My first barley wine – Fermentation plan

[suitbrewing]

I will be brewing my first barley wine on Saturday and wanted to bounce off some ideas. If all goes well I will enjoy during Christmas 2019 ;-)

I will mash @65C for 90m.The expected OG is 1.115. I will be using 3 packs of MJ42 (alcohol tolerance 12%) so if all goes according to plan it should attenuate down to 1.023.

I am looking for feedback on the below fermentation plan:

Primary: Pitch @ 19c and let the beer rise to 20c naturally. Do a 3 weeks primary @ 20c. During the third week of primary add oak cubes. During the last 2-3 days raise temp to 22c-23c to help the yeast clean up.

Secondary: Rack beer off the yeast pack and oak cubes. Age the beer @ 16c for a couple of months.

Bottle: Re yeast with v.high alcohol tolerance yeast and bottle with dextrose in Champagne bottles. Age in bottles for another 9 months or so.

Question: How do I ensure that the re-yeast does not attenuate the residual malt sugars? I don’t want my Barley wine dryer than 1.023?

 

[HTH1975]

Do you have temperature control? A beer that big will self generate a fair bit of heat, so it will easy free-rise to 24C from 19C pitching.

 

[RM-MN]

I will be brewing my first barley wine on Saturday and wanted to bounce off some ideas. If all goes well I will enjoy during Christmas 2019 ;-)

I will mash] for 90m.The expected OG is 1.115. I will be using 3 packs of MJ42 (alcohol tolerance 12%) so if all goes according to plan it should attenuate down to 1.023.

I am looking for feedback on the below fermentation plan:

Primary: Pitch @ 19c and let the beer rise to 20c naturally. Do a 3 weeks primary @ 20c. During the third week of primary add oak cubes. During the last 2-3 days raise temp to 22c-23c to help the yeast clean up.

Secondary: Rack beer off the yeast pack and oak cubes. Age the beer @ 16c for a couple of months.

Bottle: Re yeast with v.high alcohol tolerance yeast and bottle with dextrose in Champagne bottles. Age in bottles for another 9 months or so.

Question: How do I ensure that the re-yeast does not attenuate the residual malt sugars? I don’t want my Barley wine dryer than 1.023?

You should mash until all conversion is done. That may be 30 minutes or 120 minutes, depending on the crush of the grain.

You should add the same kind of yeast for bottling as that yeast should have completed all possible fermentation. The other choice is to use something like Champagne yeast that cannot digest the remaining malt sugars.

 

[suitbrewing]

The beer will be in a fridge with stc1000 and a germination pad wrapped around the vessel so I have good temp control.

If champagne yeast cannot ferment malt sugars then it sounds like the perfect choice! At 12% MJ42 will be maxed at its alcohol tolerance so I am worried that it will have a hard time carbonating the bottles!