Apple Brandy Barrel Aged Wheat Wine

I recently acquired an apple brandy barrel from Aeppeltreow cidery & distillery. This is some of the best brandy I've tried, with beautiful spice and fruit notes to it! The barrel echoes these, with an even more intense savory spiced aroma than the brandy itself. The barrel is around 26 gallons, which is more than I want to brew myself, so I recruited some friends from the B.O.M.B. (Barrel of Monkeys Brewers) group I started last year for group barrel projects. My friend Bob has a delicious Wheat Wine he brewed, based mostly off of one of the recipes in Stan Hieronymous's Brewing With Wheat. We decided it would be a great beer to age in the barrel. Along with Bob, Jim, Dan, and John, I brewed a batch of the wheat wine and we filled the barrel a week ago, along with a hefty amount of sampling of homebrew & commercial beers! A good time was had by all.

Barrel Aged Wheat Wine

brewed on: 9/16/11
OG: 1.110
IBUs: 75 IBUs
SRM:  11
mash temp: 156F

mash:
17.25 lbs Marris Otter
7.42 lbs White Wheat malt
1.36 lbs Aromatic malt
0.7 lbs Carapils
0.7 lbs Flaked Wheat


Hops (all loose pellets):
83.7 gm Centennial @ 8.7% - 90 minutes
25.6 gm Amarillo @ 7.5% - 30 minutes
43.66 gm Cascade @ 5.4% - 10 minutes
41.45 gm Cascade @ 5.4% - flameout

Yeast:
US-05 - 1 pack, rehydrated
Munich dry yeast - 1 pack, rehydrated


11/4/11 - Sample is showing nice clove and apple notes from the brandy barrel. Oak complexity is at a great level. We're shooting to empty asap, which is still 3 weeks off since we're brewing this week. Hopefully it doesn't get over-oaked. I'm really looking forward to this beer!

Second Runnings Beer - Thomas Hardy barleywine

For the second runnings beer from my Thomas Hardy inspired barleywine, I capped the mash with a bit more grain. Unfortunately, it ended up picking up an infection from the dry hops (I don't know why I bothered using a bag on this one when I usually don't for pellets.) I'm 100% sure it came from the nylon hop bag. It was a bland beer anyway, so no huge loss. I've got a Brett Blend #9 pitch from East Coast Yeast on its way, which I may pitch to see what happens, but I'm not expecting much. By the time the bugs are done I'll have a beer that had little malt character, old hops (by that time) and a bunch of brett. Doesn't soundvery good, or balanced, to me. Anyway, for the sake of recording recipes, I capped the mash with the following:


12 oz Crystal 60L
6 oz Crystal 120L
6 oz Pale Chocolate malt


hops:
0.9 oz Nugget @ 13% - 60 minutes
0.5 oz Challenger @ 5.3% - 15 minutes
0.5 oz Challenger @ 5.3% - flameout


yeast:
WY London ESB - half slurry from English Mild

Thomas Hardy inspired Barleywine

Although I didn't brew much over the summer, as usual, I've brewed a few beers since my last post and really slacked about recording them! I've intended to do an all-base grain barleywine, inspired by the delicious Thomas Hardy's Ale. A few friends and I each picked up a sack of Marris Otter in preparation. I was considering using a Bavarian Lager yeast for awhile, after reading a report that that's what Eldridge Pope brewery used to use, but went with a combination of Wyeast London ESB yeast (the Fuller's strain) and Nottingham. I love the character of the Fuller's yeast, and added the Notty since I know it can handle high gravity well.

I made this brew using first-runnings only, and had a tough time hitting my mid-1.120s OG I was shooting for. In the end I topped it off with 3 lbs of DME. I used the yeast slurry from my English Mild, split it in 2, and used half for the second runnings beer. The pack of Notty was pitched into the primary along with the slurry.

Barleywine

brewed on: 8/28/11
OG: 1.127
IBUs: 64
SRM: 10
mash temp: 150F

mash:
35 lbs Marris Otter
Hops (all loose pellets):
2.5 oz Nugget @ 13% - 60 minutes
1 oz Fuggles - 10 minutes


Yeast:
WY 1968 London ESB- 1/2 yeast cake from English Mild
1 pack Nottingham


5/2/12 - I tasted a sample of this the other day out of the secondary and it is tasting amazing! The malt character is just what I'd hoped for with a sweetness level right around the actual Thomas Hardy beers I've tried! I'm thinking about bottling it soon!

Old Stone Thrower English Barleywine

As I mentioned in my last post, we're brewing an English Barleywine for our latest BOMB barrel brew. We went with the Timothy Taylor strain of yeast (although I'd have preferred something more attenuative personally.) This beer is destined for a French oak red Zinfandel barrel in a couple weeks and I can't wait. We got the barrel from Stone's Throw winery in Door COunty, WI, so we've dubbed the first beer to go into it Old Stone Thrower in honor of the winery.

Since I've neglected my posting duties a bit lately, this beer has already been in the primary for a week. This yeast strain is definitely an English top-cropping variety, as it crawls up the bucket almost every time I rouse it, and has come out/filled up the airlock twice this week already! Others in our group have had similar experiences with it. I don't know how this yeast strain will turn out with a barleywine, but it'll be fun regardless. I know it definitely isn't normally used for such big beers though. The Timothy Taylor website lists their strongest beers as clocking in at 4.3% abv. I should also mention that while the recipe was written for 65% efficiency, lower than mine even for big beers, I neglected to scale it down mostly on purpose since we had a few other batches come in on the low side for OG. Here is our barleywine recipe:

Old Stone Thrower English Barleywine

brewed on: 12/27/10
OG: 1.095
IBUs: 57 IBUs
mash temp: 150F
color:13.7 SRM

mash:
19 lbs Marris Otter
1 lb UK Dark Crystal (one of my favorite movies comes to mind whenever I use this grain!)

Hops (all loose pellets):
1.4 oz Nugget @ 11% - 60 minutes
2 oz. WIllamette @ 3.7% - 25 minutes
1 oz. Fuggle @ 5.1% - 25 minutes

Yeast:
Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire yeast cake from this sort-of ESB starter batch

90 minute boil