which should I brew?

[OHIOSTEVE]

I want to try another barleywine. I have a made up recipe of my own....and one from on here. Not sure which one I want to try. So help me decide. I have the supplies to do both but it will wipe out my 2 row pretty much if I do.

#1= 5.5 gallon batch ( I am figuring 60% efficiency from past experience with grain bills this big)

25# 2 row
3# corn sugar
1# crystal 20
1# crystal 80
mash at 154 for 60 minutes....90 minute boil

3 oz centennie l@ 90
1 oz centenniel @ 60
1 oz fuggles @ 30
2 oz cascade at flame out
2 oz cascade dry hop for 7 days

pitch on an s-05 yeast cake
--------------------------------------------------------------

#2 = 5.5 gallon batch

24# 2 row
2# crystal 60

toast 1 pound of the 2 row and add into grain bill.

90 minute mash 120 minute boil

3 oz columbus @ 70
3 oz cascade @ 1 min

s-04 yeast cake

 

[wyzazz]

I'd go with #1 and add the sugar as fermentation starts to slow down. I would probably nix the crystal malts to help with attenuation. That's about a 1.160-1.170 beer you'll have there.

 

[OHIOSTEVE]

So just the 25 pounds of 2 row?
when you guys add sugar during ferment, do you just pour in the sugar ( no worry about infection?) Or do you add just enough water to boil the sugar?

 

[wyzazz]

So just the 25 pounds of 2 row?
when you guys add sugar during ferment, do you just pour in the sugar ( no worry about infection?) Or do you add just enough water to boil the sugar?

Just my $.02 but yes, I'd go with just the 2 row & sugar, and probably even sub out some of the 2 row for sugar. The sugar should be added as a syrup, boiled in a minimal amount of water when the fermentation slows down. This gives the yeast some simple sugars to chow down on after they've worn themselves out on the Maltose, kind of like a little turbo boost if you will. BYO had a great article on a high gravity Barleywine an issue or so back.

I'd probably mash a bit lower as well, you'll want this stuff to be as fermentable as possible because you'll likely poison the yeast with alcohol before running out of fermentable sugars.

 

[wyzazz]

As an alternative to the sugar you could probably can some wort and feed the beer some fresh wort at intervals, IIRC that's what was done in the BYO article.

Found the article online... http://***********/blogs/byos-15-anniversary-ale-test-batch.html/blogger/Chris%20Colby/

 

[Justibone]

... you'll likely poison the yeast with alcohol before running out of fermentable sugars.

So when your yeast poops out, do you add more if you want more dryness?

And on barleywine, does anyone ever use wine yeast as a finishing type yeast?

If they are choking on the alcohol, and you're bottle-carbonating, will even weakened yeast carb it up after a couple of weeks, or do you step it up a notch and use champagne yeast or turbo yeast at that point?

 

[wyzazz]

So when your yeast poops out, do you add more if you want more dryness?

And on barleywine, does anyone ever use wine yeast as a finishing type yeast?

If they are choking on the alcohol, and you're bottle-carbonating, will even weakened yeast carb it up after a couple of weeks, or do you step it up a notch and use champagne yeast or turbo yeast at that point?

Wine and Champagne yeast can consume simple sugars and tolerate a higher alcohol environment so using a wine or champagne yest to carb a very high test brew will work just fine. There are still probably enough yeast left in suspension (depending on how long the beer bulk aged and how high the alcohol content was) but if you want the beer to carb faster then it normally would then using wine yeast has worked well for me. To get the beer drier you'd probably want to rack on to a healthy fresh yeast cake, even then if the beer is up there it probably wouldn't work.

 

[OHIOSTEVE]

OK I have a slight change of plans... I have a few beers ready to go to cold crash but the one setting the longest is on S-04 yeast...will that work as well?.. here is what I have in my head and feel free to point out any idiocy.

Make the beer minus the corn sugar. I will probably keep the crystal malts as I have made ALMOSt this recipe before with them and liked it....Rack onto the s-04 yeast cake and let it go until it seems to have stalled out.. then mix up 3 pounds of corn sugar in barely enough water to get it to boil..let that cool and pitch a packet of champagne yeast into that. Once I see activity siphon that into the barleywine. let it go until fermentation is stopped then dry hop for a week...rack to secondary for bulk aging. doing this I should not need more yeast at bottling I wouldn't think.

The other alternative I see is to put the champagne yeast sugar mix into a clean secondary and rack the beer on top of that rather than the other way around.

 

[OHIOSTEVE]

ok gonna take your advice and go with just the 2 row...and add in sugar as the fermentation slows down.. How much sugar can I add to 25 pounds of malt with no adverse effects? I want to crank this up pretty high if I can. Will 5 pounds be too much? I would like to ge this a few years before opening.

 

[wyzazz]

I would think if you keep it under 30% of the grain bill you should be just fine. It will just make a drier, and more fully attenuated final product. If you bulk age in a secondary for 6-8moz or so I'd add back some dry wine/champagne yeast to the bottling bucket so you can ensure carbonation if you're bottling.