Barley Wine

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sam.k

Landlord.
Joined
Mar 16, 2013
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has anyone got a tried and tested recipe? I want to make something I can put down for ages to really mature out.
 
Anyone? I'm thinking I may just try headcracker if I can't get a recipe.
 
You can pretty much do 100% Maris Otter up to 8-10%, or add some sugar to reduce sweetness (I did one with golden syrup but it's taking ages for the beer to finish conditioning). You can also add a bit of chocolate malt or roast barley (less than 1% of the grain bill) for colour if you fancy. Regarding hops there's not a lot to do if you want to do the traditional version: a good addition of gentle hops to bring the IBU above 35 on a 60 or 90 minute boil, and if fancied some late hops. This beer style tends to be so malt driven that all the flavour comes pretty much from the technicalities of the mashing and the initial grain bill.
 
I was playing around with a calculator trying to remember my recipe and, roughly, if I were to build on it and improve it, it would end up like:

Mash: 7kg of MO, 50g of chocolate malt (mash low, 62-64c, try to sparge everything out of it)

Boil:
60m - 50g of Brewer's Gold
15m - 25g of Brewer's Gold, 200g of Brown Sugar, Irish Moss

Yeast: nottingham.

Should end up around 1.083. ~8.5 ABV, 40 IBU, reddish colour (I like it to look like an oloroso sherry). I found that Brewer's Gold gave it a nice viney taste, a bit like that red fruit taste you get in red wine. I've made this version a bit lighter on the late additions as you might prefer it to be more malt driven.
 
That sounds like a nice brew, going to put that on my "to do" list...I got sent a bottle of Barley wine from secret santa thing but I never did find out who sent it me...it was damn nice though :thumb:
 
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