Aged Barley Wine - How To Carbonate ?

[Tseay]

A couple of years ago the original Sydney BJCP group did a group Barley Wine brew and it has been ageing in Oak at Trevs place for around 30 months. It's around 11% alcohol and is now ready to bottle. The question is - how to carbonate it. Whilst Barley wine has a low level of carbonation it still needs some. Options seem to be:

1) Add a champagne yeast - not keen on this as I am concerned it would chomp up all the dextrins in sight.
2) Lightly gas in a keg and re bottle.
3) Some form of krausening- make up a wort and add a small amount to the base beer and then bottle.

I favour the last approach, but don't have any experience with krausening.

Appreciate any ideas from the readership on these and any other approach.

Thanks

T

 

[mika]

You're best to test it first and make sure there's still some viable yeast in there before getting too excited about Krausening. I've heard of people adding half a pack of US-05 to a 25L batch just to make sure there's enough yeast for bottle conditioning, but you're going to be pushing it up hill to get the yeast to survive 11%. Force carbing with CO2 might be the best option.

Agree that adding Champagne yeast would ruin a 30 month effort.

 

[Muggus]

30 months! Cripes!

I have a barley wine that spend 6 months in secondary.
Carbed the bottles with a half measure of dextrose.
Took a few good months before the carbonation was noticable, but a year on its good.
You don't want it to be too lively/highly carbed, and after 30 months you may want to do a practice run of sorts like Mika mentioned.

 

[sinkas]

Cold crash for a couple of weeks in kegs or something, then re yeast with US05 or a belgian strain for bottling, give it at least 6 months

 

[mikem108]

Option 2 in my opinion, never had much luck with re-yeasting personally

 

[GMK]

OK - you could add a wyeast sweet mead yeast - can go upto 15% and will still leave body.

 

[Tseay]

Folks,

Thanks for the advice. As I only have 15 litres of the BW Iam limited in the amount of exprimentation I can do. I am thnking of maing a simple wort, fermenting it down (say3/4) using an English Ale yeast and adding a small amount of the newly fermenting wort to a couple of litres of BW, bottle it and wait and see.

Chers

T

 

[newguy]

I carbonated my eisbock by racking to a keg, lightly force carbonating (shaking keg with gas hooked up @ 14 psi for 2 or 3 minutes), then bottling from the keg. I deliberately foamed the last little bit in each bottle to "cap on foam" and immediately capped each bottle. I tried to cap on foam to minimise oxygen in the bottle. It worked very well.

 

[gibbocore]

I carbonated my eisbock by racking to a keg, lightly force carbonating (shaking keg with gas hooked up @ 14 psi for 2 or 3 minutes), then bottling from the keg. I deliberately foamed the last little bit in each bottle to "cap on foam" and immediately capped each bottle. I tried to cap on foam to minimise oxygen in the bottle. It worked very well.

i reckon this is a great suggestion and is what i would be doing

 

[Mr.Moonshine]

I was talking to a mate who takes science at uni in relation to carbonating something like an eisbock/barley wine, and he suggested adding dry ice to the volume of CO2 you would want in the bottle. It's a hassle to get the exact amount, and if you're bottling in glass it could be an issue, but unless anyone can think of a reason not to, it's technically a viable option to bottling.
Of course, you'd have to know exactly how much CO2 you needed in each bottle and in effect have a dry ice pellet for each, which is a bitch and a half to do, but it's possible
Aside from that, you could bottle carb using a champagne yeast, but you risk ruining the flavour (My malt liquor using champagne yeast was foul, you need ALOT of aging time to make champagne yeast flavours mellow out). If you gave it enough time, you COULD, but, personally, I'd recommend kegging it and counterfilling from a keg.

Cheers

Mr.Moonshine

 

[Adamt]

I don't think that would be such a good idea... putting dry ice (extremely cold) in to cool beer will do a couple of things:

1. Provide nucleation sites for bubble formation.
2. Knock out dissolved CO2 from solution.
3. I'd imagine the huge temperature difference and convection through the beer would cause huge heat transfer to the dry ice causing either the beer to snap freeze (and so will your bottle, snap that is) or cause instant sublimation of the dry ice to CO2 gas and a big fizzer.

Edit: That's the problem with scientists. They get great ideas but are completely oblivious to applying it to real-life situations. *playful dig*

 

[Guest Lurker]

Any of the yeast options are going to leave you with tired sad yeast in a high alcohol environment for a long period of time. After a few years, this will likely develop some distinct vegemite flavours and I would advise against it. My barley wine went from winning best beer of show at Bathurst at about 3 years old, to not even placing at 4 years old, because the vegemite flavour turned up at about that age, and has been getting steadily worse ever since.

 

[mje1980]

I have an 05 barley wine, and the carbo is quite low. Just a hint really. I dont think it needs a lot though. You've just reminded me about mine. Im gunna go check on them now. I have like 3 or 4 375ml bottles left out of 15 or so. I keep trying it, every once in a while. Not too bad, but 10% beer is hard to drink hahah.

 

[PostModern]

Any of the yeast options are going to leave you with tired sad yeast in a high alcohol environment for a long period of time. After a few years, this will likely develop some distinct vegemite flavours and I would advise against it. My barley wine went from winning best beer of show at Bathurst at about 3 years old, to not even placing at 4 years old, because the vegemite flavour turned up at about that age, and has been getting steadily worse ever since.

Hence the reasoning behind methode champagnoise.

 

[GMK]

with my BW the OG is 1100+.
yeast is 1728 or 1084.

I usually bottle at 1025-1035.

No priming sugar..

will gas gradually.

Hope this helps.

 

[Darren]

Option 2 in my opinion, never had much luck with re-yeasting personally

Thats been my experience too/ Keg and bottle is guaranteed to work.

cheers

Darren

 

[muckanic]

I wouldn't have thought champagne yeast would chew up dextrins any more than an attenuative beer yeast. It's not as if it's Sacch Diastaticus. OTOH, why not just make up a starter of the original yeast which has been demonstrated to tolerate 11% ABV? The only issues then are whether to use dregs, supernatant, or the lot, and whether to prime separately with sugar or whether to use the fermenting wort. You would only use a more attenuative yeast if you actually wanted some of the carbonation to come from the dextrins. BTW, I've drunk naturally conditioned brews more than 5-years old and never noticed autolysis - they simply don't contain enough yeast. Temperature of storage could come into it, however.

 

[Millet Man]

The yeast in my strong belgian has pulled up at 10% abv (OG 1.106, FG 1.030) and I'm cold conditioning and will then keg and bottle using cpbf. Don't want to take the risk of trying to bottle condition it.

Cheers, Andrew.