Barley wine kit help, please.

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JohnB

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Hi, can anyone help, please? I have a 1.5Kg tin/kit of Young's Barley Wine that I picked up cheap from my local home-brew shoppe, I can't find a manufacture date on the tin, but the "Use by ..." is September this year (2019). I already chucked the little packet of yeast 'cos I'd think it will be worse than useless.

My questions really, are:

a) What yeast should I use with a Barley Wine, please? I have both CML and Bulldog English Ale Yeast, I also have some GV12 but should I get something more specific? I'm out of my depth and searches turn up so much conflicting advice. If I end up making a barley wine, then I want to do the best for it.

b) The kit is a "Youngs" pre-hopped kit. Should I refresh with a hop tea? or boil the wort and add some hops? I have a variety of hops that I could add to the kit. Although still in date, do the contents get "tired" with age?

c) Drastic I know, but should I just chuck it into an all grain brew?

Any help, any at all on this would be really appreciated, many thanks for reading and in advance of your answers.
 
  1. My "Go to" yeast is always Wilko Ale Yeast (aka Gervin-12) so you're in luck! That's what I would use anyway.
  2. I believe in following the recipe written on the tin until fermentation is completed. After fermentation is finished I quite often add a Hop Tea before carbonation so I would give it a whirl.
  3. Why potentially screw up an AG brew? If it's "off" it will put the AG brew off, if it isn't then it should produce some palatable Barley Wine.
Enjoy!
 
Your 1.5kg can plus an extra 1kg fermentables brewed to about 14 litres (24 pints) should produce a beer of just under 7% (according to the BF calculator). That's within the capability of one sachet of CML Real Ale yeast https://www.crossmyloofbrew.co.uk/yeast-specs
GV12 is fine too but I don't know the Bulldog yeast.
I would use the CML yeast as its cheapest, since you are brewing a kit of unknown quality, and save the others for something else. But be assured that I use the CML yeast as do others on here.
My view on one can kits is that the biggest single boost you can give to them is to have a hop addition of some sort, irrespective of their age, to refresh the hop taste. The impact of dry hopping diminishes with time and since you are likely faced with a long conditiong time I would not do that. Nor would I boil the kit wort. But as @Dutto suggests, a hop tea is fine, perhaps using a typical English dual purpose hop like EKG.
And I would not be adding 1 kg of dextrose to this kit or it will thin the taste, nor would I use additional LME (my view is that it is responsible for homebrew 'twang' especially in darker beers). I would go for 1 kg of amber/medium DME or if you want a more roasty taste, dark DME.
Finally I would put this beer into conditioning/storage for at least 3 months before I even considered cracking open the first one.
 
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