A good reason to store them cold after they are sufficiently carbed.
A high FG doesn’t necessarily mean there are fermentables left.
For sure.
But…
Is it likely to possibly have more fermentables left in a higher FG beer (say 1.025) than a lower one (1.012)?
I guess another way to ask the question is this: Given a calculated, proper pitch rate, are yeasties just as likely to FINISH a big beer as a standard gravity one?
Nope, not necessarily if the same practices are followed for each.
The bottles that burst were one offs, the rest of the bottles from the batch were okay, and as seems to be the case with big beers, pour with very little head. I always batch prime from the FV and the 1st bottle is usually a 500 or 750 ml bomber, the 2nd bottle is a 16 oz water bottle filled to 12 oz and all the air squeezed out so as to monitor conditioning. The 1st bottle always seems to be the one most likely to be over carbed, maybe cuz all the stuff that settles to the bottom of the conical winds up in it.
As for your question about adding yeast, that depends. As briefly as possible, my FV’s have a 750 ml collection ball which with most batches gets harvested twice to sanitized 36 oz peanut butter jars and then to the fridge. In the fridge the yeast quickly settles out with clear beer on top, usually ~ 1/3 yeast & 2/3 beer. I batch prime in the FV & other than big beers, most of the time I prime with reserved wort/spiese. The evening before bottling day I inoculate the spiese with clear beer from the top of the harvest jars. If there is good airlock activity the next morning it gets pitched to the FV, stirred well, CO2 purge the headspace and left to sit for an hour or so before bottling. I there is insufficient or no airlock activity I’ll add a ~ 1T to 1/4 cup or so of harvested yeast.
Big beers are a different animal, I’ve yet to devise reliable method of bottle conditioning them. The higher the ABV the more difficulty I have convincing yeast to get back to work and condition the beer, and barrel aged beers are especially problematic although I’m not sure why. For big beers I normally dissolve priming sugar & a small amount of yeast nutrient in hot H2O and cool to pitching temp. I’ve tried using beer and/or harvested yeast from that batch, beer and/or harvested yeast from a lower gravity batch with the same yeast, fresh yeast either rehydrated according to Mfr. instructions or sprinkled on the surface of the priming solution. With the exception of using harvest beer from that batch, the other methods almost always take off nicely until the prime is pitched to the FV, at which point the little yeasties get really lethargic and just want to take a siesta.
Two biggies I recently bottled show how variable they can be, 1st was a BBL aged Barleywine O.G. 1.106 & F.G. 1.022. Dextrose priming sugar & WyNutrient dissolved in hot H2O, cooled, US-05 sprinkled on surface [sugar solution was 1.138]. A few hours later had good kraeusen & airlok activity, added some harvested beer, a couple hours later still good active fermentation so I pitched it to the FV. Next morning I had upsuck in the airlock. After goofing around trying to rouse the yeast with CO2 several times over the course of a day and a half I finally said screw it and bottled the batch. Low and behold 2 days later the 2 TellTales water bottles were about 50 to 60% inflated.
The 2nd was an Imperial Stout O.G. 1.123 F.G. 1.040 that failed to do anything when the prime was inoculated with harvest beer but took off nicely when 1 1/2T thick yeast cake was added, and kept going after pitching to the FV. That one the Telltale was 95% expanded in 2 days and the 1st sampled bottle was nicely conditioned in about 1 1/2 weeks. Some of my earlier biggies took a month or two to condition, some never really did carb up much at all.
Thanks for the reply. Some process, that. Very impressive. Unfortunately, my Shiftless Approach to Brewing ™ precludes me from that type of effort and care. 
So I tempted fate and bottled from the spigot on my Speidel FV with carbonation drops. 20 bottles took about 15 minutes, not counting cleaning and sanitizing the bottles. My pour was a bit too careful and I feel I could have induced a nicer head. But the beer never lost carbonation and kept a very thin layer of foam on top. I was ok with that given all the stories I have read about foam, head retention and big beers. What my carbonation will look like in a few months when I try another, who knows?
Every once in a while I will bottle a few directly from my spiedel. I add 2.3g table sugar to each 12 oz bottle and it seems to work well for me.
The process isn’t quite as bad as it sounds, and it’s WAAAAY better than having a couple cases of otherwise great beer that are completely lacking carbonation. Once the crown caps are on and set, there aint fixing a lazy/dead yeast issue, best to know if you’re good or not before bottling.
As for storing cold once carbonation is complete, there a 2 problems with that. First is that doing so would require a walk-in cooler- something I have neither the cash nor space for. The second is that aging essentially stops once when beer is cold, for hoppy and lighter beers that’s fine, but most of what I brew keeps improving with age.
If there is some reliable, quantitative way to measure the flavor/ sensation of bitterness then you have a solid premise on which to build a “maximum” level of bitterness that a human can discern. It appears that IBU “measures” are based more on marketing than real data.
It makes sense that some people would have a greater or lesser ability to detect that bitterness and that ability would top out at some point. Most of what I’ve read deals with bitterness comparisons being meaningless within 3-5 IBUs.
Ex: Hard to tell the difference between something at 85 IBUs vs 90 IBUs.
Scant evidence aside, the current fad that’s become a feature of wanting to make a weapon’s grade IPA points to at least some brewers and drinkers believing that they can appreciate massive bitterness in the 100’s of IBUs.
I think the MIBU information supplements our earlier thinking about IBU measurement and issues associated with that earlier single level approach. Denny brought this up in his podcast when he and Drew interviewed the science guys at Grainfather who penned the following:
Cheers!
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Nearly 4 years ago I started this thread looking for help brewing my first Barleywine and I received a lot of great advice, some of which I even listened to. 
The goal was to brew a BW that borrowed a bit from an IIPA.
The first thing that comes across is a floral nose, possibly from the Loral and Idaho 7 late additions, or possibly esters created from a stressed fermentation.
The taste definitely has this figgy presence and subtle woody and vanilla notes. Finishes relatively dry with a boozy warmth.
The body is a bit thin, too thin actually. I was warned about using sugar in the grist but I felt it was the only way to reach my goal. Still, I didn’t want a chewy mouthfeel and I certainly didn’t get it.
Decent carbonation and a nice color. Looks the part in the glass.
All in all, this ‘21 was a modest success. I have brewed one BW every year since and have slightly modified my recipe from year to year. The sugar was ditched after the ‘22, I switched to WY1318 in ‘23, and started adding a touch of Roasted Barley in ‘24. The trend has clearly been towards more body and complexity, but still well attenuated and not chewy sweet. Just bottled my ‘25, which has Rye Malt as the latest twist.
Great hobby.
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Nice! I popped into this thread thinking “self - a zombie thread from 4 years ago has suddenly appeared in the feed - it’s probably spam”, but no… it’s barleywine!
Fitting given today’s Big Brew Announcement - Big Blimp Barleywine
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I’ve been using the formula over 5 years now and I’ve been really happy with the results
@dbeechum - Big Blimp recipe
That is an unnerving amount of hops!
i know this is a reply to a post from 2021 and you have definitely moved well beyond that (~4 years of barleywines) but simply to post and maybe if you’d like to clarify as well:
my method for getting the highest starting gravity I can is basically hit my max usual dry weight in grain with as little specialty grains (roasted/crystal etc) that my mash tun can take, use lots of rice hulls, 90 to 120 min mash.
use around 10% DME, use another 5 to 10% dextrose or sucrose AND/OR candi syrup. boil at least 60 mins, and i’ll get around 1.095 with my system and sorta not great efficiency.
i was trying to make a few high gravity, high alcohol beers like this, but i’ve found over time:
benefits:
-flavour intensity can be really high
-they do last better in their “good” state over time quite well compared to even 8% beers
-theyre showoffy to other people if that matters to you
cons:
-you are going to drink them even less than the infrequently you imagined you would drink them.
-high ABV can be rough on some yeasts
-if they are unbalanced, which can be hard to predict ie. didn’t attenuate well enough, not bitter enough they can be quite flawed
-i feel like you can get the good elements (flavour intensity, better aging potential than lower ABV beers, greater ability to use oak or more specialty grains) with a sweetspot that is much lower than the mid 90s.
-they do take a long time to really come into their own. trying them before even 2 months is a waste, this messes up your pipeline potentially a lot.
-bottle carbing them will take much much longer above 10% in most cases
i still really enjoy big beer projects but my target now is honestly 1.068 to 1.075 max for beers i want to age.
my current project is just a 1.068 strong amber beer that has been on dark fr. oak cubes for 9 weeks so far. i will get to see how awful it is in a few weeks
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For my first BW that appears above, I did use sugar for two specific reasons. One was to try and dry the beer out and keep it from being too chewy-sweet and the other was for some low-hanging gravity points. Brewing BIAB in an 8-gallon pot puts an obvious cap on my upper gravity limit. However, I’ve since moved away from sugar as I felt the beer was attenuating a bit too far. My solution for going all-grain and still keeping the gravity up is to simply make less beer, reduce the volume in the pot. Easy enough. If I end up with 18 bottles of 9-10% BW instead of 23-24…so be it.
And to your point, I do not drink these that often. So in this case, less is more. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy them, because every BW I’ve made is a different level of delicious, including the first. And pulling one out every now and again always feels like a special occasion, as it should. I’d like to think that my changes over the years have improved each vintage. I really like what the addition of a touch of Roasted Barley has done, giving the beer a subtle dry, espresso quality - a tool to lower the perceived sweetness that is so obvious in hindsight that I’m disappointed I did not think of it earlier.
I have really come to enjoy the once-a-year Barleywine. Probably my favorite brew-day of the year.
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This years Big Brew has a BW recipe that looks pretty good.
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It’s great to hear that you are making a BW every year now. I don’t think there are too many of us around. I have been making one every year for the last 20 years and I really enjoy tasting a vertical of the last 5 or so years when the weather gets cold. Of course I share this with my wife and friends because I couldn’t drink all of those by myself. It’s great to compare the different vintages and we usually agree that the 3-5 year mark is the sweet spot.
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Think SN Bigfoot pushed a bit bigger in the malt profile and aroma/flavor hops. Drink young or aged. Not a session beer unless you have many in your session. Sugar helps dry it out. Chico yeast is a work horse and gives a clean finish. Just be patient!