ResQ wrote:I am looking for inspirational recipes for a barleywine. I want to formulate a great barleywine recipe, but am not sure what kind of grains and hops fit well for the style. To tell you the truth, I dont think Ive ever had a barleywine. I will start there, but if you would please jot down some of your fav barley wine recipes/grains/hops. even an OG would be great.oh and yeasties too.
Thanks!
ResQ wrote:holy cow! those are all 3 very different recipes. I guess thats what makes them all unique. Thanks for the postings guys! and HerbalJoe - Grats on the longshot! thats awesome!
This isn't really one style. It's 2 according to BJCP. 3 if you count the emerging wheat wine style. And each of those 3 styles certainly have a wide-range of interpretations. Different ingriedients and flavors are appropriate if you want a more malt-forward version, hop-forward version, or with a wheat wine, softer, lighter, wheat/malt-forward version. Part of the reason the recipes you've seen so far are so different, is that they are very different stylistic approaches to a barleywine. The first question you should ask, is what kind of beer do you want to make? Malty or malty/hoppy? Lighter or darker? Carmelly or toasty? Barley or wheat? There is a fair amount of freedom here to generate the kind of beer that you really want to drink.
The main considerations are that 1) you need a high attenuating yeast to make the beer finish dry enough and 2) you need adequate bittering for the beer, esp. considering that bitterness will significantly drop out as it ages. In other words you want a beer will probably taste too bitter / out of balance when it's freshly bottled, might taste like it has firm supporting bitterness a year later, and provides a background bitterness only 4 years down the line. Again there is is a lot of freedom here as to how bitter you want it (to a limit as beers get saturated bitterness after a certain point in the 100-120 IBU area).
So my suggestion to you would be to look at all these recipes, try to figure out what kind of beer everyone is making, and why they used these ingredients. Think about the philosophy of the brewers. Stone (Mitch Steel), in their Old Guardian interview, said they prefer a barleywine to be mostly base malt with a lot of yeast character, and a small amount of specialty malt and some flavor/aroma/dry hopping primarily to support these flavors. They get a lot of that from their british-style yeast. Something made with Cal Ale might demand more specialty malt and / or hopping. I think when you try to conceptualize the flavors before you brew the beer and compare them to the finished product you'll understand the beers better, and more closely approach what YOUR ideal barleywine is. That's not to criticize any recipes, these guys all make fantastic beer. But their ideal barleywine isn't necessarily yours.
