Barleywine 2016

On the eve of 2016, I brewed the first installment of a planned annual barleywine project. Here's round two, brewed almost exactly a year later. The first beer really dried out, but after several months in the bottle, it's become more enjoyable. The new batch has retained a better balance of residual sweetness and hop bitterness and is pretty tasty right now. I'm tempted to punch it up a bit with dry hops before bottling (in the style of Stone's Old Guardian with Pekko dry hop) but I doubt I'll drink an appreciable amount before that addition fades. And this is a beer I plan to keep around for a while to appreciate. 



Barleywine 2016

Batch size: 3 gallons
Projected OG: 1.102
Projected SRM: 14.6
Projected IBU: 105.5
Boil time: 120 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 60%   

Grains
80.0% - 14 lb Great Western 2-row
11.4% - 2 lb Weyermann Munich II
5.7% - 1 lb C40
2.9% - 8 oz C80

Hops
.6 Millennium (15.6%) (60 min)
.5 oz Bravo (16.2%) (15 min)
.5 oz Chinook (11.9%) (15 min)
.5 oz Centennial (8.9%) (15 min)
.5 oz Bravo (10 min)
.5 oz Chinook (10 min)
.5 oz Centennial (10 min)
1 oz Bravo (5 min)
1 oz Chinook (5 min)
1 oz Centennial (5 min)

Yeast
2 pkg US-05 (rehydrated)

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)
.5 tablet Whirlfloc (10 min)

Water (mash)
Profile: Reno
8 g Gypsum, 5 g CaCl, 3 g Baking soda, 8 ml Lactic acid (88%)

Brewday: 29 December 2016
Mash: 20 qts @ 151 F for 90 minutes
Sparge: 14 qts @ 200 F
Pre-boil volume: 6.1 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 17.5 P (1.0)

Target water profile: Balanced (brewersfriend.com)
Ca 109.2, Mg 3.0, Na 35.5, Cl 81.0, SO4 141.7
Alkalinity -19.7, RA -99.3, pH 5.25

3.5 gallons to fermenter at 56F. 1 minute pure O2. Fermented in swamp cooler at 58-60F ambient. After 3 days of active fermentation—and signs of krauesen beginning to drop—allowed swamp cooler to free rise, about 1F/day.

10 January 2017: Ambient temp rose to 63F & held for several days; moved swamp cooler out of brew closet, ambient rose to 65F & roused daily. Today all krauesen has dropped. Removed from swamp cooler to rise to room ambient (68F) & roused daily for a week or so.

Secondary: 26 February 2017
FG: 1.022
ABV: 10.7%

Bottled: 30 April 2017
Bottled 2 gallons with 1.7 oz table sugar, yeast nutrient, and rehydrated US-05.
Moved 1 gallon onto 1 oz boiled oak cubes.
Bottling yeast (US-05) acclimated to the beer’s high gravity 24 hours ahead of time by adding finished beer to the priming solution at a ~1:1 ratio with water.