For my 150th batch, which I’ll brew later this month, I’ll be brewing my first barleywine. I don’t usually brew big beers; I prefer 4-6% beers most of the time. Anyway, this is sort of a milestone for me, so I’m going big!
Here’s what I’ve got so far. Any of you barleywine connoisseurs out there have any suggestions?
American Barleywine
19-C American Barleywine
Author: Matt Schwandt
Size: 5.26 gal
Efficiency: 65.0%
Attenuation: 78.0%
Calories: 343.19 kcal per 12.0 fl oz
Ingredients:
18 lb (75.0%) 2-Row - added during mash
4.5 lb (18.8%) Light Munich - added during mash
.75 lb (3.1%) Caramel Malt 60L - added during mash
.50 lb (2.1%) Victory® Malt - added during mash
.25 lb (1.0%) Caramel Malt 120L - added during mash
1.75 oz (25.9%) Columbus (12.9%) - added during boil, boiled 60 m
1.5 oz (22.2%) Centennial (8.7%) - added during boil, boiled 20 m
1.5 oz (22.2%) Cascade (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 20 m
1 oz (14.8%) Centennial (9.0%) - added during boil, boiled 1 m
1 oz (14.8%) Columbus (12.9%) - added during boil, boiled 1 m
2 ea Fermentis US-56 American Ale
1 ea Danstar Nottingham (Bottling)
-Primary for 1 month
-Secondary for 2 months
-Add 1 pkg Nottingham dry yeast to bottling bucket when bottling
-Bottle condition for as long as humanly possible before cracking one open!
You might want some of that 2 Row to be Marris Otter.
The most important thing that I have found to make a good barleywine is to have very good temperature control in the fermantation. You don’t want that running away as it can in a big beer. I assume 2 packs hits what mrmalty says for pitch rate.
This may be a personaly taste thing but I don’t like any crystal in BW. I think that with a gravity that high you will get plenty of body.
+1 to the marris otter suggestion or, what I do, is way up the light munich. in fact, that’s all I use in barley wine.
I like the hop schedule for an AmBW. I may be totally off on a wrong tack here but in my mind the difference between a English BW and an American BW is a more aggressive hop profile combined with recipe and technique that allow for much younger enjoyment so those hops are still bright and present.
Course, I LOVE bigfoot after 3 or 4 years in the bottle so I could be wrong.
Keith, good idea re: keeping some DME on hand. That’s easy enough, as I have several pounds on hand for making starters.
Also, I was actually thinking about incorporating some Maris Otter. I just picked up a 50# sack of Warminster Floor-Malted MO that I’ve been itching to dig into, so I’ll work it in there. Would you suggest a 50:50 split between 2-row and MO?
I add 1% C120L to my American Barleywine, as well as oats and wheat for that thick chewy mouthfeel. If this is a 19C, I think you are way short on hops. I go against most thinking on dry hopping, as my BWs are dry hopped for at least a month, preferably longer. I know people say that’s too long, and 5 days is good, but for something that’s suppose to age, you don’t want so much fresh hop as that little bit dank and resinous flavor IMHO. My last BW recipe was. 1.104 OG, 120 IBU with columbus, chinook, cluster and cascade, and sat on 4oz of cascade for 6 weeks. It’s taken 3 golds so far this year, and runner up BOS.
101.05 IBUs isn’t enough? :o If the taste threshold is right around 100 IBUs, then why waste hops by increasing IBUs? If you’re talking about the lack of dry hops, I get that. I might think about dry hopping.
I always use an entire slurry from a 1050 ish beer and a blow off tube is a must. 100 IBU’s might seem like a lot, but if you plan on ageing this the hops will fade over time.
Just throwing this out if you have the capacity (mash & fermentation)… You could do a parti-gyle and get 2 beers for just a little more work. I usually approach big beers this way (Barleywine, RIS, Strong Scotch). Your 2nd beer could be an APA or similar. Good Luck regardless… Cheers!!!
Looks pretty good…I agree with the suggestion of having some DME on hand, or using some sugar (that’s what I use in mine…it’s a traditional ingredient and not evil ;D) If you opt to use some sugar in the boil, I’d keep the crystal malt in there. Come to think of it, I’d keep it in there anyway.
Also, I’d personally keep it in secondary for longer…but that’s just me (some of my barleywines/Burton ales have stayed in secondary for a year). I just find that it results in (to me) a better brew and lessens the likelihood of foamouts or bottle bombs for those bottles that make it to the two year mark (or longer)…and it’s those bottles that will be the best tasting, hands down. You will wish you had made more or, at the very least, you’ll wish that you had saved more. Trust me on this. 8)
So there’s a difference between bulk ageing and bottle ageing? Say you made two batches of barleywine and bottled one after one month and bottled the other after 10 months, then tasted both after one year total conditioning time (carboy+bottle), do you think there would be a big difference?
My understanding is that it is more about consistency (and in this case left over sugars). If you bottle a barleywine after 1 month, and then age for a year, the yeast all change the beer in slightly different ways. If you bulk age, all of the beer ages the same way.
I’m happy to be corrected, but I’m not sure I buy that theory. A properly mixed beer with priming solution should be homogenous from racking into the bottling bucket, so there should not be inconsistencies like that. Yes I can understand bulk aging to be sure you don’t bottle too early and avoid bottle bombs from tired yeast, but I don’t buy the argument that they’ll all have different sugar amounts in there if you don’t. To me that just suggests poor bottling practice.
Just assume that your efficiency will be lower and compensate accordingly. That’ll keep you from having to use DME to bump it up, but having some on hand is a good idea, as suggested.
I’d mash lower than 154. This beer will have a good amount of residual sugar left in it even at a lower mash temp. Or add some sugar per the Professor’s suggestions to help dry it out.
I’m not sure that it’s necessarily poor bottling practice as much as it is the increased number of variables that you have from bottle to bottle. Bottle size, shape, fill level, amount of oxidation, priming sugar, etc. I doubt that anyone on a homebrew level gets the exact same amount of priming sugar into each bottle.
I’m more familiar with long-term aging of wines than beer, and with wine you can get significant differences between bottles of the same age. Also, magnums age differently than 750ml bottles, so volume may have more of an impact than you might think. Temperature has an impact on aging and a larger volume should maintain a more consistent temperature with respect to variations in ambient temp.
Currently, I bulk age all my beers since they are in kegs. When I first started brewing higher gravity beers, I would leave them in the carboy for months but found that to be a PITA after awhile (after 6 months or so, I typically needed the carboy for another brew). I’ve found that I have the ability to keep bottled beer much longer than kegged beer since I can stash bottles and forget about them.
On a commercial level (although I’m not sure who does significant aging on a commercial level) I do believe that bulk aging would be used for consistency purposes, particularly to eliminate any variables in bottle storage, etc. prior to release.
Like a lot of other things, I would be that on the homebrew scale the impact/difference is minimal.
One thing to consider about bulk againg and commercial breweries: Unless storing in BBLs it is difficult for most commercial breweries to seriously bulk age a beer. One only has a finite # of conditioning tanks and to keep one of those filled for much longer than 2-4 weeks seriously cuts into the bottom line.
Yes. What I had in mind as I was typing was the barrels that Goose Island uses for Matilda.
Those have other purposes than simply aging as the barrels impart a lot of character to the beer, as well. I’m actually not even sure how long they age Matilda. Not long, I do not think.
I wasn’t talking about different sugar amounts in the changes. As Joe Sr. said, two bottles can have pretty vast differences between them after a year or two. If you leave the whole beer in the carboy for that year, you are minimizing differences between the bottles. This is why I have heard that some people like to bulk age for 6mos to a year for the big beers, before bottling. The fact that it helps make sure you don’t bottle to early and have bottle bombs is a bonus. I know nothing about commercial aging processes, but I agree that they probably don’t age beer unless its in a barrel of some sort. I know black raven has a conditioning tank in their cold room that they condition some beers in before they keg, but I don’t think it is used for more than a couple weeks, and that is to smooth out some of the barrel aged beers.