new member here with question

[99-bottles-of-beer]

hello,

i'm a new member and pretty new to home brewing as well. i've been pretty happy with my results so far and have gotten some good compliments from friends.

i do have some questions regarding a brew i have in secondary...

i have a 2.5ish oz barley wine that had an original gravity of 1.142, which i was able to bring down to 1.042 in two weeks by putting it onto two packets of wyeast 1056.

off the top of my head, the grain bill was
12lbs pme
2lbs maris otter (mashed too high...160's for 30 min)
1.lb of crystal malt 40l w/ 1lb crystal malt 80l (mashed a bit better hi 150's for 30 min)
and, i added 14oz of turbinado at the 20-30 min mark during the boil


this sunday i racked to a secondary, as i want to try to oak this beer, which is tasting pretty good so far. i haven't added the oak yet. i'm thinking 1/2 oz. it's been soaking in wild turkey for over 30 days now. should add some good flavor, right?

ok, just wanted to give a little background on what's going on. now, my question...

i added a 5oz packet of redstar champagne yeast to the 2nd on sunday (per packet directions) but as of now, i have not seen any visible activity/proof of any fermentation happening. my hopes were to get down to the 1.032 range, or lower. my brew is in the 68-72ish degrees at all times.

is anything happening? should i just sit back and wait or should i do something else?

 

[forstmeister]

Beers that big take lots of time. Check the gravity in a couple weeks time. Once the gravity stops changing its done. Yeast tends to be stressed in high alcohol content environments.

I have a barleywine that has been aging since December that I am going to put oak honeycombs in soon.

 

[99-bottles-of-beer]

forstmeister,

thanks for the quick reply!!!

 

[sweetcell]

i have a 2.5ish oz barley wine that had an original gravity of 1.142, which i was able to bring down to 1.042 in two weeks by putting it onto two packets of wyeast 1056.

1.142? are you sure about that? because 1.142 --> 1.042 = 13.6% abv and 70% attenuation. for a beer that big, that's damn impressive. you pushed the 1056 pretty damn high! there is a chance that the champagne yeast went dormant as soon as it hit the beer. champagne yeast is tolerant up to 18%, i believe, but that's its upper limit that it might reach under the right conditions. going from dormant to 13.6% might have been too much of a shock.

how long had the beer been fermenting before you added the champagne yeast? ideally you should wait for the beer yeast to do as much as they can since champagne yeast will kill beer yeast; and champagne yeast cannot digest maltose (they can only consume simple sugars). you want the beer yeast to do as much as they can before bringing in the champagne.

 

[99-bottles-of-beer]

hey sweet cell,

yup, those numbers are right.

i pitched the 2x 1056 04/21, and i made two hydro readings between 05/01 and 05/05, with both readings staying at 1.042. that made me think it was done fermenting as far as it could go, and then why i thought to add the champagne yeast.

i did this sunday, so it's done. do you think that the 13.6% killed the champagne yeast?

 

[tacks]

Depends on the strain - if you pitched montrachet then probably yes, but if premiere cuvee then no - did I read that you pitched 5 oz though? that's about 13 normal packets of yeast if you really pitched red star (11.5g packets). Montrachet gets overwhelmed at about 13% if I remember correctly and Premier Cuvee at around 18%. I don't know about Red Star's other strains, but here is a table outlining tolerances. If you want to ease your yeast into it, and get them up and going, get a starter going and slowly add more and more of your current wort to it so that it's close to your wort's environment and doesn't get shocked and go dormant like sweet cell says may have happened.

 

[99-bottles-of-beer]

tacks,

i pitched one packet of red star

 

[tacks]

Winemaking.jackkeller.net/strains.asp - that's the table, sorry I thought I posted it. You can match it up to what you want to or already pitched. Good luck to you!

 

[99-bottles-of-beer]

tacks, thanks for that link!

a few updates on my barley wine...

last night after work, there were the smallest clusters of fermentation bubbles forming on top of the brew. and, this morning i even saw an airlock bubble. super happy about that!

any advice on how long i can let the bw sit on this champagne yeast to try and get the most out of it, and also not have to pitch a new batch for carbonation when i go to bottle?

also, another question:

i'm interested in adding bourbon soaked oak chips to this, and i wanted to see if i could do this at the same time that i'm sitting this on the champagne yeast. any advice on using oak chips?

for this, i have 1/2 oz of med-dk pre-toasted oak chips (american i'd assume?) that have been soaking in a 1/2 pint of wild turkey (completely covered by it) in a mason jar for over a month.

 

[unionrdr]

A half pint of bourbon is a bit much for only 1/2oz of chips. I barely use enough to soak'em good,as the flavor of the wood soaks out as the bourbon soaks in. I pour the whole thing through a hop sock,tie off,& drop it into a secondary & rack the beer onto that. Give it a week & taste a 1oz sample to see if it's where you want it.

 

[99-bottles-of-beer]

unionrdr,

do you pour the filtered bourbon into the brew with the chips?

 

[sweetcell]

any advice on how long i can let the bw sit on this champagne yeast to try and get the most out of it, and also not have to pitch a new batch for carbonation when i go to bottle?

i'd give it at least 2 weeks. at 13%+ abv that isn't a hospitable environment for the yeast. work will be slow. and when you bottle, expect a long time before the beer is carbonated - i'd be surprised if it was carb'ed in less than 6 weeks. also, prime at the low end of the range, like 1.9 volumes. you want to leave yourself a little wiggle room in case the champagne yeast decides to munch a little more while sitting in the bottle.

i'm interested in adding bourbon soaked oak chips to this, and i wanted to see if i could do this at the same time that i'm sitting this on the champagne yeast. any advice on using oak chips?

for this, i have 1/2 oz of med-dk pre-toasted oak chips (american i'd assume?) that have been soaking in a 1/2 pint of wild turkey (completely covered by it) in a mason jar for over a month.

there are many threads on this forum about using oak chips. the one piece of advice that i'd give is toss in the cubes only, don't toss in the bourbon (or only very little of it). some might suggest to throw in both the oak and the liquid, but in your case you don't want to up the alcohol content. a pint in a 2.5 gal batch (that's what you've got, right?) would make an impact and further hinder future carbonation.

 

[99-bottles-of-beer]

sweetcell,

good advice, thanks! i want to be cautious with the oak and bourbon since the bw is going pretty good so far. and, yeah...i was expecting to bottle age this until the holidays.

one question: what do you mean by 1.9 volumes?

yes, 2.5 gal batch

 

[sweetcell]

sweetcell,

good advice, thanks! i want to be cautious with the oak and bourbon since the bw is going pretty good so far. and, yeah...i was expecting to bottle age this until the holidays.

one question: what do you mean by 1.9 volumes?

yes, 2.5 gal batch

at 13%+ you're going to want to age this as much as you can, 6-7 months (to the holidays) is probably a minimum. be sure to ration these - you're really going to enjoy them after a year or two.

"1.9 volumes" refers to how much CO2 you have in the bottled beer, AKA how carbonated it is. you can control how fizzy your beer is by varying the amount of sugar you add at bottling. many recipes call for "half a cup of sugar" or some other volume, which isn't a good way to prime your bottles. much better is to weigh your sugar. use an online priming calculator like http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/ to determine how much sugar to use. you need to indicate how much beer you're bottling (don't forget to subtract the trub, which won't be bottled!), what's the max temperature the beer fermented at, and how much carbonation you want. there is a handy pull-down menu allowing you to select volumes of CO2 according to style. you'll note that 1.9 is on the low side, barley wine is typically in the 2.2 range. by going lower you're leaving some room for additonal carbonation due to the yeast slowly working through anything more than that priming sugar you added.

don't forget to boil your priming sugar in a little water to sterilize it.

 

[99-bottles-of-beer]

sweetcell,

cool, will do!

 

[99-bottles-of-beer]

hello all, long time since i was last in, but i just wanted to give a report on the state of that barley wine.

i added red star yeast to try and squeeze a few points in the f.g., but that didn't do anything to it. it still wound up being 13.4% at bottling time, so...i'm happy with that. i'll skip that step in the future.

3 weeks after priming and bottling, i took my first taste. i put it in the fridge for a day and couldn't wait to try it, though i know it's still young. i followed sweetcell's suggestions on priming. at tasting time, when i popped the cap, i got a little bit of vapors wafting up, and there was a small amount of carbonation. not a lot, but not flat. it kept releasing bubbles throughout it's time in the glass, but never a lot at one time. but, with how sweet it was, i think it compliments the brew. also, i'm sure the carbonation will build as it ages? either way, happy with that so far.

now, taste. i did wind up adding 1/2 oz of that wild turkey soaked toasted oak, along with 2 oz of the bourbon from the soaking jar into the secondary, along with 1.5 - 2 oz of cascade hop pellets. it sat for two weeks. and, i think those flavors have complimented to taste.

the beer is sweet and has a present alcohol flavor. there are strong hints of vanilla, but not too much. a bit of hop nose, though not a high amount of hop flavor. you can taste it in there, but it's subtle like i said. the color is a rich copper, and the carb bubbles are light wheat yellow.

all and all, super happy with the results. i'm disciplining myself on letting them condition and age. that first one is the only one i've had so far, but these guys will definitely be on my celebration day menu for the future.

thanks for the help, everyone. if anyone is interested i've been designing labels for all the beers i've been making so far. i'm a graphic artist by day and went to art school, so that's part of the fun for me. i have pics of the labels online at daledreiling(dot)net. look for the "wunder bieres" page link.

cheers!