Looking for barley wine advice

Cheers and best of luck with the Barley wine If you want to trade a bottle or 2 when its done for some beer from Quebec or Ontario let me know! I'd love to try it!

 

Welcome to BA! Can't help you as i don't homebrew but check out the homebrewing forum for tips.

 

Welcome to BA from FL!!

 

Welcome to BA! 20-25 abv will be next to impossible. Most yeast strains don't attenuate that high. I would personally aim for 10-12 if you want to brew a barleywine.

 

Welcome to BA, and good luck with your project. If it's feasible, I'm sure the homebrewers here will be able to help. Cheers!

 

Welcome to BA. Doubt you'll get to hit that 20-25% ABV, but good luck nonetheless.

 

Welcome to the BA site, kmh8288. The recommendations above to visit the Homebrewing forum with your question are the correct advice. (Not many homebrewers spend time in this New Member welcoming forum.)

However, I'll take a basic stab at an answer and say that you are biting off a huge project to hit an ABV like that. It is possible to load up enough sugar (extract or granulated sugar) into your wort to potentially hit a high ABV, but the problem lies with the yeast. Most yeast will crap out on you at 12-15 percent, then you've got a stuck fermentation and a very sweet beer that you will have trouble bottle conditioning (if that is your choice of packaging). Just to get your yeast to stay at work up to that 12-15 percent level will require perfect fermentation temperature conditions, plenty of oxygenation for the yeast to thrive, and a huge yeast pitch. I don't know of a beer yeast that can go that high, but maybe someone in the Homebrewing forum will know if you might have to use a wine yeast past the 12% level or something like that.

Hang around the site as much as you'd like, explore to discover all of the features, and enjoy your time while here.

 

Welcome to BA, Kmh!

 

Welcome and Cheers from CT!

 

Greetings!

 

Welcome aboard! I've never seen a barleywine with an ABV that high but I wish you success!

 

Welcome fellow home Brewer - good luck with your quest!

 

A 20-25% ABV beer is next to impossible. To try it, you'll probably have to use a champagne yeast or a combination of beer yeast and champagne yeast, and feed the yeast a little sugar at a time slowly over the course of 6-12 months. Then finally at the end you might need to "eis" the beer, that is, to partially freeze it and remove the ice crystals which are nearly 100% water, thus concentrating the beer down towards the 20% ABV mark by leaving the alcohol behind. That's the best way I could figure of doing it.

And then, even if you are successful in your goal.... don't expect anyone to enjoy it much. Can you say, rocket fuel? Headaches? Ouch.

 

I suggest you shoot for 10% ABV before attacking 20% ABV. You will learn alot on the 10%.

Do not use Champagne yeast for anything except bottle conditioning as it only metabolizes simple sugars and those are not the sugars that will give you a high FG. Could possibly kill the other yeast based on their sensitivity to K factor. There are comparison charts out there for strains that produce or are sensitive to K factor.

When you do go for 20% there is a blog post out there where the homebrewer tried a Dogfishead 120 clone. Good information on feeding the sugars.

My advice for a 10% beer would be to shoot for an OG between 100 and 110, make sure you pitch enough yeast (a few packs of dry yeast would be a good idea), and control your fermentation temperatures at all cost.

Good luck!

 

Keep in mind, the beer will benefit from long-term aging, especially if you are wanting at least 10% or higher. As everyone has mentioned, it is going to be extremely difficult to achieve 20-25% ABV. You don't want to make an alcohol bomb for the sake of just saying you can, in my opinion. As @dmtaylor mentioned, you could freeze the beer and extract the alcohol. I actually did this to a 2.5 gallon barley wine experiment that finished at 12%. I'd figure that the end result of how much i extracted resulted in about 55% ABV.

 

I agree with the above posts that 20-25% is way too ambitious. You would need to pitch multiple strains, continuously feed an already strong ale with sugar to keep the yeast alive and fermenting, and lastly it is impossible to bottle condition a beer that strong. You would need to keg it or drink it without carbonation.

My first strong ale project was probably 15 batches in. I brewed a 12% imperial stout with extract and steeped specialty grains. Ran into several issues along the way, learned a ton about brewing high gravity, and in the end I had a beer I was really happy with.

 

Hope you like the taste of electrical fire. Whiskey aficionados love it in small sips.

Wish you luck, I sincerely hope it turns out to your liking.