Barley wine

[Todd]

Just ordered the B3 Barley Wine kit, can't wait to make it! From everything I've read, you brew it up, rack it off to a secondary fermenter and then have to hang out for 6+ months while it matures and continues on it's path to liquid heaven.

Questions for those who have made a BW before:

1) put it in a 5 gallon carboy with an airlock and store at room temp - is that acceptable?

2) agitate the yeast from time to time, or not to agitate... (has anyone put a magentic stir bar in the fermenter and given it a whirl that way?

3) when do you know it's ready for quaffing?

Thanks folks...

[DannyW]

After 2-4 weeks in primary, you can rack to a carboy and keep it at room temp, sure. A little cooler is better. As long as the gravity is stable, you can go ahead and bottle it at that time and let it age in the bottles, too.

Doc has played with a 5 gallon stir plate, but it is not usual. The normal action of the yeast will keep it in good enough contact with the beer. Some English strains like WLP002 are more floccuant and might need special attention, but most of the yeasts we use will finish out just fine.

Taste it every few months and you will get an idea of how it matures and when it peaks. It will probably peak right about the time you crack open the last bottle It depends on lots of factors. I had one I that took 2 years to finally turn the corner.

[Cosmic Charlie]

1) put it in a 5 gallon carboy with an airlock and store at room temp - is that acceptable?

I primary in a 6.5 gallon carboy with blowoff tube. A vigorous fermentation might push your airlock off.


2) agitate the yeast from time to time, or not to agitate... (has anyone put a magentic stir bar in the fermenter and given it a whirl that way?

I just swirl the carboy when I can.


3) when do you know it's ready for quaffing?

I like how Danny said it, "It will probably peak right about the time you crack open the last bottle". I successfully stashed one batch away for one year before taking my first sample.

[UcfLumberjack]

just make alot of other beer while your waiting for it to age. or make a couple batches of it so eevn if you drink some youll have enough left to age.

[Thirsty Mallard]

Also, put one or two bottles in the back of your fridge and forget about them for a few years.

Trust me.

[Bugeater]

I make a couple barleywines every year. I age them in a corney keg for a minimum of a year. I carbonate in the keg and then bottle with a beer gun. It takes me about a year to drink up 2 kegs of barleywine so this schedule keeps me in properly aged BW all the time.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

[Todd]

If all goes well, I may get to brew this one this weekend or next. I've upgraded to the 6 gallon Better Bottle for my primaries (with a carboy cap and blow off tube) and have a 5 gallon glass carboy for my secondaries. I have a Fat Tire clone in the fermenter right now that I'll keg this weekend and use that yeast cake for the barleywine.

I drank a series of barleywines this week to get psyched up - Old Guardian (Stone), Hog Heaven (Avery), and Bigfoot (Sierra Nevada). Heck of a job having to drink one of these each evening in front of the TV. Oh darn, the way I am willing to suffer for my art.

Game plan is to brew it, put in the primary until it stops blowing stuff all over the place, rack to the secondary after a few weeks, let it hang out that way for a while, then put it in a corny and let it age in my kegerator. I think I'll end up drinking this one young just to see how it turns out and to get ideas for the next one. I am more interested in brewing these more often, vs. waiting a year to see how it turns out. Since I have capacity to serve 10 beers at a time on draft, I always want to have one or two HUGE beers available for me to nip on whenever I get the urge for a snifter full of liquid dynamite.

I'll let you know how it turns out, then start picking Bugeater's brain for his barleywine expertise for the next few recipes. Thanks!

[Bugeater]

If all goes well, I may get to brew this one this weekend or next. I've upgraded to the 6 gallon Better Bottle for my primaries (with a carboy cap and blow off tube) and have a 5 gallon glass carboy for my secondaries.

I would strongly suggest using a big bore blow off tube (BBBOT) rather than a piece of tubing stuck on a carboy cap. 1" ID vinyl tubing will fit snugly into the neck of a carboy (a Better Bottle too, I think). This is MUCH less likely to clog than the smaller tubing you have to use with the carboy cap. Once yeast takes off in a barleywine you can get quite a bit of blowoff and you don't want that carboy cap popping off under pressure and spewing all your BW all over the ceiling, the walls, the cat, etc.

Another big advantage of the BBBOT is that with the larger diameter you won't get sanitizer and contaminated yeast and other spooge being sucked back into the fermenter when the yeast stops producing as much heat towards the end of fermentation and the wort cools. This cooling will create a partial vacuum in the fermenter.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company