American Barleywine

[lexuschris]

Hi all,

I've been hankering to do another American Barleywine for some time. My last one was for the club barrel brew in 2010, and that was very tasty!

I used to work next to Tenaya Creek Brewing in Las Vegas, back in 2002, and loved their Jackalope BW. They did not post the receipe, just the ingredients, so this is kinda a meld from the 2010 Barleywine, but with ingredients inspired form Tenaya Creek.

Also, such a big beer won't completely fit in my 16-gal mash kettle. So, instead of a 11 gallon batch, I reduced it 9 gallons, and replaced some grain with Amber DME. This will fit easily, and get me to where I want to go. Would love the feedback on the recipe. I brew on Sunday.

9-gal batch

21# Pale 2-row, US 65%
2# Carared 20L 6%
1.5# Crystal 80L 5%
1# Wheat Malt 3%
6# Amber DME 10L 15%
1# Muscavado sugar 3%

2oz Millenium Hops 14% @ 60 min 39 IBU
3oz Columbus hops 14% @ 20 min 35 IBU
2.5oz Cascade hops 5.5% @ 5 min 3 IBU

2 pkg WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast (3.8L starter)
4 oz. Light Oak Chips (Secondary)

OG: 1.099
FG: 1.014
ABV: 11.1%
SRM: 15
IBU: 78

MASH TEMP = 150F @ 60 min
BOIL TIME: 90 min

Hope everyone has a great Memorial Day Weekend!
--LexusChris

[Megastout]

I have good luck with 099 super high gravity yeast in addition with san diego or by itself. Since I am away, can't check previous brews. Good luck

[BrewMasterBrad]

Hey Chris. How did this go? Looks like a tasty recipe.

[lexuschris]

Brewday went very well! I was able to spend the Saturday setting up my rig, and gave everything a good cleaning (pump heads too!). I pre-filled the BK & HLT with water, and was able to start heating on Sunday morning before I even made my 1st cup of coffee. Made for a really timely brewday! (8:00am flame on, 1:15pm pitch, clean up done by 3:00).

My numbers were off, as they have been for most my brew sessions recently. However, I finally had enough measurements to go through Beersmith 2.0 and find out where my config was off.
+ My actual boil evap rate was not 8%, it was just under 4%.
+ My batch sparge mash profile needed some tweeks so that I would not put so much water into the mash & sparge. Too much water, means dilution of the final product.
+ Adjusted dead-space volumes in equipment profile too.

When I recreated my recipe with the new settings, my numbers were spot on. Hopefully, that will make future brews more accurate as well.

With a big beer like this, I like to let it sit in the fermenter 3-4 weeks, to ensure it ferments out completely and cleans up after itself. I cannot find my toasted oak chips, so will pick some up this week. I soak them in vodka for a few days, then will put them in the fermenters for 4-6 days. Should be super tasty! <fingers crossed>

I plan to bottle the whole batch after carbing in kegs, so I can age them and enjoy them over the next year or so.

--LexusChris

[JonW]

4% is a very low evaporation rate. You should be at least double that. Sounds like your burners are starving or not fully combusting the gas that is there. With my BG14 burner (and air injection) I run 11% boil off. On my old rig with the wok burners, I was at 15%.

I'm guessing with only 4% you're also not seeing a very vigorous boil.

[lexuschris]

I totally agree with you Jon. It is something I've been struggling with at my new location, which is all that has changed since that profile was pretty accurate in Irvine. 8% used to be a pretty good number for me.

Since I brew in my backyard, and now have prevailing coastal winds, it is much tougher to get to a boil. The winds push the heat away from the kettles, and my burners are probably too close to the kettle bottoms.. giving lots of heat wash, and not very efficiently heating the kettles.

Eventually, I will need to move my burners down a notch or 2 inside the wind shield, and double check the orifice openings on my gas valves. A project for a day when I have a lot of time.
--LexusChris

[bwarbiany]

Since I brew in my backyard, and now have prevailing coastal winds, it is much tougher to get to a boil. The winds push the heat away from the kettles, and my burners are probably too close to the kettle bottoms.. giving lots of heat wash, and not very efficiently heating the kettles.

Yeah, I had something similar at my old house when I moved the process from the garage to the backyard. One area of the yard (where I had intended to site the brew system if I'd moved to NG) was a bit of a wind tunnel, and the burners just didn't like it. I had to move the system to a much more protected area to even be able to keep them lit.

[CurtisG]

Going from backyard to inside the garage my boil-off doubled.
I also get a lower efficiency, from 80% to a consistent 75%. Not sure what's up with that though..

[lexuschris]

Ended up finding some Brandy Barrel Oak Chips (Brewer's Best) at Windsor... just added them (2 oz to each 5-gal fermenter). Plan to keg & carb on Sunday, then sample for a month or two before bottling.

--LexusChris

[maltbarley]

...then sample for a month or two before bottling.

Let me know if that becomes too labor intensive. Sounds delicious.

[lexuschris]

I totally agree with you Jon. It is something I've been struggling with at my new location, which is all that has changed since that profile was pretty accurate in Irvine. 8% used to be a pretty good number for me.

Since I brew in my backyard, and now have prevailing coastal winds, it is much tougher to get to a boil. The winds push the heat away from the kettles, and my burners are probably too close to the kettle bottoms.. giving lots of heat wash, and not very efficiently heating the kettles.

Eventually, I will need to move my burners down a notch or 2 inside the wind shield, and double check the orifice openings on my gas valves. A project for a day when I have a lot of time.
--LexusChris

On the issue of evaporation rate, I made 2 changes recently that have greatly improved my evaporation rate and boils in general.

1) I replaced my 3/4" gas hose with a 1/2" hose. My gas pipes were always 1/2" in the backyard, but I had ordered the 3/4" by mistake. I just used a reducer elbow to get back into my gas burner feed.
2) I moved to a condo in Irvine.

My first brew back in Irvine had me at target SG in 35 minutes on a 90 minute boil... so that should put me over 8% ... probably closer to 10% evap rate. I'll have to run a separate test to measure it properly. Suffice to say, the boil was vigorous and I had to add more runnings from my mash tun to continue the boil.

I now suspect that my gas feed at the CDM house was the culprit. Previous owner took many shortcuts around his add-ons to the house. We found more & more surprises like that as we lived there. I bet I was not getting proper pressure to my system, which was a stub off his builtin BBQ addon.

Anyways, just happy to be back to strong boils, and good evaporation rates!!

--LexusChris