As per my yearly Memorial Day tradition, I will be making an English Barleywine today. I haven't brewed in something like 10 months so very good to be getting back to it.
I have brewed one of these every year since 2014 (read about 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024). It is a complex style of beer that features a combination of malt, hop, yeast, and alcohol flavors in varying degrees and it ages well with it's high ABV, high hopping rates, and residual sweetness
I brew a different recipe each year for the most part. This year I'll be making one based on a historical recipe from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog: 1879 William Younger No. 1. It is an interesting recipe as it uses all base malt. It also has a heavy dose of bittering hops and quite a bit of flavoring hops. I like the simplicity and weirdness of these old recipes and they typically make a really nice beer
These beers would have been aged historically before consumption and Brettanomyces would likely have been present. I am going to try to replicate a historical Brett character in this beer through the use of Orval Dregs in Secondary (a beer that is reported to contain a couple strains of wild yeast). I will age the beer at least through December before bottling.
Recipe Details:
- Grain:
- 10 lb 12 oz Pilsner
- 7 lbs 4 oz Golden Promise
- 4 lb Munich
- Hops:
- 6 oz Cluster (Pellet, 7.4% AA) at 180 min
- 2 oz Hallertauer Mittelfruher (Pellet, 2% AA) at 30 min
- 1 oz East Kent Golding (Pellet, 4.3% AA) at 0 min
- 1 oz East Kent Golding (Pellet, 4.3% AA) as Dryhop
- Yeast:
- 2 packets Windsor
- Orval Brett Culture in Secondary
- Water:
- 10 gal spring water
- 5 gal tap water
- 2 tsp Gypsum
- 2 tsp CaCl
- 1 tsp citric acid
- 1 tsp Irish Moss (15 min)
- Batch Size:
- 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
- Mash:
- 156 F for 60 min
- Boil:
- 180 min
- Fermentation Temperature:
- Ambient Basement Temps
- Primary Duration:
- 1 month
- Secondary Duration:
- 6 months
- OG:
- 1.106 (Target 1.100)
- Efficiency:
- 78% (Target 74%)
- FG:
- TBD (Target 1.025)
- Apparent Attenuation:
- TBD (Target 73%)
- ABV:
- TBD (Target 10.9%)
- 5-26-25 - Brewday - 12 PM to 6:30 PM - including setup and cleanup
- Measured and milled my grain. Added half the CaCl and gypsum to the grain and the other half to the boil kettle just so I wouldn't forget. Also added the Citric Acid to the malt
- Heated 8 gal of strike water to 185 F
- Moved 7 gal of strike water to the mash tun and cycled it through the RIMS until the temperature had settled at 166 F
- Added the grain to the mash tun and stirred well to eliminate doughballs. Let the mash sit for 10 min prior to starting the RIMS cycle
- Cycled the RIMS for 60 more minutes
- Heated 10 gal of sparge water up to 185 F
- Slowly fly sparged - started heating the kettle after collecting 3 gal. Had it near a boil after collecting 8 gal or so. I ended up collecting 12 gal of wort which will make this a 3 hr boil
- Added the bittering hops once the hot break had cleared
- Boiled for 3 hrs
- Rehydraded my yeast in room temperature spring water
- Added flavoring hops at 30 min
- Added Irish Moss at 15 min
- Put in the wort chiller with 5 min to go to sanitize
- Added the flame out hops
- Chilled to 75 F
- Drained into the fermenter - let the wort fall a foot or so to aerate. Pitched the yeast during this transfer
- Got 6 gal and measured gravity as 1.106 which is a little high but close enough
- Set the fermenter in my utility sink in anticipation of a mess
- 5-27-25 - The beer was fermenting agressively by the next morning and pushing krausen up and out of the airlock
- 5-30-25 - I cleaned up the airlock a couple days ago. No more airlock activity today
- 7-26-25 - Transferred the beer to secondary. Added the 1 oz of dry hops and 2 cups of a malt starter I inoculated with Orval dregs a couple months ago - this beer is sour and quite fruity which should be very interesting. I measured the gravity of the beer as 1.044 at transfer
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