Finding this thread has me breaking out all of my home brew recipes and looking through to see what to brew. I found my Barley Wine Recipe and wanted to share it with everyone here. In fact I still have one bottle left that I am saving for this September when my parents come out to visit. My dad was my best man at my wedding, and I want to share the last bottle with him. I am hoping that it is still good lol as it has been aging in a dark corner of my basement for over three years now.
When I did this one I had to create a mashtun out of a standard cooler in order to fit all of the grains in it. There are not a lot of different ingredients for this recipe, but it is a large quantity. My original gravity before the boil was 1.079 for this, after the 2 hour boil it reached 1.113, and my final gravity after fermenting was 1.042. All this resulted in an ABV of 9.3%. I was hoping for higher, but I think that my second and third yeast pitches needed to be a bit bigger.
An item that I used also was an aeration stone and oxygen. Aerating on days 2, 3, and 4. There are also a total of 3 yeast starters. The first one is a double batch, and the other two are normal starters. These need to be really active yeast starters in order to be able to survive through the high ABV this beer will reach.
I used a calculation that I got from the book, "Barley Wine" written by Fal Allen and Dick Cantwell, of 1 quart of water per pound of grain as a place to start. However you need to watch how much you use for your sparge, because if you add too much water you will not get the high gravity that you need in order to get the ABV you are looking for.
If you try this recipe out let me know how you did. Like I said it isn't super fancy and my next batch I may throw it on a few split vanilla beans when it goes into secondary.
Ingredients
Malt
25 pound of Marris Otter
1 pound English Chocolate Malt
Hops
12 ounces of East Kent Golden pellet hops
Yeast
Main huge starter
2 packages of White Labs WLP005-British Ale Yeast
Additions for days 3 and 5
2 packages of White Labs WLP001-California Ale Yeast
Mash for 90 minutes between 148-150 degrees. When using an insulated cooler to hit your mash temperature use this calculator to make your life WAY easier https://www.brewersfriend.com/mash/ .
During your sparging into your boil kettle check the gravity often and make sure to stop pulling from the mash tun when your pre-boil gravity is close to 1.080.
Hop additions during boil
4 ounces EKG at start of boil
4 ounces EKG at 45 minutes remaining
4 ounces EKG at 10 minutes remaining
4 ounces EKG at 1 minute remaining
Cool the wort as fast as possible and put into fermenting container. Use the aeration stone and O2 to saturate pure oxygen into the wort for about 5 minutes. Make sure that the wort is below 70 degrees and pitch the double batch of WLP005. I highly recommend a blow off tube, as well as putting the fermenter in at least a shallow tub if the wort is anywhere over halfway filling your fermenter. Just an experience thing and a dislike of cleaning wort and yeast off the basement floor due to super active fermentation.
On day two aerate the wort again.
On day three aerate the wort again and pitch the first of the two starters of WLP001
On day four aerate the wort
On day five pitch the second starter of WLP001
Check gravity on day 14 (mine had dropped to 1.046 by this time)
On day 25 check the gravity and rack to a secondary container. This is done to help with separating the bulk of the yeast and the hops from your now flat beer.
On day 30, or when the majority of the yeast has fallen out of suspension, rack your beer from your secondary fermenter to your bottling bucket. Try to keep out as much of the fall out that is on the bottom. Mix up your priming sugar slurry and gently mix trying not to slosh it around. Then bottle. This is a great tool to help with your priming sugar additions
For bottle conditioning it is recommended to keep it at temperatures around 65-70 degrees for 30 days or more for carbonation to build up. I ended up bottling two smaller 375ml bottles so that I could test the carbonation. I did that because all of the other bottles that I planned to give out were 750ml, and didn't want to waste that much testing to see if the carbonation process had finished.
Once you have gotten good carbonation out of your testers you will want to cellar the beer. Temperatures between 48 to 55 degrees is preferred, and let it age for as long as you can hold off from drinking it. Six months was a good time frame for it to age and I have had one at 18 months.
Enjoy and let me know your results.
When I did this one I had to create a mashtun out of a standard cooler in order to fit all of the grains in it. There are not a lot of different ingredients for this recipe, but it is a large quantity. My original gravity before the boil was 1.079 for this, after the 2 hour boil it reached 1.113, and my final gravity after fermenting was 1.042. All this resulted in an ABV of 9.3%. I was hoping for higher, but I think that my second and third yeast pitches needed to be a bit bigger.
An item that I used also was an aeration stone and oxygen. Aerating on days 2, 3, and 4. There are also a total of 3 yeast starters. The first one is a double batch, and the other two are normal starters. These need to be really active yeast starters in order to be able to survive through the high ABV this beer will reach.
I used a calculation that I got from the book, "Barley Wine" written by Fal Allen and Dick Cantwell, of 1 quart of water per pound of grain as a place to start. However you need to watch how much you use for your sparge, because if you add too much water you will not get the high gravity that you need in order to get the ABV you are looking for.
If you try this recipe out let me know how you did. Like I said it isn't super fancy and my next batch I may throw it on a few split vanilla beans when it goes into secondary.
Ingredients
Malt
25 pound of Marris Otter
1 pound English Chocolate Malt
Hops
12 ounces of East Kent Golden pellet hops
Yeast
Main huge starter
2 packages of White Labs WLP005-British Ale Yeast
Additions for days 3 and 5
2 packages of White Labs WLP001-California Ale Yeast
Mash for 90 minutes between 148-150 degrees. When using an insulated cooler to hit your mash temperature use this calculator to make your life WAY easier https://www.brewersfriend.com/mash/ .
During your sparging into your boil kettle check the gravity often and make sure to stop pulling from the mash tun when your pre-boil gravity is close to 1.080.
Hop additions during boil
4 ounces EKG at start of boil
4 ounces EKG at 45 minutes remaining
4 ounces EKG at 10 minutes remaining
4 ounces EKG at 1 minute remaining
Cool the wort as fast as possible and put into fermenting container. Use the aeration stone and O2 to saturate pure oxygen into the wort for about 5 minutes. Make sure that the wort is below 70 degrees and pitch the double batch of WLP005. I highly recommend a blow off tube, as well as putting the fermenter in at least a shallow tub if the wort is anywhere over halfway filling your fermenter. Just an experience thing and a dislike of cleaning wort and yeast off the basement floor due to super active fermentation.
On day two aerate the wort again.
On day three aerate the wort again and pitch the first of the two starters of WLP001
On day four aerate the wort
On day five pitch the second starter of WLP001
Check gravity on day 14 (mine had dropped to 1.046 by this time)
On day 25 check the gravity and rack to a secondary container. This is done to help with separating the bulk of the yeast and the hops from your now flat beer.
On day 30, or when the majority of the yeast has fallen out of suspension, rack your beer from your secondary fermenter to your bottling bucket. Try to keep out as much of the fall out that is on the bottom. Mix up your priming sugar slurry and gently mix trying not to slosh it around. Then bottle. This is a great tool to help with your priming sugar additions
For bottle conditioning it is recommended to keep it at temperatures around 65-70 degrees for 30 days or more for carbonation to build up. I ended up bottling two smaller 375ml bottles so that I could test the carbonation. I did that because all of the other bottles that I planned to give out were 750ml, and didn't want to waste that much testing to see if the carbonation process had finished.
Once you have gotten good carbonation out of your testers you will want to cellar the beer. Temperatures between 48 to 55 degrees is preferred, and let it age for as long as you can hold off from drinking it. Six months was a good time frame for it to age and I have had one at 18 months.
Enjoy and let me know your results.
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