Mon Feb 27, 2012 1:42 pm
I brew lots of barleywines. I don't pay any attention at all to the bubbling in the airlock. I let them sit on the yeast in primary for a minimum of 3 weeks and usually 4-5 weeks. Big beers like this need all the yeast they can get to finish out. Often rousing the yeast once a week or so helps quite a bit on attenuation. All you need to do is rock it back and forth until you see yeast rising off the bottom but being careful not to splash your beer.
Your beer is suffering a bit from both the early racking and a problem with yeast health. Dry yeast needs to be rehydrated with plain water prior to pitching into the wort, especially with high gravity worts like barleywines. All that sugar in solution will create high osmotic pressure on the cell walls of the yeast and will damage the yeast. Ordinarily a packet of dry yeast will have almost double the amount of yeast you need for a normal gravity beer. One packet is barely enough for a high gravity beer. With the lack of rehydration and the resulting damage, you are underpitched even without having racked off the yeast cake.
Before you panic, take a gravity reading and take a sip of your hydrometer sample. If the gravity is too high and it tastes too sweet you can pitch another yeast. I would make a starter (1.5 - 2.0 liters) with some Wyeast 1099 or Pacman and pitch it into the barleywine at high krausen. These beer yeasts will consume types of sugars the champagne yeast won't so they will have plenty to eat. Let this go for another 2-3 weeks. Letting it go at least this long is important because of the underpitching of the original yeast. Underpitching will lead to the creation of unwanted esters. This second extended fermentation period will allow the yeast to clean up those esters. This cleanup will continue for quite a while after the gravity has stopped dropping so fight the urge to rack as soon as the gravity stops falling.
You beer is injured, but with a little TLC you can nurse it back to health.
Wayne
