"Cheating" my way to high OG for barley wine?

[heywolfie1015]

I've read in various places that getting the proper OG for a barley wine is difficult because you have to use a large amount of mash and sparge water and then boil off some water to raise up the OG. I've also read that using extract is a useful way to "cheat" your way up to the required OG.

Right now, I am looking at a recipe which requires 17 lbs. of pale 2-row, 3 lbs. of Munich, and a little over 1 lb. of specialty grains. If I mash 9 lbs. of the pale malt and the 3 lbs. of Munich, steep the specialty grains, and then add 6 lbs. of pale extract to the resulting wort, would that be an adequate way to "cheat" my way into a proper barley wine OG?

It just seems that doing it this way would make the whole process easier and more manageable. Has anyone ever done this, and to what result?

 

[Pappers_]

Its not cheating, extract brewing is legitimate. I think that sounds like a good method - plug the numbers into BeerSmith or your favorite program and see if they work out.

 

[khiddy]

Yeah, what Pappers said. It's quite acceptable to use extract to reach your numbers - that's the advantage of taking a hydro reading (or, even better, a refractometer reading) midway through the boil, so you can adjust by adding water or extract to hit your target.

I added both DME and corn sugar to my Old Ale last month (OG 1.080), it came out fabulously.

 

[nebben]

Or instead of boiling off a lot of liquid to achieve your desired gravity, just use a ton of grain and only collect the first runnings and don't even sparge.

 

[CDbrews]

it will be like a really big mini mash, not cheating

 

[EricCSU]

Take a look at "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels. He lists the ingredients and there frequency of use for each style of all the NHC Second-Round recipes. For Barleywine recipes, more than 60% of the recipes included extract.

Still think it is cheating?

Eric

 

[heywolfie1015]

Take a look at "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels. He lists the ingredients and there frequency of use for each style of all the NHC Second-Round recipes. For Barleywine recipes, more than 60% of the recipes included extract.

Still think it is cheating?

Eric

I stand corrected...and totally stoked. If award-winning barley wines are using extract, this has got to be a good method.

 

[david_42]

That's how I do my barley wines. Otherwise there's way too much sugar wasted in the mash and the boil-off takes too long.

 

[pjj2ba]

Another option is to do a double mash (old technique). I did this for a 13% ABV beer. I divided the grains in half and mashed the first half as normal and then drained it off, did a small sparge, and then used all of the wort to mash in the second half of the grain. The mash obviously took longer, but I only had to do a regualr 90 min boil (Pils malts) to get my proper final volume.

 

[ajwillys]

I agree its not cheating, but why steep the specialties? Just mash them with the 2-row and munich. If you don't have enough room for them in your MLT, cut the 2 row back a pound and bump up the extract a tad.

 

[ibrewit]

Not cheating at all; just an efficient way to reach a relatively high OG.

 

[s3n8]

That's how I do my barley wines. Otherwise there's way too much sugar wasted in the mash and the boil-off takes too long.

I usually use the "Bobby_M double batch sparge" method and the last big beer I did I used the second sparge runoff for a 2.5 gallon smaller beer. I upped the sparge volumes a bit to compensate, and ended up with 4.5 gallons of 1.100 and 2.5 gallons of 1.040 all said and done. I dont feel like I wasted anything .

 

[Edcculus]

I recently did this with a RIS since I only had a 5 gallon MLT. I used all of the specialty grains, and as much base malt as I could fit. I made up the difference with DME.