Barleywine Help

100% your favorite base malt.
After the mash drain 2 gallons of dirty runnings and boil down to a lava like syrup. Once it is lava boil another 30 minutes. You will have to keep turning down the heat as you go.

Sparge boil bla bla bla using a single bittering addition of 60-100IBU.

Be sure to give it more O2 about 12-24 hours later. If you are poor like me you can just sanitize a kettle and pour from the fermenter to the kettle and back. A low cost homebrew Yorkshire Squares type of thing.

Good luck.

 

Last year I made a Barley Wine with 100% Marris Otter. I did not boil down any runnings but the beer is starting to drink well. I am still on the fence if I like this one over the one I made with other malts added in. You are going to loose alot of wort boiling for that long. I do not boil anything over 2 hours. ( I am also lazy! ) Good luck.

 

That's all a matter of what kind of barleywine you're going for, be it more in the vein of JW Lees (100% base malts) or a Firestone Walker Sucaba type beer (albeit without the barrel component). A few months back, I brewed the following:

OG: 1.099/FG: 1.026
80% Maris Otter
16% Munich
2% Special B
2% Medium British Crystal (50 - 60L)
And a couple ounces of Chocolate Malt

50IBUs (mostly Bravo at 60 min, a smattering of EKG at 15)

Wyeast 1028

It has only been in bottles for a couple weeks, but it's very promising so far. An entirely different mindset from the 100% MO school of thought, but neither better, nor worse. If there are specific barleywines you're trying to emulate, specifying those will help give direction on what kind of grain bill strategy will achieve your goal.

 

The recipe I came up with was an amalgamation of Jamil's English barleywine from Brewing Classic Styles and some various notes on Sucaba clone attempts I found online. Firestone Walker lists the ingredients (without proportions) on their page for Sucaba, which is where some of my specific choices came from. I believe they use WLP 002 as their house strain, but I wanted something that would attenuate better since it wouldn't be going into a barrel, hence the use of Wyeast 1028 (equivalent to WLP 013).

 

i brewed a BW about a month ago and concocted my own recipe
11 lb United Kingdom - Maris Otter Pale
6 lb Liquid Malt Extract - Dark
1 lb American - Carapils (Dextrine Malt)
1 lb Turbinado
1 lb American - Caramel / Crystal 40L
0.25 lb American - Roasted Barley

I tried an experiment with this one doing a sort of double fermentation. Used both WPL 005 and WPL 007 for drier finish. 2nd batch of yeast was added at 7 days with a big starter and added another 1/2 lb of boiled turvibado slury to get fermentables up and more caramel flavors. Turned out really tasty. really slow to carb up (read post and comments from last week on carbing high ABV beers)
The extract was MO as well. I did take the first 2 gallons of first runnings and boiled down to syrupy concoction and the boiled everything together for 90 minutes.
Hopped generously with UK hops

1 oz East Kent Goldings Pellet Boil 60 min
1 oz Fuggles Pellet Boil 50 min
1 oz East Kent Goldings Pellet Boil 40 min
1 oz East Kent Goldings Pellet Boil 30 min
1 oz East Kent Goldings Pellet Boil 20 min
1 oz East Kent Goldings Pellet Boil 10 min
1 oz Fuggles Pellet Boil 5 min
1 oz Fuggles Leaf/Whole Dry Hop
14 days

 

Get a generous helping of your favorite base malt. Add a couple of pounds of crystal 55-60L. 90 min boil, with a bittering and a flavor addition of your favorite hop. I used Cascade and an Irish Ale malt that I have been really enjoying this past summer. Since I like an English-style barleywine, I don't go too heavy on the hops or dry hop.