barleywine v1

By no means am I an expert, but I've brewed a barleywine every summer since my son was born (so 3 times now) and here's what I've done / found out. I can post the recipe too if you'd like

If you can, play around a little with your water chemistry. I did on the latest batch and already I think it's better than the other 2 and it's only a few months in the bottle.

I added 2 types of crystal and special b malts for a little more complexity. 3 might be too much, but I think you can easily do 2

I'd also push the abv up to the double digits and adjust the hops accordingly and maybe yeast if it cant handle the higher alcohol. You're making a barleywine dern it, not just a strong ipa.

Is there a particular reason you're using american hops vs English ones? I usually dont adhere strictly to style guidelines, so I'm just curious.

Hopefully some of this rambling will be helpful to you:)
 
Oh I like the oak chips and vanilla bean nice twist leave it on the oak for a while to really infuse the flavours. I left mine on chips for a month but now that flavour is just minscule.

Totally agree with Jmcnamara on upping the ABV and on adding some different crystal malts for complexity in recon the vanilla will stand up well to a bit of residule sweetness.
Good call on a standby DME or extract to beef up the numbers if efficiency fails you on this one.

Looks after your yeast man they will be working double time

Why not do a 1.040 ale then pitch your barleywine right onto that yeast cake to really fire it from the start.

Just my thoughts good luck I hope it's a success!:)
 
jmcnamara said:
By no means am I an expert, but I've brewed a barleywine every summer since my son was born (so 3 times now) and here's what I've done / found out. I can post the recipe too if you'd like

If you can, play around a little with your water chemistry. I did on the latest batch and already I think it's better than the other 2 and it's only a few months in the bottle.

I added 2 types of crystal and special b malts for a little more complexity. 3 might be too much, but I think you can easily do 2

I'd also push the abv up to the double digits and adjust the hops accordingly and maybe yeast if it cant handle the higher alcohol. You're making a barleywine dern it, not just a strong ipa.

Is there a particular reason you're using american hops vs English ones? I usually dont adhere strictly to style guidelines, so I'm just curious.

Hopefully some of this rambling will be helpful to you:)
Click to expand...
thank you for the advice the lower alcohol is more to compensate for my pretty small/primitive setup plus not wanting to fork out a lot of money in dme the American hops were because I usually follow guidelines when I first make a style. I added caramunich for more flavor though
 
weldedsord said:
thank you for the advice the lower alcohol is more to compensate for my pretty small/primitive setup plus not wanting to fork out a lot of money in dme the American hops were because I usually follow guidelines when I first make a style. I added caramunich for more flavor though
Click to expand...
No problem at all. And you've got a rationale for those decisions, so even better.
And now I see you're doing an american version, sorry I glossed over that and just assumed an English one
Good luck with it!
 
Looks good. 2 packs of yeast will be plenty. No rush out of primary. I like to go 4 wks then keg and age some more. Patience will make a better barleywine.
 
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