50th Birthday Barley Wine

[DeGarre]

In the next couple of weeks I will brew a barley wine, intention is to age and mature most of it for two years until my 50th birthday. Recently I brewed a 1074° and 8% abv DIPA by double-mashing with my 20L BM and encouraged by the success of this method I will now brew even higher gravity, aim is 1100°. Test bottle will be opened this Christmas...

For 24 litres:
9.4kg pale ale
0.4kg amber50
0.4kg crystal150
--------------
10.2kg-----------------mashing first 5.1kg then replacing the grist with the 2nd half and mashing that in the existing wort. The efficiency for the 2nd batch will be shite but with 90 minute boil and with as little sugar as possible I will try to reach 1100°.

Hopping very simple:
50g of FG and WGV each at FWH.
10g of Target 60 minutes
10g of Admiral 60 minutes
---------------------------------------This should give about 60-70 ibus. No need to go with fancy schmancy aroma hops as the beer will be matured for a long time.

2x Mangrove Jack Burton Union dry yeast

I usually carbonate with 1.5 litres of sweet wort itself (German speisen-method), this time with only 0.5 litres, although I will do some calcs on this one later on.

I would like to get a vinous, port-like character into the beer.

How's it sound?

[djbadger]

Great idea. I'm also 50 in two years (well nearer 1 and a half), perhaps I'll do something similar.

I made my first BW back in Feb and carried out a single mash with a lot of pale malt (don't have recipe to hand) and only got about 1085 in the end so it'll be at the lower end of the scale ABV-wise and probably not such a keeper as yours.

You are going to put the 2nd batch in with the existing wort? How about running it off no sparge, then sparge into a 2nd container. Repeat, adding the 2 lots of 1st runnings together for your barley wine and the 2nd runnings for a lower ABV beer? I've not used a Braumeister (BM?) so don't know if this is a practical idea.

[DeGarre]

If I remember correctly, last time I paused the mash cycle, lifted the malt pipe and grist, sparged into a bucket, replaced the malt into BM, added the sparged wort into the main wort and continued the mash cycle. Can't remember exactly but it worked very smoothly so I'll just wing it, it'll come back to me.