Harvest Barley Wine - How far can i push it?

[b.all]

I've got a youngs barley wine i'm intending to make up soon, one of these: http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/aca ... _Brew.html

From what i could find out, this kit makes a 6.5 - 7 % barley wine but i'd like to up that a bit to make a good 9 -10 % beer. I don't want to add any extra sugar beyond the kilo required as that will dilute the hop flavour too much and lead to an unbalanced beer, a mistake many professional breweries make when producing a barley wine. Since the kit is for 24 pints the obvious way to go is reduce that to roughly 16-18 pints. Has anyone reduced this kit or in fact any other kit beer to this level?

I expect that the kit yeast is unlikely to be able to hack it at that alcohol strength so does anyone have a suggested strain which would work? I have Nottingham and Windsor in as spares for any unviable kit yeasts but i could pretty easily get other yeasts as well.

Thanks

[6470zzy]

I expect that the kit yeast is unlikely to be able to hack it at that alcohol strength so does anyone have a suggested strain which would work?

Thanks

Lavlin K1V-1116 will do the trick for you, it will eat through the maltotriose which the champagne yeasts do not, a common misconception when using a wine yeast for a Barley Wine.

Cheers

[6470zzy]

http://www.danstaryeast.com/library/wine_yeasts.html

The proof is in the pudding

[b.all]

by sugars i was including malt sugars in that term, i certainly wouldn't want to wreck a kit by adding just table sugar or brewing sugar. I tend to stick with just malt sugars though i had considered a little normal sugar for this. obviously breweries tend to stick mainly to malt but i meant that several commercial barley wines i've tastes have used a great deal of malt to get the required gravity and strength but have used a similar level of hops you would used in a pale ale and it just tastes unbalanced.

nottingham yeast sounds like a good bet, thanks for the advice.