I recently opened a bottle of English barleywine that I brewed 9 years ago. I have to be honest, I am really surprised with how well it has held up over the years. I think it’s been at least 4 or 5 years since the last bottle I opened, and the only major difference I noticed was that the hop bitterness has faded significantly. Unfortunately, it still has a bit of a husky astringency that has faded slightly, but not to the extent I had hoped. I’m glad I decided to bulk age this in a keg and bottle from there rather than bottle condition, because there is none of the autolyzed soy sauce flavor that I get from old bottle-conditioned beer. There is certainly some oxidized character, but (probably because this beer attenuated quite well 1.142 OG > 1.024 FG) it’s not a real cloying caramel/raisin/sherry note; it’s more like port and dried cherries. I’m looking forward to checking back in on this one next year for its 10th anniversary.
If you haven’t brewed a big barleywine for aging, you should give it a try. Your future self will thank you. And if you have one tucked away in the cellar, give it a try if you haven’t checked in on it recently.
I also have a 9 year old English Barleywine at home. I open a bottle every once in a while and it is still pretty amazing. My brew buddy and I make one every year and the '14 won two best of shows in a competition when it was 4 years old. They definitely age very well. The American style loses hop bitterness and aroma pretty quickly when aging but is still good.
9 years is awesome willpower. I am struggling not to touch a 9% Bourbon Oatmeal Stout from 3 1/2 years ago. It is my oldest bottle, and it will be compared to the batch I just made in January which is now in the bottle conditioning. Patience is a challenge. I need to find a way to hide some on myself. Time capsule in my yard?
re: bottle conditioning, i did a RIS in bottles where i hit a very low carbonation i enjoy. ive been theorizing on big beers over the past few months since i made a big one in early 2022. thomas hardy afaik has almost no carbonation if im not mistaken (been more than a decade since ive had it), and i actually enjoy those heavy, old fashioned barley wines. im thinking clearing out the beer well, and going for extremely low carbonation and added sugar (~25g for a 5 gallon batch) should keep out the yeast autolysis issues you describe?
also what yeast was it?
imho from my experience of having these “oh no just a few left… i cant waste it.” thoughts - just do it, and make another one.
In my experience, I prefer bottle conditioning for long aged beers. I have made an American Barleywine every year for the past 16 years and I have never gotten soy sauce flavors. I used a beer gun before and that beer was an oxidized mess after a year and a half. The oldest that I’ve had was a 10 year that was very drinkable with sherry notes from oxidation. I think the sweet spot is the 3-5 year range.
For all those that make Barleywines, what are your experiences with the timing? Obviously not all Barleywines are created equal and I’m sure they don’t follow the same sweet spot curve. But are there clear signs of improvement and then after a certain point the flaws start becoming obvious? I ask because I started my annual bottle conditioned BW collection 2 years ago and so far, I can’t pick up any obvious changes to the 2021 beer. Maybe a bit more mellow, but flavor and aroma are essentially the same.
Years ago I entered a British barleywine in a competition and got mediocre scores (mid 30s). “Too hoppy for style.” A year later it scored in the low 40s and got second in BOS.
The thing I noticed with my English versions is that they get more sherry like after about 4 years which enhanced the flavor. I have not noticed and off flavors like excessive oxidation (cardboard, etc.) in them as they got more age on them. We made one in 2015 that was 15.5% ABV and it got a bit more alcohol bite as it aged and was not as smooth and mellow. The lower ABV ones run about 10-12%. Just my 0.02.
I took gold at our state fair comp with an American BW that was just over 5 years old. One of the comments was “oxidation has been very good to this beer”.
Autolysis seems to be hit or miss, both with my own beers and commercial beers, so to me it was just an insurance policy with the thought that less yeast in the bottle would run less of a risk of autolysis. Your plan should work fine, I think.
The yeast was WLP037 (Yorkshire Square - a White Labs limited release, and allegedly from Samuel Smith’s). I stepped it up from a low gravity bitter, to a 1.060ish Old Peculier-style old ale, then I used the full cake from the old ale for the 1.142 Barleywine. I fermented it open with 2 extra shots of pure O2 in addition.
That’s really an interesting question. If I had to guess, I would assume it goes up. It would certainly have an effect on aging whether it went up or down.
It had been pretty good in the 5-7 year range, though.