This will be my eleventh version of English Barleywine. I have brewed one every Memorial Day since 2014 - read about the previous versions here: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. This are high alcohol, sweet, and malty beers which continue to develop flavors as they age. I typically brew a different version of the beer every year for the sake of variety.
For the beer this year, I have decided to revisit version 1 which was a recipe I came up with. It is intended to be a fairly light colored barleywine with just a small amount of light crystal for accent malts. This time I've switched base malt from Marris Otter to Golden Promise.
For hops, I'm going with a large charge of bittering hops in hopes of keeping a reasonable hop presence for the first couple years of drinking it. I hopped at this level in the 2023 batch and it didn't create that strong a bitter profile but I'm hoping for more this time. May have to increase the hopping in the next batch
The original beer used S04 and Nottingham yeast which produced a yeast character I've enjoyed in that 2014 batch. It also ended up fermenting down to 1.016. I am very curious to see if it manages the feat again.
I intend to let this beer ferment in primary for about a month and then let it bulk age in secondary for another 6-8 months. I will age this batch with red wine soaked oak for some extra flavor.
Recipe Details:
- Grain:
- 20 lb Golden Promise
- 2 lb Crystal 10L
- 1 lb Crystal 20L
- 5 oz Acid Malt
- Hops:
- 4 oz Target (Pellet, 9.6% AA) at 60 min
- 2 oz Goldings (Pellet, 5.4% AA) at 20 min
- Yeast:
- S-04
- Nottingham
- Water:
- 20 gal of Spring Water
- 2 tsp Gypsum
- 2 tsp CaCl
- Irish Moss
- Extras:
- Red Wine Soaked Oak (6 sticks)
- Batch Size:
- 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
- Mash:
- 155F for 60 min
- Boil:
- 2 hrs
- Fermentation Temperature:
- Ambient Basement Temps
- Primary Duration:
- 6 weeks
- Secondary Duration:
- 6 months
- OG:
- 1.106 (Target 1.10)
- Efficiency:
- 75% (Target 71%)
- FG:
- TBD (Target 1.030)
- Apparent Attenuation:
- TBD (Target 68%)
- ABV:
- TBD (Target 10%)
- 5/27/24 - Brewday - from 10 AM to 5 PM- including setup and cleanup (+ 1 hr for lunch and working out issue with propane tank hose)
- Heated 10 gal of spring water to 175 F
- Milled my grain. Added half the CaCl and Gypsum to the grain
- Moved 8 gal of the strike water to the mash tun and cycled through teh RIMS until the system had equalized to about 165 F
- Added the grain and stirred well to eliminate dough balls. Let this sit for 10 minutes before cycling. The temperature settled to 156 F
- Cycled the RI(MS at 156 F for 60 minutes
- Brought 10 gal of spring water up to 195 F for the sparge
- Did a slow fly sparge until 10 gal of wort had been collected. Started heating the kettle after collecting 3 gal and had the beer to a boil by the end of the sparge
- Added the other half of brewing salts to the kettle during the sparge
- Boiled for 2 hrs (stopped boil at 1 hr to change propane tanks and couldn't get valve to re-open at first)
- At 60 min hops. The hops smell very nice. Grassy and herbal.
- Rehydrated my yeast in room temp spring water
- Added the 20 min hops
- Added Irish Moss at 15 min
- Added the wort chiller to sanitize with 5 min left
- Chilled down to ground water temperature (~70 F)
- Transferred to fermenter. Pitched yeast during this
- Measured gravity as 1.106. Collected just about 6 gal of wort. So, pretty close to target. I'm happy with this
- Set this up in the corner of the basement to ferment - it is in the high 60s
- 5/28/24 - The beer is off to a very strong fermentation. I moved the fermenter to my utility sink as krausen is being pushed out the airlock
- 7/14/24 - Transferred the beer to secondary. I measured the gravity as 1.036. The beer is a bit sweet but not sweet. It's also got a really nice ester, malt, bitter balance. Added 6 sticks of red wine soaked oak
