Brewed my first barleywine and I have some questions maybe y'all could enlighten me on... 5 gal batch - I brewed it on 12/12/16, OG 1.112 - Let it ferment til 12/28/16, racked into a secondary with a gravity reading of 1.024 What are y'alls thought on... 1) How long should I keep it in the secondary? 2) Is it better to age in the secondary or bottles? 3) When I do bottle, should I prime it as I normally would or should I add fresh yeast and priming sugar? Thanks for the help! Joe
The sooner you get it into bottles the better chance you'll keep oxygen away. With an ABV that high fresh yeast is probably needed. Probably best off making a small starter and add it when the starter is in active fermentation. That said I've made 4 barleywines and I felt much more comfortable force carbing in a keg then bottling, if you have that option. And I'd age to taste to be honest.
I exploded some bottle of my first barleywine a while back, so I'm hesitant to bottle anything unless I know it's done. I say let it go another 2 weeks or so in secondary just to be safe
I'd give it at least 4 weeks from brew date to finish up. I also think you should add some fresh yeast. When I did this, I just put some dry yeast in the bottle and it carbed them fine but if you're worried about it, make up the starter. In terms of aging, I'd sample it every 4-6 months. It took my barelywine almost 2 years before it was finally to a point that I enjoyed it.
I'm sorry, I don't know how I missed that the first time. That's a doozy, you might want to try this yeast. You can rehydrate it in your priming solution, wait 30-90 minutes, then add your priming solution to your beer. I used it on a 12% barleywine that was slightly stuck and it worked well, and there were no carbing issues. http://www.danstaryeast.com/company/products/cbc-1-cask-bottle-conditioned-beer-yeast
