Idea for a "one year" beer?

FWIW, In the email I got from Tom Allen, Exec VP of North Coast, Old Stock is ONLY Maris Otter and Fuggles and a long boil. Approximately 3 hours.

 

11 lbs is not too far off for a big English BW. Some recipes call for 25 Lbs for a 5 gallon batch, I did a 10 gallon batch this summer with 50 Lbs of malt.

 

+1. My highest scoring beer to date was a spiced Old Ale that I aged for over a year, and it was ~6% ABV.

 

“Some recipes call for 25 Lbs for a 5 gallon batch…”

I suppose it depends on the conversion efficiency an individual achieves. For 75% a total of 25 lbs. for a 5 gallon batch comes out to 1.030 which is beyond the BJCP defined range for an English Barleywine (1,080 – 1.120).

If I were to homebrew an Englsh Barleywine I would personally shoot for something like 1.100.

Cheers!

 

The target was 1.120, as that was Thaomas Hardy's Ale starting gravity. I got to 1.115, as after 3 hours of boiling I was tired. With that much grain the efficiency is low, and I finally made a decent Small Beer using the second runnings as enough sugar was left behind.

 

"With that much grain the efficiency is low..."

I suspected as much.

Cheers!

 

It comes down to how much sugar are you rinsing out. For a big beer you want the high gravity first running so you hit the target without boiling forever. So sugars are left behind, hence the second small beer from the second runnings.

 

Jesse, it is totally OK to bottle your batch once primary fermentation is complete (i.e., you have reached final gravity and there are no perceptible off-flavors of aldehydes, VDKs, fusel oils, etc.) and age within the bottle.

If you would prefer to keep the beer in a secondary for an extended time that is OK too.

Basically it is your choice.

Cheers!

 

I would not do a secondary, just let it finish in the primary then age in bottles. You might want to try putting half on oak, I have really enjoyed the ones that I did on oak chips once the oak "settled down" (I left it on chips for way too long).

I don't think you need to do anything special to age a beer like this, just leave them in your closet or basement and come back in a year.

 

With and OG of 1.091 and using WLP007 I think you are looking at significantly higher than 6.5% abv. I was thinking around 9% depending on certain variables. Regardless, I really like the look of that recipe. Might have to give something like that a shot soon.

 

This is pretty evident based upon drinking JW Lees/Thomas Hardy's, but I for some reason, couldn't believe it until I brewed the same type of beer at home. After doing a 100% Halcyon malt barley wine with a 5 hour boil, I was shocked at the malt complexity I picked up from just a single malt, hop and yeast strain.

 

I would expect that with a 5 hour boil there would be increased Maillard reactions with the resulting formation of melanoidins yielding ‘interesting’ flavors like nutty, toffee, caramel, etc.

I listened to a podcast with Charlie Bamforth where is he stated that boil lengths greater than 90 minutes can be foam negative. How was your head for your 5 hour boil beer?

Cheers!

 

Patience would be my main piece of advice. And maybe minimize (but don't try to eliminate) O2 exposure pre-packaging. I say maybe, because some O2 is needed for some of the reactions happening during aging. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend a closed CO2 transfer, for example, for this beer.

 

Near zero head; some little bits around the sides of the glass and a bit of lacing on the glass when drinking the non-barrel aged version. The barrel aged one has zero head.

The imperial stout I made with a 6 hour boil (all base malt mash 6 hour boil, second mash with specialty, roast and crystal malts had a 60 min boil), has much better head retention, but it also has a good deal of crystal malt and a much higher final gravity (~25 pts higher).

 

Any material you put between the atmosphere and the beer will at least slow down (if not eliminate) O2 diffusion across that space. That said, I'm fairly sure wax isn't totally impermeable. But since it would reduce the diffusion of O2, oxidation reactions would be reduced/take longer.