stout to secondary, harvesting yeast, and brewing barleywine
The barleywine I brewed last year came out very well and was quite popular. We're down to only a few bottles left so I decided to brew up another batch. One of the reasons I brewed the oatmeal molasses stout last weekend was to be able to harvest plenty of viable yeast for the barleywine since it's such a high gravity beer.
I started prepping ingredients and equipment before noon and then transferred to stout to secondary. The transfer went fine, and I measured it's specific gravity at 1.024. I've also noticed (later in the evening) that there's some fermentation (yeast kraeusen and airlock activity) going on with the stout which is nice to see since I'd really like the final gravity to end up a bit lower.
Once the stout was transferred, I began the process of getting yeast from the trub left in the carboy to pitch for the barleywine. Last year I just transferred the barleywine directly onto the yeast cake in the primary fermenter I had just transfered another beer out of. That worked great except it made a bit of a mess because I didn't use a blowoff tube. This time, I decided to use a clean fermenter for the barleywine since the carboy the stout was in was pretty well gunked up from kraeusen on the inside plus overflow through the airlock on the outside. So I decided to try a little bit of yeast ranching. I dumped out the trub and did a little work to water it down and try to separate the good yeast from the sludge. I had four different vessels in use at one point (quart, 2 half-gallon, 1 gallon). I probably should have worked at it a bit more, but I was doing this while also brewing so I only took it so far. Eventually decided that one of the half-gallon jugs looked like it would probably to the job since it had an obvious layer of yeast on top, a cloudy layer that probably still had yeast in suspension, and limited trub at the bottom. (I also kept another half-gallon or so to practice harvesting from sometime later.)
My recipe for this batch is modeled after last year's barleywine recipe which was based on the Old Bawdy clone recipe (from Beer Captured, p.128). I had to make a substitution in the grain bill as compared to last year -- the brew shop didn't have Belgian aromatic so instead of 2.5 oz of that I used 2 oz of Belgian biscuit -- and the hops were fairly close but not exactly the same. Here's what I ended up with:
Type: Extract with grains
Batch size: 5 gallons
Ingredients:
Brewing Instructions:
Fermentation:
Target gravity:
O.G. 1.101 - 1.105
F.G. 1.023 - 1.026
ABV: 10%
Here are some details of brewing the barleywine:
Today was a very warm day. Would have been nice to get started earlier, but that's the way it goes. Setting up an oscillating fan out in the garage helped a little, but I was still sweating the entire time. Here's the timeline of my brew day:
12:45pm - went over to erik_frederick's house to use his mill to grind grains
1:15pm - grains steeping in pot and up to 150 F
1:45pm - grains out; started sparging & topping up brew kettle
1:44pm - flame on
2:14pm - at boil; flame off
2:20pm - DME in; flame back on (low)
2:30pm - at boil; bittering hops in
2:47pm - boilover :(
3:15pm - flavor hops and Irish moss in
3:20pm - wort chiller in to sanitize
3:28pm - aroma hops in
3:30pm - flame off
3:45pm - wort chilled to 80 degrees
4:20pm - barleywine in primary (with blowoff tube) in lagering freezer set to 68 F
5:20pm - everything cleaned up (including garage floor and propane burner)
When I filled the brew pot (up to the level of the lower rivets for the handles), I didn't take into account the large amount of DME that would be added later. [Note: these are the exact same words I wrote about last year's barleywine. Wish I had read all of that post before starting this brew day.] When I added the 12 pounds of DME, it raised the level a couple inches such that the pot was almost completely full. Last year I removed a gallon of wort which I added back in later. This year I just went for it and watched the level carefully. Made it through the hot break just fine. It wasn't until 25 minutes after adding the DME that the pot boiled over while I was checking my e-mail on my phone. *sigh* Made quite a mess and boiled over enough to put the burner out. I had to scrub a bunch of crusted-on wort off the burner afterward.
I used the autosiphon to transfer from the kettle to the carboy since ovrclokd was out, and I realized I was going to make a huge mess if I tried to pour through the funnel with no extra hands. After the transfer and putting the yeast (from the half-gallon container) in, I swirled the carboy vigorously to aerate. When the primary was full it looked like the level was at least 5.5 gallons.
Measured the O.G. at 1.112.
The barleywine is now sitting in the lagering freezer with the temperature controller keeping it at 68 F for fermentation. I just checked on it, and there's already some activity five hours after pitching the yeast. The yeast layer is beginning to build on top of the beer, and the "airlock" is bubbling about once a second, but it hasn't started going nuts ... yet.
ETA: And I'm very happy to see activity since it lets me know that I didn't screw up harvesting yeast. Yay!
I started prepping ingredients and equipment before noon and then transferred to stout to secondary. The transfer went fine, and I measured it's specific gravity at 1.024. I've also noticed (later in the evening) that there's some fermentation (yeast kraeusen and airlock activity) going on with the stout which is nice to see since I'd really like the final gravity to end up a bit lower.
Once the stout was transferred, I began the process of getting yeast from the trub left in the carboy to pitch for the barleywine. Last year I just transferred the barleywine directly onto the yeast cake in the primary fermenter I had just transfered another beer out of. That worked great except it made a bit of a mess because I didn't use a blowoff tube. This time, I decided to use a clean fermenter for the barleywine since the carboy the stout was in was pretty well gunked up from kraeusen on the inside plus overflow through the airlock on the outside. So I decided to try a little bit of yeast ranching. I dumped out the trub and did a little work to water it down and try to separate the good yeast from the sludge. I had four different vessels in use at one point (quart, 2 half-gallon, 1 gallon). I probably should have worked at it a bit more, but I was doing this while also brewing so I only took it so far. Eventually decided that one of the half-gallon jugs looked like it would probably to the job since it had an obvious layer of yeast on top, a cloudy layer that probably still had yeast in suspension, and limited trub at the bottom. (I also kept another half-gallon or so to practice harvesting from sometime later.)
My recipe for this batch is modeled after last year's barleywine recipe which was based on the Old Bawdy clone recipe (from Beer Captured, p.128). I had to make a substitution in the grain bill as compared to last year -- the brew shop didn't have Belgian aromatic so instead of 2.5 oz of that I used 2 oz of Belgian biscuit -- and the hops were fairly close but not exactly the same. Here's what I ended up with:
Type: Extract with grains
Batch size: 5 gallons
Ingredients:
- grains:
- 12 oz crystal malt (49-64L)
- 9 oz dark Munich malt (8-10L)
- 2 oz Belgian biscuit malt
- 1 oz chcocolate malt (338-432L)
- 12 oz crystal malt (49-64L)
- fermentables:
- 6 pounds extra light DME
- 6 pounds light DME
- 6 pounds extra light DME
- hops:
- bittering (60 min): .5 oz Magnum @ 13.7% AA, 1 oz Columbus @ 14.4% AA (21.25 HBU) - 3 hop plugs
- flavoring (15 min): 1.3 oz Mt Hood @ 4.7% AA (6.1 HBU)
- aroma (2 min): .5 oz Czech Saaz @ 4.0% AA (2.0 HBU)
- bittering (60 min): .5 oz Magnum @ 13.7% AA, 1 oz Columbus @ 14.4% AA (21.25 HBU) - 3 hop plugs
- other:
- 1 tsp. Irish Moss (added with flavoring hops)
- yeast:
- Wyeast 1318 London Ale III (harvested from previous batch of beer)
Brewing Instructions:
- Steep grains in 1+ gal water at 150 degrees F for 20 minutes.
- Remove grains and sparge with 1 gal. water at 150 degree F.
- Top up wort to 5 gallons.
- Bring wort to boil.
- Add extracts and bring back to boil.
- Add bittering hops.
- Continue to boil for 45 minutes.
- Add flavor hops and Irish moss.
- Continue to boil for 14 minutes.
- (put wort chiller in to sanitize sometime in last 10-15 minutes)
- Add aroma hops.
- Simmer final aroma hops 1-2 minutes.
- Cool with wort chiller.
- Transfer to carboy and top up to 5.25 gallons.
- (take sample for O.G.)
- Shake and swirl to aerate.
- Add yeast and put in airlock
Fermentation:
- Primary for a week or so.
- Move to secondary for approx 8 weeks.
- Prime with another dose of same yeast strain approx 3 days before bottling.
- Bottle-condition with 4 ounces corn sugar.
- Bottle condition for 5 weeks and cellar for 9 months to 2 years.
Target gravity:
O.G. 1.101 - 1.105
F.G. 1.023 - 1.026
ABV: 10%
Here are some details of brewing the barleywine:
Today was a very warm day. Would have been nice to get started earlier, but that's the way it goes. Setting up an oscillating fan out in the garage helped a little, but I was still sweating the entire time. Here's the timeline of my brew day:
12:45pm - went over to erik_frederick's house to use his mill to grind grains
1:15pm - grains steeping in pot and up to 150 F
1:45pm - grains out; started sparging & topping up brew kettle
1:44pm - flame on
2:14pm - at boil; flame off
2:20pm - DME in; flame back on (low)
2:30pm - at boil; bittering hops in
2:47pm - boilover :(
3:15pm - flavor hops and Irish moss in
3:20pm - wort chiller in to sanitize
3:28pm - aroma hops in
3:30pm - flame off
3:45pm - wort chilled to 80 degrees
4:20pm - barleywine in primary (with blowoff tube) in lagering freezer set to 68 F
5:20pm - everything cleaned up (including garage floor and propane burner)
When I filled the brew pot (up to the level of the lower rivets for the handles), I didn't take into account the large amount of DME that would be added later. [Note: these are the exact same words I wrote about last year's barleywine. Wish I had read all of that post before starting this brew day.] When I added the 12 pounds of DME, it raised the level a couple inches such that the pot was almost completely full. Last year I removed a gallon of wort which I added back in later. This year I just went for it and watched the level carefully. Made it through the hot break just fine. It wasn't until 25 minutes after adding the DME that the pot boiled over while I was checking my e-mail on my phone. *sigh* Made quite a mess and boiled over enough to put the burner out. I had to scrub a bunch of crusted-on wort off the burner afterward.
I used the autosiphon to transfer from the kettle to the carboy since ovrclokd was out, and I realized I was going to make a huge mess if I tried to pour through the funnel with no extra hands. After the transfer and putting the yeast (from the half-gallon container) in, I swirled the carboy vigorously to aerate. When the primary was full it looked like the level was at least 5.5 gallons.
Measured the O.G. at 1.112.
The barleywine is now sitting in the lagering freezer with the temperature controller keeping it at 68 F for fermentation. I just checked on it, and there's already some activity five hours after pitching the yeast. The yeast layer is beginning to build on top of the beer, and the "airlock" is bubbling about once a second, but it hasn't started going nuts ... yet.
ETA: And I'm very happy to see activity since it lets me know that I didn't screw up harvesting yeast. Yay!