Group Barley Wine

[pmastello]

Hi everyone, I thought I would start a thread for a Brew club activity of a group brew of a Barley wine.

Basically, interested brewers state their interest in brewing a beer together. After a bit of discussion here on what the recipe will be - we will all get together one weekend at Toukley Homebrew shop and brew about 200L of a barley wine. We all split the cost between us all, so it should end up pretty cheap.


After its brewed, we cube it up and everyone can take home 20L of wort to ferment at home. The one requirement is that we all use a different yeast.

Then once its all fermented, everyone bottles it up and we swap around our beers. That way we get a case of different barley wines to age and taste over time.

So - Who's in?

 

[mr_wibble]

Aye!

An English Barley Wine?
Recipe?
Geeze, that means I need to find 20 litres of bottles - probably smaller ones.

I don't have an "under the house" ... maybe I could bury it.

-kt

 

[pmastello]

Nah, doesn't have to be English. We want to come up with a recipe that can lend itself to different yeasts - An American neutral yeast, a fruity english yeast, Belgian yeast, even a lager yeast! Hops will be the hardest choice here I think.
Yeah, I'll need to find some smaller bottles too - haven't got many lying around, I'll have to start collecting.

 

[Goldenchild]

Count me in Pete. Wanted to do this one for a long time now.
I have a friend who is also interested so how many of us would that make?
I am thinkng of using wy9097 old ale which has a brett strain in it.
I would also love to chuck some in the wine barrel but oxidisation could be a problem if its not full.
Cheers Marc

 

[pmastello]

You could still Oak it with some chips or cubes if you wanted. How's your barrel saison going? Still got some left? I've found mine was too oaky initially and now is fading a bit.
Good luck getting that Old ale yeast - its a private collection from a year ago. But if you can, awesome, it would be perfect for this. If you can't, they say Roselare is tolerant of upto 11%...

So far we have with yeast preferences-
Pete - Lager yeast
Josh - ?
Kt - ?
Marc - Old Ale
Marc's mate - ?

Still got room for quite a few more people if there's interest!

 

[Goldenchild]

Hmm didnt think of oak chipping perhaps I will take 40L and oak half in a glass carboy. Thats if we don't have more takers.
I was browsing craftbrewer lastnight and it says they still have some old ale from dec12 might need a few packets and a big starter but should still be viable. What size are we thinking anyway? 10%?


That saison is tasting great! I am still getting to the bottom of the first keg. All reports are saying it has been getting better and better.

 

[Jaynus]

After an hour of sorting out this app I'm finally here! I'm "Marc's mate" but I go by the name of jay! I'm down for this brew and will get back tomorrow night with a yeast!

 

[brockerst]

Count me in!

I'll have a think about yeast selection. I want to say saison, but am too scared to.

Brock

 

[silvana]

I'm very interested.
Looks like I might actually be able to make Aprils meeting too after living on the coast for a year.

As for yeast I'll put my hand up for 100% Brett ferment with the strain pending further research

Ben

 

[pmastello]

Now it looks like we've got enough people to make this happen. There's still room for more people to join up though!
I am waiting to hear back from Duane on the size of his mash tun to work out exactly how much beer we can make and how many batches it will produce, I will report back when I hear. But even if we top out, you can still get involved, helping out with the brew day and with costs and you will get a share of the beer at the end. The more the merrier.

So far we have -
Pete - Lager
Josh - ?
Kt - ?
Marc - Old Ale
Jay - ?
Brock - Saison (Don't be scared!)
Ben - Brett

Jeez, no one here likes standard Barley wine yeasts, do they?! Any volunteers for Scottish ale yeast or 1056? A Belgian yeast would be good too. Cool if you don't though, you can use a wheat beer yeast if you want!


Does anyone have ideas for a recipe? Personally I've never brewed a barley wine before, so I'm open to suggestions. I was thinking around 10%

 

[Jaynus]

I'll have a stab at the Scottish ale yeast! 10% sounds good to me!

 

[Jaynus]

Scrap that! Safale US-05 for me!

 

[Jaynus]

Pete - Lager
Josh - ?
KT - ?
Marc - Old Ale
Jay - safale US-05
Brock - Saison (Don't be scared!)
Ben - Brett

 

[pmastello]

Dry yeast is probably a good idea, much easier to buy a few packs instead of growing up a huge starter.

This is the recipe I have so far. Please have some input into this because I've never brewed a Barley wine before and I pretty much made this up. No hops yet, I was thinking of bittering to about 70-90 IBU. No idea of which hops to use. Aussie (Galaxy) or NZ hops? Or American or English.

Group Barley Wine
American Barley wine

Type: All Grain
Batch Size (fermenter): 180.00 l Boil Size: 200.00 l
Boil Time: 120 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 % Est Mash Efficiency 60.0 %

Est Original Gravity: 1.090 SG Est Final Gravity: 1.014 SG Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 10.0 %

Ingredients
Amt
60.00 kg Pale Malt, Traditional Ale (Joe White) (5.9 EBC) 71.4 %
15.00 kg Munich, Light (Joe White) (17.7 EBC) 17.9 %
5.00 kg Crystal (Joe White) (141.8 EBC) 6.0 %
1.00 kg Chocolate Malt (Joe White) (750.6 EBC) 1.2 %
1.00 kg Crystal, Dark (Joe White) (216.7 EBC) 1.2 %
2.00 kg Sugar, Table (Sucrose) (2.0 EBC) 2.4 %

Total Grain Weight: 84.00 kg
Mash Name: Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out - Infusion 64C

 

[brockerst]

I've never brewed a barley wine either, and only ever tasted a couple but here's some input.

How big is the mash tun?

The trick with this recipe is going to be to get a good balance so that different yeasts with different attenuation rates don't mean too dry or too sweet an end product.

I think the FG and the mash temp in this recipe is a bit low and may lead to relatively dry (for a barley wine) with some yeasts.

Hopping will be a similar issue. Different yeasts will mean different FGs. 90 IBUs is probably too much with an FG of 1.014 but would work nice with an FG of 1.024.

My vote is for American hops with a nice flavour hit. Aroma is probably a waste due to ageing.

I'll use a Saison yeast. I plan to use the yeast cake of a small Saison rather than try and grow a huge starter.




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[stakka82]

This is a great idea, good luck guys, if I lived closer I would be in!

 

[pmastello]

Yeah, you are right Brock, that FG is too low. That's just what Beer smith calculated, which is about 83% attenuation. I don't think we would actually get that low with a OG that high. You might if you use Belgian Saison yeast, but the rest of us will probably conk out somewhere in the 20's. But still, maybe knock the mash temp up to 66C then?

I think a higher IBU is a good thing as IBU's will drop out over time. The best I can come up with is from Fundamentals of Beer and Hop Chemistry, 2/3 of the hop bitterness in wort has a half-life in excess of 5 years, and the remaining 1/3 as a half-life of 1 year. So, if you leave a beer for 1 year, it's IBUs will have decreased to 75% of its original value. For example, an 80 IBU beer will have 60 IBUs after 1 year.

Plus this measure of 80->60 IBU is measured, rather than calculated. A lot of the IBU equations don't work so well for higher OG's or IBU's, so basically we are flying in the dark here. Maybe we can look at the IBU's on some aged commercial or Homebrewed examples. Or just pick a number. I'd vote for about 80 IBU.


As for Mash Tun size, I had a chat to Duane on the weekend, he doesn't know exactly how much malt it will take, so maybe we can cap it 7 people (160L).

 

[joshuahardie]

I'll be using a English ale yeast, like wlp007, 1098, or even the dry safale equivalent.

I am happy with the Aussie hops, 90+ ibu.

I have done some 10% stouts before so I'll go back through my records and see what I have done in the past.

I don't know how big duanes mash tun is, but remember we can always add liquid base malt to get the gravity up

 

[mr_wibble]

Wyeast 3463 - Forbidden Fruit, tolerance 12%

 

[brockerst]

Ok so we might end up with a range of yeast attenuation rates of between 65% and 85%. Do we adjust for that somehow, eg finishing them off with a wine yeast? Or do we accept that this project is all about the variation between yeasts and let the cards fall where they may?

We may need to increase OG if we want an average of 10% to perhaps 1.1.

My first instinct is to go Australian hops too, but what would you use? I don't trust galaxy as a bitterer.

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