I want to give a barley wine a shot and I’m going to do it with a relatively small batch and just let it sit in the basement for close to year. However, I have heard some things that I am not sure of. I’ve heard with “bigger brews” that a thicker mash is appropriate, closer to 1.25qt/lb, where I’ve been doing about 2qt/lb up until this point. Is this just due to size constraints for the mash tun to be able to fit more water? If that is the case, then I won’t worry about it (doing a 2 gallon batch), but if there is some sort of deeper meaning with conversion and such that would be good to know.
Also, I plan on using the yeast cake (Wyeast 1056) off of a brown ale (OG:1.057, 5.5 gallons) for this barley wine. Would this be over kill for such a small batch? Or will the high OG (estimating 1.1) compensate for that? Thanks for the help and happy brewing!
I think the thicket mash would be to avoid having too much wort. figure 2 gallons of 1.1 is about 7lbs grain so at 2 qt/lbs that’s 14 quarts or 3.5 gallons less .8 held by grain is 2.7 gallons of first runnings alone. to get to your 2 gallon mark you would have to boil alot. or just use first runnings.
Use mrmalty.com to see how much slurry you need. The slurry should be yeast, and not trub and yeast. You can look up how to rinse the yeast. Or you can just use the cake, this works, but a clean slurry is even better.
Barleywines do not have to take a year to be mature and ready to drink. Here are some key items. Propper amount of yeast (you know this already), give the yeast plenty of O2. Control the fermentation temperature, as these can take off like a rocket and generate a high temperature and the fusel alcohols that go with it, and then you have to age for a year. This is the way I have made a pretty good Barleywine that was winning awards at 3 months.
Sierra Nevada makes Bigfoot after they are done with Celebration Ale brewing, which is made right after the hop harvest. So the make Celebration in late Sept/Oct and then brew Bigfoot, which is released in January. Not too long.
Wow, thanks for the quick responses. Sounds like two solid answers so thanks for the help. I love Bigfoot, and I can’t remember but the recipe I’m using might be a Bigfoot clone, either that or I made it up, don’t remember haha.
I was going for a 5 gallon batch when I brewed my barley wine and used 1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain and ended up with almost 7 gallons of first runnings. I didn’t sparge, though I could have and just made a smaller beer with the second runnings. I was happy with it, boiled down to a little over 5.5 gallons and it has some awesome maltiness to it. It’s still relatively young and hot, but I’m excited for it when it mellows.