Buzzy Beer, Planning Phase Part 2

I thought I would talk a little more about Barleywine and what goes into one. I got most of my information from the book Designing Great Beers.

In order to get a higher alcohol content you have to make your beer have a higher starting specific gravity. The specific gravity is a measure of how much dissolved solid is present in the beer. In the case of beer, the dissolved solid is mostly fermentable sugar. You also have to have a yeast that is more alcohol tolerant. Having a higher specific gravity to start often means that you will have a higher specific gravity to finish and your beer will have more of a malt flavor.

The other thing that makes Barleywine different is that in olden times they added hops to the keg before shipping it to the pubs. This is called dry hopping. The usual procedure with most beers is to boil the hops with the malt. The hops served as a preservative initially and then people started to really like the taste of hops to balance out the sweet taste from high gravity beer. Because Barleywine has a higher finishing gravity than most beers, it will be sweeter and thus need more hops to balance out the sweet flavor. Barleywine typically has a much higher amount of hops than your typical beer. If you remember, Benn Naughty Ale has around 35 or 36 International Bitter Units (a way to measure how much hops flavor your beer has.) Guinness has about 50. Traditional commercial Barleywines had between 50 and 100 IBU's. The Barleywines that win beer contests typically have between 75 and 150 IBU's.

Keeping these facts in mind I have set out to design a Barleywine that is in line with the standards and typical practices for ancient Barleywines. I am changing things a little bit because I have different materials available to me, but by and large I am planning a very traditional Barleywine. More on that later.