Well, I've been increasingly drawn to brewing beer. I just can't wait long enough to keep my thief out of my meads, so I need something to drink in the meantime. I've read through Charlie Papazian's The Complete Joy of Homebrewing 3rd Edition, and am still working my way through Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. That said, I've never been one for starting a hobby with something simple, so I took the info from Ray Daniels' book on barleywine and made up a grain bill similar to what is outlined in the chart. Here's the recipe. I'll try to post my process, but I was up all through the night, so some things didn't get written down/don't make sense looking at them now. 
5 gallon batch:
-10.8 lbs of organic 2-row
-8 lbs of light DME
-3 lbs of flaked rye (unmalted)
-1.6 lbs of caramel amber (for color and some flavor character)
-0.6 lbs of flaked wheat (unmalted)
-2 oz of Warrior hops (pellets, 14.2% AA, for bittering mostly)
-2 oz of Cluster hops (pellets, 6.7% AA, for some bittering, flavor, and aroma)
~8 gallons of spring water (this was the total amount used, including topping up to bring the gravity to the desired level)
-23g of Safale US-05 Dry Ale Yeast (Fermentis brand, two 11.5g packets)
-34g of Go-Ferm used to rehydrate the yeast
First off, I know you don't really need to rehydrate beer yeast, but for a higher gravity must like what I'm using (and this being my first ever beer), I wanted to make sure things got off to a good start.
So first, I mashed the grains for 30 minutes at 122 F, stirring every 5 minutes. Then, moved temps up to 150 F for 10 minutes. Then, moved up to 158-160 F for 15 minutes. After that, I sparged the grains about 2-3 times with water boiled in the tea kettle.
Next came the boiling. Now, this took me all night and into this morning because the stock pot I have only holds around 2 gallons. Thus, I had 4 separate boil sessions. The one thing I wasn't too sure on when to start the timer for the boil (like when I first start to heat up the wort, or when the boiling actually started), so the first boil was for 60 minutes from start of heat to off. The rest were done the second way, just in case.
During the first boil, I added 2 lbs of the DME, ~.5 oz of Warrior hops at the beginning, and another ~.25 oz 5 minutes before the boil was over. Second boil 3 lbs of DME, ~.5 oz of Clusters at the beginning, ~.25 oz at 20 minutes until end of boil, and another ~.25 oz at 1 minutes before boil end. Third boil got 3 lbs of DME, ~.5 oz of Warrior at the beginning, ~.25 oz halfway through, ~.25 oz 10 minutes before the end, and ~.5 oz of Cluster 2 minutes before end of boil. Final boil got the rest of the Clusters added 15 minutes in, as well as the rest of the Warrior hops at 45 minutes in.
After each boil, I cooled the stock pot down in an ice bath, strained into the fermenter, and started the next boil with more wort. I ended up with around 4.5 gallons of must that was at 1.124, so I added another gallon of water to bring the gravity down to my target of 1.108. I waited for the must to cool a bit, pitched the vigorously bubbling yeast (there was a good 1 1/2" of foam in the pyrex I used to rehydrate
Yay Go-Ferm!). I also added 1g of Epsom salt for good measure. This is airlocked and dropping some sediment still (not sure how to avoid this, but I'm sure I'll learn), and will probably be out of lag sometime soon.
Ultimately, there is a lot of room for improvement, but I think this batch should turn out at least decently. The efficiency of my mash surprised me, as the wort after sparging was around 1.050 before DME addition (half of my total gravity, wich is about what I was calculating). I'm also considering adding some medium toast Hungarian oak cubes to the primary. Does anyone have any thoughts/comments that might help me improve this recipe? Maybe using malted rye next time?
I have to say, I love beer, and hope this will be plenty hoppy, strong, and unique. Cheers! ;D
5 gallon batch:
-10.8 lbs of organic 2-row
-8 lbs of light DME
-3 lbs of flaked rye (unmalted)
-1.6 lbs of caramel amber (for color and some flavor character)
-0.6 lbs of flaked wheat (unmalted)
-2 oz of Warrior hops (pellets, 14.2% AA, for bittering mostly)
-2 oz of Cluster hops (pellets, 6.7% AA, for some bittering, flavor, and aroma)
~8 gallons of spring water (this was the total amount used, including topping up to bring the gravity to the desired level)
-23g of Safale US-05 Dry Ale Yeast (Fermentis brand, two 11.5g packets)
-34g of Go-Ferm used to rehydrate the yeast
First off, I know you don't really need to rehydrate beer yeast, but for a higher gravity must like what I'm using (and this being my first ever beer), I wanted to make sure things got off to a good start.
So first, I mashed the grains for 30 minutes at 122 F, stirring every 5 minutes. Then, moved temps up to 150 F for 10 minutes. Then, moved up to 158-160 F for 15 minutes. After that, I sparged the grains about 2-3 times with water boiled in the tea kettle.
Next came the boiling. Now, this took me all night and into this morning because the stock pot I have only holds around 2 gallons. Thus, I had 4 separate boil sessions. The one thing I wasn't too sure on when to start the timer for the boil (like when I first start to heat up the wort, or when the boiling actually started), so the first boil was for 60 minutes from start of heat to off. The rest were done the second way, just in case.
During the first boil, I added 2 lbs of the DME, ~.5 oz of Warrior hops at the beginning, and another ~.25 oz 5 minutes before the boil was over. Second boil 3 lbs of DME, ~.5 oz of Clusters at the beginning, ~.25 oz at 20 minutes until end of boil, and another ~.25 oz at 1 minutes before boil end. Third boil got 3 lbs of DME, ~.5 oz of Warrior at the beginning, ~.25 oz halfway through, ~.25 oz 10 minutes before the end, and ~.5 oz of Cluster 2 minutes before end of boil. Final boil got the rest of the Clusters added 15 minutes in, as well as the rest of the Warrior hops at 45 minutes in.
After each boil, I cooled the stock pot down in an ice bath, strained into the fermenter, and started the next boil with more wort. I ended up with around 4.5 gallons of must that was at 1.124, so I added another gallon of water to bring the gravity down to my target of 1.108. I waited for the must to cool a bit, pitched the vigorously bubbling yeast (there was a good 1 1/2" of foam in the pyrex I used to rehydrate
Yay Go-Ferm!). I also added 1g of Epsom salt for good measure. This is airlocked and dropping some sediment still (not sure how to avoid this, but I'm sure I'll learn), and will probably be out of lag sometime soon.Ultimately, there is a lot of room for improvement, but I think this batch should turn out at least decently. The efficiency of my mash surprised me, as the wort after sparging was around 1.050 before DME addition (half of my total gravity, wich is about what I was calculating). I'm also considering adding some medium toast Hungarian oak cubes to the primary. Does anyone have any thoughts/comments that might help me improve this recipe? Maybe using malted rye next time?
I have to say, I love beer, and hope this will be plenty hoppy, strong, and unique. Cheers! ;D
After the first boil, I realized that half of the hour "boil" was spent not boiling...lol.
