Ok, I’ve wanted to make an old-fashioned style fruitcake beer for a long time. A dessert beer that will hopefully pack that traditional fruitcake flavor with the added punch of being soaked in wood and rum for 9 months. Will make this March 1st and age until Christmas 26’. I’m not talking about that “brick” you see on an end-cap at the grocery store after Thanksgiving. This will be based on a traditional old-English style fruitcake that is aged in spirts for months and years before eaten. A family recipe that has been made for at least 4 generations in my family. This is the year! Recipe is as follows so far:
English Style Barley Wine: 65% Pale Ale Malt
22% Crisp M.O.
1% Caravienne
<1% C-40
<1% C-60
<1% C-120
<1% Special B
2 lbs. Dark Brown Sugar
2 lbs. Sugar
Orange Blossom Honey
Cascade @ 90 for 23 IBU’s
EKG @ 60 for 13IBU’s
Willamette @ 15 for F&A and 7 IBU’s
WLP066 Dry
1.111 SG…1.038 FG 10% ABV
This is a first time attempt at making a Barley Wine, so if anyone with experience has an opinion, please share!! I am always open to helpful criticisms.
Fruit Cake Inspiration…3lbs +/- of : Raisins, apricots, dates, cherries, lemon peel, sweet orange peel @ 15 mins and through 20 min WP at 190*
After fermentation I will age on an undetermended quantity of french white oak staves that were soaked in rum for 1-2 months prior to adding and will probably add a portion if not all of residual rum and age in kegs for 9 months.
If this is successful and passes the taste test I will pare this beer with a 2 year old aged fruit cake that is currently under refrigeration.
Calculate your sugar addition to be not more than 20% of total fermentables. For a BW, I’d keep it in the 12-15% range. With your original amounts you risk reducing the body too much, which you dont want in a BW. Brown sugar will add no flavor. It will ferment out. Add fruit to the fermenter, not the boil. Tell me what caravienne and very small amount ts of all the different crystals will bring to the party. Why both pale ale and MO? Why not just use an MO kilned to about 3L?
My sugar additions total 8.4% of fermentables according to BS. My idea with the brown sugar is to replicate what is in a fruit cake recipe although the %'s are slightly different between the cake and beer. I was thinking of using treacle in place of the brown sugar but decided to go with the brown sugar originally but will sub out with something different that brings flavor. Fruit to fermenter, check! Using a split of Pale Ale and Maris because I have it on hand. 100% MO will probably be a better option but… As far as the multi-small additions of crystal malts was I think I am bringing a small bit of complexity to the brew.
I appreciate the feedback, Denny! This recipe will probably evolve over the next couple of weeks.
Those amounts are too small to bring any complexity. Focus! Pick one…you’ve got plenty of other stuff in there for complexity. I’d go for a small amount of 60 and even less Special B. Brown sugar is just white sugar with molasses, so maybe add a very small amount of molasses. That’s one ingredient you don’t want to overdo. I get the feeling that you’re putting this together without “tasting" it in your imagination.
i will probably come back to this thread and post more soon, but for future reference re: sugars and brown sugar and fruitiness
i have seen date syrup here before, but havent tried it either tasting or in brewing yet, and also theres palm sugar out there easily available. let alone D180 would definitely be reminiscent of for me - what i would expect to be a much darker fruit cake/christmas cake than what youve described. its likely a regional thing
Hmmm, I see what you’re saying. Keep it simple. Don’t muddy the mash tun with too much. I will overthink this and repost something slightly different taking your advice to task.
I also agree (mostly) with Denny. All the C malts and Special B will likely get lost at those percentages, what with everything else. My thought would be to use the 120 only, as I think its raisiny, burnt sugar, stone fruit flavors might do well with what you’re going for. Though I would still be light handed with it.
Good luck. I love the idea and will be following along.
My recipe philosophy is too use whatever you need to get the result you want, but know why every ingredient is there. “Taste" it I your head as you add each. And if you can’t justify it, don’t use it. Drew is even more of a minimalist. You can probably find some of our recipe design seminars online.
I am with Denny here. I have been going thru my recipes and declutterring them. I plan to focus much more on processes this year. I believe I don’t need an overly complicated, complex recipe to make very good beer. There are no tricks or one special ingredient I’m missing that will make my beer perfect. There is no one big thing to improve. There are multiple small detailed interlocking steps. Attention to detail.
Having said that, I often add some 2-row to simply hit my OG w/o busting open another bag of the primary base malt. For example, I write my recipe based on % and it lands at 1.049 but I want 1.052 OG. I always have an open bag of 2-row so I would add a little 2-row to get me there.
The malt bill is not going to give you the desired characteristics you are looking for, this will be thin, watery, and high alcohol without a nice base to it. Keep the Pale Ale malt and the MO, lose the table sugar, and use English Dark and Extra Dark Crystal malts. I would go with about 10% of each. This will give rich, dextrinous, caramel and dark fruit notes to balance the alcohol. How much OB honey are you using? Based on the rest of the recipe, I would go ¼ lb per gallon, add it after the boil to maintain aromatics. To get the rum notes, you can soak an oak spiral in a good dark rum and age on that for a few months. Add any fruit or spices after fermentation and aging.
I have made similar - one caution - go easy on the spices particularly cloves as a little of any of these spices go a long way flavour wise and can over take the beer. If this is a 5 gal. batch, from my experience and recipe dependent: 2 vanilla beans will play in the flavour background, 3 vanilla beans will be a noticeable flavour, 4 beans will become a dominant flavour.
