Bottling an 11.3% Barleywine

[BroomVikin]

Bottling question for you fine folks, I just racked 2.5g of a barleywine to secondary to sit for a month in the ferm. fridge. It finished out at 1.018 for an ABV of 11.29% if my numbers are accurate. That's just past the 11% limit for W1056 according to Wyeast. What I'm wondering is what exactly to do at bottling. Should I just use a normal priming calculator and go without additional yeast? Should I add a little? If I do need additional, which and how much? I don't want bottle bombs especially considering it'll likely be sitting for the better part of a year before I crack one open. I also want to make sure that the high ABV isn't too much for the remaining yeast to deal with when carbing up.

 

[cegan09]

Use a priming calculator like normal for your priming sugar. That factor never changes.

If you're worried about yeast health, add some. Adding more yeast does not create a bottle bomb risk as long as your priming sugar is right. I've used CBC-1 for bottling large beers since it's designed for that purpose. Highly recommend.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I think that Chico can handle sugar at 11% no problem. I would say that for that the yeast stopped because it was out of fermentables, not hitting its tolerance especially since your FG is reasonable. Just prime it, even if the priming is a little slow, which I don’t think it will be your beer has a year to finish. I’m curious what temp will you age your beer at in the bottle and have you done it before. I have a very similar Barleywine and can’t decide if I should lager it in my fridge until Christmas or age at the 78 degrees my house is at consistently.

 

[BroomVikin]

I've made this once before (although it was brew #2 in my career so probably an entirely different outcome than this one) and I bottled and stuck it away in a cardboard box in a dark corner of my pantry. The temperature wasn't completely constant but I'd guess it stayed somewhere between 65° & 75°. I'll probably do the same thing this time around. I'd like to keep it at "cellar temp" in my fermentation fridge but it also doubles as my kegerator so that can't happen. I first brewed it in Sept. '15, cracked the first one around Mar. '16 and then slowly drank the rest up until this week. I'd say it hit it's peak after about 10-12 months and stayed great. I wish I could lager it. I'd be interested to see how that would turn out.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

There’s a cave here in AZ that I know about that is 72 degrees year round. I thought of burying it in a plastic box and then coming back for it a year later. That’d be pretty bad azz.

 

[Miraculix]

There’s a cave here in AZ that I know about that is 72 degrees year round. I thought of burying it in a plastic box and then coming back for it a year later. That’d be pretty bad azz.

Do it! And then forget about it!

Imagine how happy you will be when you dig it out by accident sometime next live in about 80 years!