Barley Wine Technique

[FungusBrew]

I'm considering doing my first barley wine soon. I've got a few questions though before I embark on the journey.

I read in Mosher's Radical Brewing about a technique that appealed to me. Take the hot liquor of your first mash, and mash into fresh grain with it. Essentially using the hot liquor as strike in water to make the barley wine. You would get a super thick runoff from it.

Has anyone tried this before? I'd love to do this, but I'm not finding too much info on it. Anyone see any potential problems? Seems like you would yield an exceptionally hearty SG and Alcohol %.

Thanks!

 

[maskednegator]

How big is your mash tun? This is probably not necessary to get your desired OG.

 

[mullet]

I actually brewed that same recipe two Sunday's ago.

I'm pretty sure that my mash tun is big enough to hold the whole grain bill needed, but I had the book and the recipe and the time, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

So far so good, my OG was a little lower than the recipe said I should get, I only hit 1.100 of the 1.120 it said, but I figured that was good enough. I used Wyeast 1098 British Ale and it fermented awesome. Blow off tube definitely a necessity!

Krausen fell in over the weekend and bubbling slowed down, so I took a sample and it's down to 1.030 ish now. I drank the sample and all I can say is that it certainly needs to age. It's got some great qualities, it's thick and syrupy and so far the flavor is nice, but the alcohol is still pretty hot.

So I'm going to rack it, and forget about it for a while. I'm a little confused about dry hopping. Recipe says to dry hop with a couple ounces of EKG. I've never dry hopped before, but I figure it can't be that hard. For most beers I've made so far I usually only secondary for 2 weeks, so I figure you just put the hops in, and rack off/bottle after that time. This one is going to need to age longer than that. (Recipe recommends 8-12 months.) I thought dry hopping was to add extra aroma, so I figured probably not right away, maybe more like the last two weeks or so?

I was also thinking about throwing some oak in there, but I wasn't sure when to do that, or how much to use either.

I also ran off a small beer after I finished the main beer, which so far seems to have also finished up pretty quick. It turned out to be around 3% ABV, so I racked straight from the primary to a keg after a little over a week. I thought initially when I racked it that it probably had an infection, but the longer I let it be, the better it seems to get. I guess there is something to be said for secondary fermentation or at least primary longer than a week.

 

[StAnthonyB]

Has anyone considered using WLP700 "Sherry Flor" as a secondary addition for Olde Ales and Barleywines?

 

[Tom]

That's the "doble-doble". I did it once. I used all of the wort from one batch as liquor for a second mash and used only the first runnings. I think I got 6 gallons of 1.132 from 42#.

For your first big beer I would recommend filling your mashtun up to the brim with grain at 1.25qt/lb and use only the first runnings. That should get you up around 1.100.

Big beers need lots of yeast. And remember, lots of yeast with lots of sugar make lots of heat so watch your fermentation closely. Keep it cool.

 

[FungusBrew]

I've only got a 5 gallon Igloo for a mash tun. So I'm restricted to about 12 lbs of grain.

Seems like it'll be pretty neat to at least give it a try.

 

[Edcculus]

My biggest suggestions are:

1 - proper yeast pitch. You can get away with low pitching for smaller beers, but its really to your advantage to pitch the proper amount of yeast for big beers. Make a big starter, or brew a pale ale and wash the yeast slurry.

2 - oxygen. If you don't have a diffusion stone, get your shaking arms ready. Ive been known to half ass the shaking on smaller beers in my shaking days. I think the time that is thrown around is at least 5 min of shaking. Thats a long ass time to slosh 5 gallons around. You want to give your beer every chance to attenuate properly.

 

[FungusBrew]

My buddy's got one of those "mix-stir" rods for wine and mead. Could I oxygenate with that? What doya' think?

And how about yeast wise? What else besides Wyeast 1098? Would any strong ale yeast do?

 

[Edcculus]

Yea, those things work great. Especially if you hook it up to a drill.

Really, any ale yeast will do, as long as you aren't planning on going over 12%

 

[Bobby_M]

Reiterative mashing.. That's what it's called. IMHO, it's a huge waste of grain and time.

You're better off doing a partigyle or sparge extra and spend the time to boil down for an extra hour instead of mashing.

 

[FungusBrew]

I'm not sure my small mash tun (5gallons) can handle the grain needed for a partigyle. How about adding some ME to the boil after a standard sparge? I'd love to achieve a gravity 1.12+ for this guy.

 

[Edcculus]

How about adding some ME to the boil after a standard sparge? I'd love to achieve a gravity 1.12+ for this guy.

Thats a perfectly acceptable solution. I've done that on big beers when I had my 5g tun.

 

[FungusBrew]

Think I'll do that. Might save some cash too. I wonder how much 3.3lbs of ME might add to the gravity?