Group "Leftovers" Barleywine

Back in October 2007 a few friends and I got together to brew a “leftovers“ parti-gyle beer. We all brought along whatever partial bags of specialty grains and hops we had leftover from previous batches. We laid everything out on a table and went to work designing a recipe.

After a bit of haggling we came up with a grain bill that everyone was happy with, using a range of different base malts with a few different crystal malts for color and complexity plus some flaked wheat just because. We used just the first runnings from the mash. After the wort for this beer was out of the mash tun, we added sparge water along with some dark malts. After sitting for 15 minutes we ran out enough wort to make 5 gallons of a 1.055 Porter-esque brew which we hopped with English hops.

For the Barleywine we took all the American hops and mixed them together in a big bowl. Starting at 30 minutes we added a handful (~1.5 oz) of this hop blend every 5 minutes, a technique known as hop bursting. The idea is that with such a huge quantity of hops near the end of the boil the wort will be saturated with iso-alpha acids making a bittering addition unnecessary. We forgot the Whirlfloc tablet until flame-out, so we added it and boiled 5 extra minutes. That is the reason the hop schedule starts at 35 minutes and there is no 5 minute addition.

Below is the result, somewhere between a Doppelbock, an American Barleywine, and an English Barleywine. Fresh it almost tasted like a double IPA, but now with 6 months of age it tastes like an over hopped English Barleywine. Hopefully with some age it will mellow out into a regular English Barleywine.

Big Brew Day Barleywine

Recipe Specifics
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Batch Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 18.74
Anticipated OG: 1.092
Anticipated SRM: 19.4
Anticipated IBU: 149.2
Brewhouse Efficiency: 68 %
Wort Boil Time: 80 Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar
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4.70 lbs. American Pale Malt
4.25 lbs. Belgian Pilsener
3.00 lbs. Golden Promise
2.60 lbs. Vienna Malt
2.00 lbs. Munich Malt (dark)
0.65 lbs. Flaked Soft White Wheat
0.52 lbs. Crystal 120L
0.48 lbs. Special B Malt
0.28 lbs. Special Roast Malt
0.26 lbs. Crystal 60L

Hops
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1.50 oz. Mix @ 35 min.
1.50 oz. Mix @ min.
1.50 oz. Mix @ 25 min.
1.50 oz. Mix @ 20 min.
1.50 oz. Mix @ 15 min.
1.50 oz. Mix @ 10 min.
1.00 oz. Mix @ 0 min.

Extras
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1.00 Whirlfloc Tablet @ 5 Min.(boil)

Yeast
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WYeast 1028 London Ale

Mash Schedule
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60 min @ 151

Notes
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Brewed 10/11/07 With Scott, Josh and James @ Scott's

Recipe made on spot from all our leftover grain and hops.

This was the first runnings, hop bursted with a mix of:
2.50 oz Chinook [13.00 %]
0.25 oz Simcoe [13.00 %]
2.00 oz Summitt [17.00 %]
0.80 oz Warrior [15.00 %]
0.37 oz Cascade [5.50 %]
0.37 oz Nugget [13.00 %]
1.00 oz Amarillo [8.50 %]
2.80 oz Centennial [10.00 %]

12/01/07 Bottled aiming for 2.5 volumes of CO2. It has a huge hop flavor and a solid malt backbone. FG around 1.028, just under 70% AA.

Very hoppy for the first few months, almost like a very malty DIPA, then around February it took on a much maltier/smoother flavor.

5/12/08 Tasted as part of the Alternative Hopping Basic Brewing Radio Episode.

11/03/08 First tasting for the blog.

5/28/17 Scott and I drank the bottle I'm aware of. A bit of oxidation, but it was a nice rich aged-out American barleywine. The hop aroma was long gone, but there was still a balancing bitterness.

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