Pitching twice for Barleywine?

[Evan!]

I've been told that, when brewing a high-alcohol Barleywine ale, you pitch with standard ale yeast at first, then pitch again later on with champagne or cuvee yeast. The recipes that I see, however, don't say anything about it. Does anyone have any experience with this?

 

[rod]

that's what i did last december with mine - once the ale yeast slowed down i pitched lavlin ec1118 to finsih up. it got the fg into range for bottling.
i haven't tried much yet as it is supposed to age until this christmas

 

[david_42]

That's exactly what I do. I'll rack after 2-3 weeks and add champagne yeast or even distiller's yeast. A strong ale yeast will adapt to the ABV and will eventually finish, just takes longer.

 

[Rookie]

Most ale yeasts will handle up to 10% or so. Unless you are brewing a monster you shouldn't have to add champagne yeast, just give it some time. Pitch BIG at the start.
My first two batches of barleywine were 12 and 10% and I didn't need to add extra yeast.
My last batch came out at 9.3% and I like it better than the two stronger ones. It came in second place overall at the Clark county fair homebrew compitition
with an overall score of 45.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

Aerate, pitch big. At the 14-24 hour mark aerate some more. After 7 days you may add champagne yeast (do not re-aereate).

 

[Evan!]

Aerate, pitch big. At the 14-24 hour mark aerate some more. After 7 days you may add champagne yeast (do not re-aereate).

Call me stupid, but, how do you aerate once it's in a fermenting vessel? I don't have any sort of aeration or oxygenation kit...do you just shake it up?

 

[david_42]

You don't need to aerate again. If you have the equipment, do it. But since the head space is full of CO2, raising the carboy over your head and shaking won't help (I've seen guys do this!). If you plan on doing mainly high gravity ales, it is worth while getting a pump, filter & stone.

 

[Chairman Cheyco]

Chris White (of White Labs) said that you can actually pitch the champagne yeast at the same time as your ale yeast and that the champagne yeast would wait until the ale yeast was done. This would eliminate the need to re-oxygenate.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

Heard the exact opposite from Lallemand/Danstar rep.

Champagne yeast eats sugars so I have a hard time belive it would "wait" for the ale yeast to finish. In fact since it's such a figorous fermenter I woud expect it to beat the ale yeast to the sugars.

Edit: Though if you pitched a LOT of ale Yeast then their number will be high enough to dominate.

 

[Exo]

I think they are both working away at the yeast and then the Champagne just keeps on chugging?

 

[Chairman Cheyco]

I dunno, I'm going to go with the microbiologist and founder of one of the biggest beer/wine yeast suppliers in the world over a sales rep. It could be that the champagne yeast works slower than the ale yeast.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

Beer rep, Brewmaster of http://courtavebrew.siteviz.com/.

Also won several awards for his barleywine a few years back.

 

[Chairman Cheyco]

Guess I'll just have to brew one both ways to find out!

Damn!

 

[Evan!]

So...you pitch the second yeast batch after racking into secondary?

FYI: I made that Barleywine over the weekend. Gonna be a big one. It's a 5-gal batch, been fermenting in one of those big 7+ gal buckets. The yeasties were so active, the krausen actually made it up to the neck of the airlock (stopped just stort of contaminating the airlock water, thankfully). Fun stuff...never done a barleywine before. The airlock was bubbling in staccato. Yeehaw.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

You can putch the 1118 into the secondary. I added my yeast after 4 days in the primary then racked to a secondary a week later then pitched some more 1118. But you can pitch when you feel it's best.