Barleywine - mashing in a 50L cooler

[jhsbaker]

Hi Fellow AHB'ers,

I'm itching to try my hand at a barley wine, but the more I read, the more daunting it sounds.

Does anybody have experience with doing a Barley wine in a 50L cooler? I have a recipe for Stone Old Guardian (OG = ~1.10, ABV ~10%). The recipe is to mash in a kettle with a heat source below it. I put it into Beersmith for my 50L cooler setup - When I put in single infusion with mashout it calculates -0.7L for sparge!

Any experience would be greatly appreciated. I am planning to age this one for years, so I want to be spot on!

Regards
James

 

[mxd]

not too sure what your issue is ?

Could you put your recipe and explain a little better so I may understand the problem ?

When I did mine I did a 2 hr boil as I wanted to batch sparge, so it was something like 15kg grain, 35 lt water, then a 15 ltr of water for sparge.

For recipe calc I dropped my efficiency down to 60% from 80 %

 

[Yob]

your best bet may be to go for a first runnings type of beer, even then you may struggle to reach the OG you are chasing. Keep some DME and Dex handy to get up to the OG you want. You wont notice it in a beer such as that.

Partigyle if you desire

 

[Dan Pratt]

What is your target volume into FV?

 

[TheWiggman]

I'd say what's happened is you have a high liquor:grist ratio going on so for the amount of grain you're putting in, barely any sparge water is required to reach your final volume.
Change your ratio in the volumes tab to something lower if you want to sparge, otherwise do as Yob said.

 

[jhsbaker]

Target vol to fermenter is 19L.

I will look into the Partigyle and have a light beer also.

Any suggestions on the Beersmith Steps for Mash In / Out?

Thanks
James

 

[TheWiggman]

Ah-ha! You've got it set to do infusion mashing. See it says to add water for the mash out step? Hence your MT will be full and all liquor drained to the kettle will mean you've reached preboil.
Was this what you intended?
Also, I'd recommend extending your boil to 2h or more.

 

[jhsbaker]

Hi TheWiggman, I wanted to do a mashout because I figured that I could have trouble with stuck runoff for such a big grain bill. Doing a big (Barley wine) and small beer from the same grain sounds like it could be a good option. If I don't hit my theoretical preboil gravity my plan was to boil for however long it takes me to hit it before doing 1st hop addition then boil for 1:45 hr:mn as per the Beersmith plan.

Do you know how much grain I can fit into 50L eski? Will Beersmith stop me from overfilling?

Regards
James

 

[TheWiggman]

Mashout isn't a bad idea but not necessarily required. I don't know your system and if you've had trouble before, then I would mash out.

Seeing as it's your first big beer then your plan's a good one. I believe EBWs typically are boiled for 2h+ so that the wort begins to caramelise which affects both appearance and flavour. More to the point though, if allows you to have a lower SG on your pre-boil which is typically easier to hit. If you were to go for 105 min boil you'll probably find your boil will be 2+ hours at the end of the day so it doesn't really matter.
If you did end up sparging I'd say the final result will be you'll only increase your boil time and won't get much more efficiency.

Some good info here: http://byo.com/scottish-ale/item/224-big-bad-barleywine

As for the Beersmith calculating whether you will max out your vessels, yes I believe it does. Throw a stupid amount of grain in there and see if you get any red dots popping up.

 

[Yob]

You can squeeze about 15kg into a 50l cooler and will get about 30l runnings so your 19 end volume sounds about right after the long boil