5.6%) at Flameout
-2oz Willamette (5.1%) at Flameout
Other:
-Irish Moss (~1 tsp) boiled 15 min
-Snickasyrup #5, using 5 lb of sugar to produce about 3/4 gal of syrup, then dissolving the rest stuck to the pot in water and boiling it down to about 20oz. Added syrup about a pint at a time after initial fermentations ceased, except added 20oz of dissolved residuals with the first pint, and accidentally added last quart pretty much all at once.
-Oxygenated for most of two hours, with a couple breaks to prevent overflowing, using an air pump and diffuser stone
Yeast:
-WLP099, starter as noted below
I was pretty much going for a beer that tastes like drinking a Nightwish album. So far, it certainly seems to have that potential.
Part III: Starter Technique:
Having consulted the manufacturer I determined that WLP099 needed to be babied for best effect. I made a multistage starter, roughly as follows:
BD-8: Boiled Golden DME in water to make a 1.04something SG, 2L wort, added 1 (about 3 weeks expired, since I'd originally bought it to try to "finish" the SHIP from the first thread linked) vial of WLP099. Added 1/4tsp of yeast energizer (the one that should be called yeast nutrient, that has vitamins and yeast hulls and stuff and not just diammonium phosphate) and something like 5 drops of fermcap. Fermented in a 2L erlenmeyer flask on a stir plate at ambient, finished bubbling noticeably in about 36 hours.
Cold-crashed over next day or so. Poured off most of the fluid in the beaker, poured the settled yeast sediment and enough fluid to resuspend it with into a sanitized plastic bottle, capped, put in refrigerator. Wound up with about an ounce of completely settled and compacted yeast sediment. Left dregs in flask. Poured more (chilled) 1.04something SG wort in, topped up with previously boiled water, put back on the stir plate.
BD-5: Repeated the above, including adding fermcap. Now about 2-2.5oz settled and compacted sediment.
BD-2: Repeated the above, including adding fermcap. Now even more sediment, I kinda stopped counting.
Brewday+1:
Having cold-crashed the third round, I poured all the yeast sediment, just enough pre-boiled water to rinse the previously sanitized bottle clean (2-3oz), and about 1.5L of chilled wort into the erlenmeyer flask. Added another half-dropperful of fermcap, put on stirplate. Aerated rest of wort in carboy while this was going on, adding at least two dropperfuls of fermcap to keep it from overflowing during the aeration. A few hours later, with starter bubbling noticeably, pitched it at high Krausen into the fermenter, with appropriate theme music, moved carboy to my fermentation fridge, plugged into blowoff vessel. The resulting volume was about 5.25 gallons.
Woke up the next morning to find that, with all that fermcap, the fermenting wort had surged up enough to completely coat the top of the fermenter with that cruddy stuff it makes, and deposited between a cup and a pint into the blowoff vessel.
Part IV to come.
I. Background
Once upon a time, I formulated a tentative high-gravity original recipe which was really trying to be two different beers. Realizing this upon reflection, I went and brewed one of them, and aside from coming out thicker and less attenuated than I really wanted it to (next time I make that recipe I'm mashing at, like, 148) I was quite happy with it.
This is The Story So Far of the other beer my original recipe was trying to be.
In February of this year, the longer-term of my two then-local partners moved to Las Vegas to live with her other partner, due to, among other things, him having some serious health issues. The day she left, after...seeing her off...going home, taking a shower, and going right the hell to bed, to sleep off the time I put in helping her pack around work, for most of the day, I spent some time in the evening pondering, and my thoughts drifted across the other basic beer concept. I sat down, pulled up the Grains section of my LHBS' catalogue page and Beersmith, and planned out a recipe for a Black Barleywine, which I dubbed "Till It Be Morrow."
I pulled together a grain set in the vein of my original musing of
, originally targeted Galena hops based on the description of a smooth/clean bitterness and "blackcurrant" aroma, and...
...appear to have posted on this already, actually.
Well, no need to repeat myself. However, it turns out my LHBS no longer carries Palisades, and with a bit more digging it turns out by "fruity" they mean "peach and apricot." Which...wouldn't work here. I did go with the pale 2-row for a range of 5 gallon test batches, except for the Vienna and Munich batches, determining that a Vienna-Galena SMaSH is a recipe worth brewing again, and the others...gave me a sense for the malt flavor. Also, I wound up brewing a (warmish-fermented) variant of the Test Drive Porter at that link with different hops (Magnum and Fuggles) and with Maris Otter for a base malt, which I dubbed "Ivy Mike" and was extremely happy with. I still have a few, actually...time to throw another in the fridge.
I refined the recipe through that batch and the set of 1 gallon malt samples, settling on Galena, East Kent Golding, and Willamette hops in part because of how it meshed with my other batches and what I had on hand, and sticking to the Maris Otter base, and with some minor tweaks, came out at an estimated 66.6 IBU and 16.6% ABV, which I considered too amusing to pass up. It also required two pounds of candi syrup ("D" and "D2"), a pound (I think?) of molasses, and the assumption that those affected the gravity of the beer but not its volume, which becomes significant later. I had planned to brew it in late April, the weekend after my calendar-birthday originally, but that wound up being the weekend my formerly local partner came to visit :3 and various other things happened that resulted in the brewing date getting pushed off by nearly a month. In the mean time, I discovered that my LHBS no longer stocks the brand of candi syrup on which I based the selections, the one that comes in plastic jars, and instead stocks the one that comes in plastic pouches. Whose product descriptions reference "toasted bread" and the like, which are not really the flavors I wanted to emphasize here.
Then, while searching for more detailed information on Candi Syrup, I found this thread and knew I had a winner.
I reformulated the recipe and finally brewed in mid-May. The batch is still going, as detailed below.
II. Recipe
I settled on the following recipe, for a nominal 5 gallon batch, dubbing the style an "Imperial Black Barleywine" since the target gravity is about half as strong again as a typical barleywine, and, you know, the color.
Grain Bill:
-18lb Maris Otter
- 2lb Caramunich 40
-1.5lb Crystal 120/"Double Roasted Crystal"
-1lb .5oz Golden Naked Oats
-1lb .5oz Special B
-1lb .4oz Midnight Wheat
-12oz Melanoidan Malt
-1 lb rice hulls
Except for the Maris Otter, all of these are measured to 2 decimal places, in the process of sorting out the grain I had on hand due to buying supplies for several batches at once (in the process determining that my LHBS tends to add an extra ounce or two to every pound >.>). This should have given me a 1.134 OG with my 80% extraction assumption, and fit in my mash tun with about a quart to spare assuming a relatively thick mash of 1.125qt/lb grain. However, I wound up with about 71.4% efficiency and about 5.86 gal with an OG of 1.120 per my measurements; and had to skimp a little on the water to get the lid on, due to, I suspect, some combination of eyeballing the rice hulls and Beersmith possibly handling their absorption by weight like other grains. These may be related. I targeted a mash temp of 153 F, overshot a little I think, and let it sit for several hours.
Hop Bill:
-2oz Galena (14.5%) boil 45min
-1oz Galena (12.8%) Boil 10min
-2oz East Kent Goldings (5.6%) at Flameout
-2oz Willamette (5.1%) at Flameout
Other:
-Irish Moss (~1 tsp) boiled 15 min
-Snickasyrup #5, using 5 lb of sugar to produce about 3/4 gal of syrup, then dissolving the rest stuck to the pot in water and boiling it down to about 20oz. Added syrup about a pint at a time after initial fermentations ceased, except added 20oz of dissolved residuals with the first pint, and accidentally added last quart pretty much all at once.
-Oxygenated for most of two hours, with a couple breaks to prevent overflowing, using an air pump and diffuser stone
Yeast:
-WLP099, starter as noted below
I was pretty much going for a beer that tastes like drinking a Nightwish album. So far, it certainly seems to have that potential.
Part III: Starter Technique:
Having consulted the manufacturer I determined that WLP099 needed to be babied for best effect. I made a multistage starter, roughly as follows:
BD-8: Boiled Golden DME in water to make a 1.04something SG, 2L wort, added 1 (about 3 weeks expired, since I'd originally bought it to try to "finish" the SHIP from the first thread linked) vial of WLP099. Added 1/4tsp of yeast energizer (the one that should be called yeast nutrient, that has vitamins and yeast hulls and stuff and not just diammonium phosphate) and something like 5 drops of fermcap. Fermented in a 2L erlenmeyer flask on a stir plate at ambient, finished bubbling noticeably in about 36 hours.
Cold-crashed over next day or so. Poured off most of the fluid in the beaker, poured the settled yeast sediment and enough fluid to resuspend it with into a sanitized plastic bottle, capped, put in refrigerator. Wound up with about an ounce of completely settled and compacted yeast sediment. Left dregs in flask. Poured more (chilled) 1.04something SG wort in, topped up with previously boiled water, put back on the stir plate.
BD-5: Repeated the above, including adding fermcap. Now about 2-2.5oz settled and compacted sediment.
BD-2: Repeated the above, including adding fermcap. Now even more sediment, I kinda stopped counting.
Brewday+1:
Having cold-crashed the third round, I poured all the yeast sediment, just enough pre-boiled water to rinse the previously sanitized bottle clean (2-3oz), and about 1.5L of chilled wort into the erlenmeyer flask. Added another half-dropperful of fermcap, put on stirplate. Aerated rest of wort in carboy while this was going on, adding at least two dropperfuls of fermcap to keep it from overflowing during the aeration. A few hours later, with starter bubbling noticeably, pitched it at high Krausen into the fermenter, with appropriate theme music, moved carboy to my fermentation fridge, plugged into blowoff vessel. The resulting volume was about 5.25 gallons.
Woke up the next morning to find that, with all that fermcap, the fermenting wort had surged up enough to completely coat the top of the fermenter with that cruddy stuff it makes, and deposited between a cup and a pint into the blowoff vessel.
Part IV to come.
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