Recipes

SM Year 2000/Millenium Barleywine

I brewed my Year-2000/Millennium Barley Wine today, and it turned out a little different than what I recommended on this forum last week. Can some of you experienced barley-wine brewers comment on the recipe and predict how it will turn out?

	0.50 lb. Caramel Pils malt
	0.75 lb. Belgian Caramunich malt
	2.00 lb. Caramunich I malt
	22.75 lb. Simpson's Maris Otter malt
	4 oz. Chinook leaf hops - 10.5 alpha acid (60 minutes)
	2 oz. East Kent Goldings plug hops - 6.4 alpha acid (15 minutes)
	1 oz. East Kent Goldings plug hops - 6.4 alpha acid (0 minutes)
	1 tsp. Irish Moss (15 minutes)
	Wyeast 1098 British Ale yeast starter (3 cups of water and 0.75 cups dry malt extract, two times)

I mashed at 154 degrees F. for 1 hour in a 36-quart picnic cooler.  This was a volumetric and a mixing challenge, and the result was a very thick mash.  I certainly recommend a bigger mash tun for a 26-pound grain bill.  I sparged to get about 7.5 gallons of wort into the brew pot.  After measuring at 105 degrees F. and doing the arithmetic, I estimated the specific gravity to be 1.085 going into the pot.   Since this was a little higher than I wanted, I did the 1-hour boil with the lid on, to minimize the increase in specific gravity.  The actual original gravity going into the fermenter was 1.093.

My experience has been that you can get a great beer from the sugar that remains in a barley-wine mash tun.  Here is the hop schedule for the Barley Wine Run-off beer:

	1.0 oz. East Kent Goldings plug hops - 6.4 alpha acid (60 minutes)
	0.5 oz. East Kent Goldings plug hops - 6.4 alpha acid (15 minutes)
	0.5 oz. East Kent Goldings plug hops - 6.4 alpha acid (0 minutes)

I continued the sparge to get another 3.3 gallons of weaker wort, which I estimated to have specific gravity 1.042 going into the brew pot.  I boiled this for 1 hour with the lid ajar.  I didn't measure the original gravity going into the fermenter.   I used a little of the Barley Wine's yeast starter.

My only real regret is not making a bigger yeast starter.

The idea is to sample this brew for the first time at the year-2000 party, to go easy on drinking it throughout the year 2000, and finally to really enjoy it during the millennium (i.e., the year 2001).

Stephen Murphrey