#6 laurabelle English Barleywine / #7 English Pale Ale

I've wanted to brew a barleywine ever since having my first at Barley's Brewing Co. with my girlfriend Laura. The highest gravity beer I had ever brewed however, until last saturday, was a 7.5 % ABV Russian Imperial Stout. It was a RIS that wasn't quite what you'd call "Imperial" in the craft beer sense of the word, but I have felt somewhat ready to brew my first beer over 8% (actually quite a bit over 8%) with the equipment I now have and where I feel my brewing knowledge is currently.

What could be more attractive to a beer geek than a woman who loves barleywine? It's been great having a girlfriend who shares my love of craft beer, and with respect to certain styles,  she has a love that exceeds mine. Since Laura is abroad working as a Fulbright Scholar in Bahrain, I figured a birthday gift that would still be around by the time she got back made a lot of sense. This beer should be around much longer than the next four months, and should with good bottling, not only last until Laura's next birthday but even years beyond.

Brewing a barleywine provided many interesting concerns due to the amount of sugar necessary to reach the high level of alcohol (usually about 9.5 % - 12%+). I knew I wanted Laura's beer to be all malt, and to avoid simple sugars which would produce a drier finished beer. I also like the idea of an all malt barleywine, preferably with the majority of the sugars coming from an all-grain mash, as opposed to the use of malt extracts. With lots of research and cross-referencing recipes and techniques, I was able to find a process that seemed the most likely to produce the beer I was hoping to create.

Using information from the "High Gravity" episodes from Brew Strong as well as a few barleywine recipes from the brewing magazine Zymurgy, I settled on brewing a barleywine in the traditional English brewing Parti-gyle mash technique. Parti-gyle mashing was utilized in order to produce three separate beers during one brewing session; the first runnings of wort from the grains produced the aging beer, typically a barleywine or old ale, the second runnings produced a table beer, usually a pale ale, mild, or bitter, and the third runnings from the mash produced small beer, for the kids and for daily drinking without becoming intoxicated. Although I didn't see the point in producing a small beer, the thought of producing an English Pale Ale from the second runnings of a large mash seemed interesting.

In order to mash three times the normal amount of grain I typically use in my beer recipes, I had to use both my 5 gallon and my 10 gallon mash tuns. Luckily, the 1.5 quarts per pound of strike water added to the 28.5 pounds of grain produced a total mash volume that was just small enough to fit in the two mash tuns. I knew I needed to collect a large amount of runoff from both mashes, and so I chose to go with 1.5 qts/lb as opposed to the 1.25 qts/lb that I usually mash with. At 1.5 qts/lb, it was expected that I could collect at least 7.3 gallons of runoff (with some water lost to grain absorption) at close to the optimal gravity for first runnings (1.080 - 1.082). After reading other homebrewer's accounts of Parti-gyle mashing, I also expected to have an efficiency close to 53% for the first runnings, an efficiency that would give me my targeted original gravity as well.

One of the benefits of the new grain mill is that I can now buy base malt in bulk. Since I needed half of a 55 pound bag of British base malt for the grain bill of the barleywine I chose to buy a bag from my local homebrew store. Rather than paying $ 2 per pound, I pay $ 1.25 per pound by buying in bulk, and the rest of the British base malt will be great in a Scottish 60 schilling ale and a Scottish wee heavy.

55 pounds of British Pale 2-row next to the 1.5 pounds of specialty malt

I chose to produce a relatively straightforward english barleywine that relied primarily on the flavors produced by the base malt, as opposed to loading the recipe with specialty malts that can often result in a cloyingly sweet beer. Hopefully with a little CaraMunich 45 for caramel sweetness, maltiness, and color and Crystal 120 for darker coloring and dried fruit/brown sugar flavors, this beer will finish with some interesting complexity. The majority of the flavors however will be derived from the British 2-row Pale base malt together with the long boil. With a long boil of a relatively light colored beer, a large portion of the color and caramel flavor produced is often the result of melanoidin formation via Maillard reactions, and in the case of the barleywine, will likely be a major contributor to the final beer's flavor and color. 

With a relatively low level of bittering, consistent with the English tradition for barleywines, I hope that the malt profile of the finished beer with be more at the forefront. Although Laura and I both love hoppy beers, I think we both tend to prefer the maltier style of an English barleywine to the hoppier American barleywine.

laurabelle     English Barleywine

Batch Volume (Gal): 5.00

Pre-Boil Volume (Gal): 7.5 (1.078, first runnings only)

Total Grain (Lbs): 28.5

OG: 1.117   Anticipated FG: ~1.032 - 1.025   

Anticipated ABV: ~11.5% - 12.0%

IBUs: 65.7

SRM: 17.5

Brewhouse Efficiency: 55%

Boil Duration: 120 min

Grain                                                     (Lbs/oz.)       (%)

British 2-row Pale Malt (Pearl)                27             94.7

CaraMunich 45                                       12 oz.           2.6

Crystal 120                                               12 oz.           2.6

Hops                            (AA%)    (IBU)   (Oz.)      (Boil[min])

Northern Brewer        10.6         25.7        0.6              90

Fuggle                          4.0          6.6        0.45             60

Northern Brewer        10.6          9.7        0.25             60

Fuggle                          4.0           7.2       0.55              45

Northern Brewer        10.6           9.9       0.5               30

Northern Brewer        10.6           2.6      0.25              15

East Kent Goldings     4.5             1.4       0.5                5

Northern Brewer        10.6           2.6       0.4                5

East Kent Goldings     4.5              0         0.4               0

Northern Brewer        10.6            0        0.45               0

Yeast

Wyeast 1028 London Ale (repitched 200 mL of 

yeast slurry from oatmeal stout)

Water

1 tsp 5.2 pH stabilizer (5 gallon small mash)

2 tsp 5.2 pH stabilizer (10 gallon large mash)

1 tsp Calcium Chloride (120 min)

1/2 tsp Calcium Sulfate (120 min)

1 tsp Irish Moss (10 min)

1/2 yeast nutrient (10 min)

First runnings

I had to stagger the mashes, in order to mash into one mashtun while heating strike water for another. After preheating the 10 gallon cooler, I mashed in 19.5 lbs of the base pale malt and the specialty malt. Unfortunately I think I'll have to work on preheating the 10 gallon mashtun more effectively (I had only previously used it as a mashtun with the oatmeal stout). I had aimed for a mash temperature of 150 F for 90 minutes for both mashes but only hit 145 F at the start of the 10 gallon mash, the lower extreme of the saccharification rest (145 F - 160 F). Since it's a larger container, I think it may lose more heat than the 5 gallon cooler when I mash in, so I'll have to work on that in the future. 

Preheating the 10 gallon cooler

The low mash temperature created a very fermentable wort that will dry out easily; however, such a low mash temperature favors the activity of beta amylase and not alpha amylase. Beta amylase likely converted all the starch to sugar that it was capable of converting, but the relatively low activity alpha amylase exhibited at 145 F seemingly left a lot of unconverted starch in the first mash, startch that it would have converted had it not been for such a low mash temperature (the runoff from this mash was cloudy). 

The grain for the 10 gallon mash and homemade mash paddle

In order to compensate for the first mash, I mashed the smaller 5 gallon mash much higher, aiming for about 155 F but hit 160 F for 60 minutes. The 10 gallon mash will make up 2/3 of the final beer and the 5 gallon mash will make up the remaining 1/3, so hopefully the extremely low and the extremely high mash temperatures will create a beer somewhere close in flavor and body to a beer entirely mashed at 150 F.

After mashing the 10 gallon mash for 90 minutes and the 5 gallon mash for 60 minutes, I recirculated each mash quickly and collected a total of 7.5 gallons of first runnings at a gravity of 1.078, with only a small amount of wort left in the 5 gallon mash that I later ranoff and used in the english pale ale. Once boiled down to 5 gallons, my original gravity was 3 points greater than what I had originally aimed for, which was a great relief as my biggest concern on brewday was that I wouldn't come close to my 1.114 targeted original gravity.

Collecting runoff and measuring the original gravity

After a two hour boil, with hops added often and in small portions (in order to produce a more subtle melding of hop flavors from the three British varieties of hops), I chilled the beer to 70 F. I chose to aerate the beer using my aquarium pump for a bit longer than I typically do, about 45 minutes, in order to dissolve as much oxygen as possible into the wort. Such a high gravity wort tends to be resistant to oxygen absorption, and the yeast needed a large portion of dissolved oxygen in order to undergo a healthy fermentation.

I had chilled the oatmeal stout the night before in an attempt to cold crash as much yeast out of the beer as possible, leaving it on the bottom of the fermenter to repitch into the barleywine. Using the yeast pitching calculator on MrMalty.com, I repitched 200 mL of yeast slurry, rather than pitching the entire yeast cake as I have with previous batches fermented with repitched yeast. Hopefully it's enough to ferment such a big beer, and I won't regret just pouring the beer onto the old yeast cake.

Transferring the oatmeal stout into the keg and off of the yeast cake

About 20 minutes after pitching the yeast, the two mashes separated with the less dense, cloudy first mash on top, and the second denser, clear mash on the bottom. The activity of the yeast about an hour after pitching however quickly mixed the two back together.

Second runnings

After finishing the barleywine, I remashed into both the 5 and 10 gallon mashes with the same amount of water I used to mash in earlier in the day. I added near boiling water to both mashes to bring the tempeartures of both mashes up to 170 F (the optimal temperature to dissolve and remove sugar from the grains without extracting tannins). Both mashes stood for 10 minutes in order to allow the sugar to dissolve, and then I ranoff both mashes into the boil kettle. I only chose to collect about 6.5 gallons so as not to necessitate a boil as long as needed to boil all of the excess water as with the barleywine. Instead I collected an original gravity of about 1.047 and added a pound of extra light British dry malt extract that I had on hand in case I didn't hit my targeted gravity in the barleywine. With the extra pound of DME, I had an original gravity of 1.055 in five gallons. I chose Columbus (one of my favorite all-purpose hops) for a high alpha-acid bittering hop and Sterling for flavor and aroma. 

English Pale ale

Batch Volume (Gal): 6.00

Pre-Boil Volume (Gal): 6.5 (second runnings from batch sparge)

Total Grain (Lbs): 29.5

OG: 1.046     Anticipated FG: ~1.012      Anticipated ABV: ~4.5%

IBUs: 42.7

SRM: 17.6

Brewhouse Efficiency: 22%

Boil Duration: 65 min

Grain                                                       (Lbs/oz.)         (%)

British 2-row Pale Malt (Pearl)         27               94.7

CaraMunich 45                                    12 oz.             2.6

Crystal 120                                            12 oz.             2.6

Muntons Extra Light DME                   1                  3.4

Hops            (AA%)     (IBU)     (Oz.)     (Boil[min])

Columbus     14.0         33.7        0.5             60

Sterling          6.0          7.4          0.5             30

Columbus     14.0         9.0          0.5             15

Sterling          6.0           0            0.5              0

Yeast

Wyeast 1028 London Ale (repitched ~100 mL of 

yeast slurry from oatmeal stout)

Water

3 tsp 5.2 pH stabilizer in the original mashes

1 tsp Calcium Chloride (65 min)

1 tsp Calcium Sulfate (65 min)

1 tsp Irish Moss (5 min)

1/2 tsp yeast nutrient (5 min)

I was super tired by the time I boiled the pale ale, and made a few mistakes with the hop additions, and the propane tank started to run out halfway through the boil. I didn't get enough water to boil off and so ended up with 6 gallons of finished beer. I was so ready to be done with the day that I simply transfered the beer from the boil kettle straight into the fermenter that I had transfered the oatmeal stout from earlier. I poured the beer directly onto what remained of the yeast cake, which I think was about 100 mL. I think in retrospect I should have measured the amount of yeast I pitched into the pale ale, since it fermented out in about 2 days after a really vigorous fermentation. Hopefully the huge pitch of yeast in the beer doesn't leave it flavorless and water-like.

After brewing a bunch of beers since the beginning of January, I'm planning on taking a bit of a break before getting back into it with some Scottish ales and then some Biere de Garde Belgian ales. The keg of Belgian Pale Ale kicked yesterday, and so the only homebrew remaining is Buster's Bitter in bottles. The Belgian dubbel is almost ready in bottles, the oatmeal stout should be ready for the kegerator in two weeks, and the English pale ale in three weeks. The Alt and the Kolsch I'll try and leave for at least the next month to lager in the basement. The barleywine should go through a very long fermentation and conditioning period; at least a two week fermentation followed by a month long at minimum (but possibly as long as 2-6 months) conditioning period before bottling. It's a good thing I'll have to wait for the barleywine to condition; without the temptation to sample, I know I'll be able to wait and have the first bottle with Laura some night this summer.