Time to brew the American barleywine again. This year it was a little different in that I modified the recipe to brew 10 gallons at once. I also brewed it earlier in the year so it’ll be perfect come October.

Additionally there were some recipe tweaks this year.

1. I removed the little bit of chocolate malt I used.
2. The gravity has also been reduced in order to reduce some of the alcohol based on multiple competition feedback.
3. The hops have been increased based on multiple competition feedback.
4. Because we’re using DME which wouldn’t finish as dry as my 142F mashed all grain work, I’m using a pound of table sugar to dry this out some.

Update: 4/23/2016

Fermentation is complete at 1.017 so quite dry. The beer tastes like you’d think a young barleywine should taste. It’s pretty abrasive and the alcohol is more pronounced that I wanted. Probably going to leave the table sugar out next time but this time next year this beer should be great.

Update 4/30/2016

This beer is already quite clear and you can certainly see it’s potential to be a great beer. Extremely hoppy going in to the keg. Will carbonate and bottle in about a week. I’m pretty excited given that I just tried one of the doppelbocks I bottled after correcting my carbonation issues. I think this will be the best version of the barleywine yet. Carbonation has always been an issue and I think I finally have it down.