English Barleywine on S-04

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Brewer #426450

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Hello, im planning to make my first, quite complex and high vol. recipe. I've come up with something like this. how does it look?

batch for 24L- about 5-6 gallons, every malt is from viking malt.
5kg - pale ale
3kg - munich dark malt
2kg - wheat malt
0.5-1kg - caramel 100
0.5kg- cookie malt
0.1kg - dark chocolate malt ( i have it laying around so why not :) )
yeast - S-04 from slurry
Hops
I have 30g of riwaka, east kent golding, about 50g of rody hodowlane 2/20 (but this will go for bittering) and some others. so ill drop a link to it, it will be easier to take a look.
also im planning to make yerba mate ipa on 25L 4kg 100% pale ale malt. i have it laying around and im not drinking it.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/1475866/awesome-recipe
boil time around 90-120 min.
 
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Gonna be pushing the upper limits of the alcohol tolerance, so make sure that yeast is really healthy
 
i'll try to reproduce it, maybe on yerba mate ipa or in some other way first. dont worry about it
 
in case of faliure, maybe ill water it down to 9%. it should work in theory.
 
Recipe looks good to me. I like the addition of a touch of dark malt.

The key will be in your process. If you usually get 75% efficiency brewing small beers, you may not manage 75% on a beast like this. Take a pre-boil gravity reading and be prepared to adjust on the fly if hitting gravity numbers is important to you. Not a bad idea to have some DME handy, just in case.
 
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I did a big barrel aged stout with S-04. I racked off a 5-gallon batch Blonde ale that I used as a starter and put a high-gravity wort right on top of the trub. IIRC, it worked very well. My notes indicate that it went from 1.098 to 1.022 for an ABV of 10% even. Since it went into a big barrel with batches from several other brewers in the club, I don't know exactly when it hit final gravity or if the whiskey barrel added a point or two but my brew session says it was at 1.0245 in 4 days.
Go for it!!
 
also i've been using sodium metabisulfite as cleaner. im thinking about switching to sodium percarbonate. since it doesnt require rinsing off and its harder to overdose and poison yourself (or at least I think it is). is it a good idea or anyone had bad experience with it.
 
Brewer #426450 said:
also i've been using sodium metabisulfite as cleaner. im thinking about switching to sodium percarbonate. since it doesnt require rinsing off and its harder to overdose and poison yourself (or at least I think it is). is it a good idea or anyone had bad experience with it.
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Never used SMB as a cleaner, only to remove Chlorides from my tap water. Small amounts are (as you noted) not dangerous, but ingesting a whole gram is definitely going to hurt you. The US FDA sets the Acceptable Daily Intake at of 0.7 mg per kg of body weight for daily ingestion, which is not a lot.
 
Donoroto said:
Never used SMB as a cleaner, only to remove Chlorides from my tap water. Small amounts are (as you noted) not dangerous, but ingesting a whole gram is definitely going to hurt you. The US FDA sets the Acceptable Daily Intake at of 0.7 mg per kg of body weight for daily ingestion, which is not a lot.
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SMB to remove chlorine of course, not chlorides
 
i've used sodium metabisulfite for cleaning everything. ok, ill add a bit of it to water (like 3-5g on 25L) and use percarbonate as a main cleaner.
 
metabisulfite is annoying to use, since it's leaving white spots everywere. i live in the EU. Max intake per kg is the same. but warning text has to be added from 0.1g/L. So ill go with safe route and add 2g on 25L which turns out to 0.08g/L.
 
Brewer #426450 said:
yeast - S-04 from slurry
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I really like this yeast, but it gives up the ghost at 10%. You will really need to aerate this very well since it was used in a previous fermentation (presumably). Even if it hasn't gone through a fermentation (dehydrated yeast is very good in a low oxygen environment), it's a good idea to aerate with pure oxygen 12-24 hours after pitch.

If you are using a harvested slurry, it should be aerated with pure oxygen at pitch and again 12-24 hours later to get the attenuation above 10%. Harvested slurry will absolutely need oxygen at this gravity.

Properly aerated, you can get this yeast to exceed 10%.
 
I've modified the recipe a bit to be ~9.5%. i sent the order, so no backing off from now on, also i bought additional packet of s-04 since i had a secound tought "maybe slurry is infected, its already 2 months old". god damn this beer is expencive.
 
Brewer #426450 said:
I've modified the recipe a bit to be ~9.5%. i sent the order, so no backing off from now on, also i bought additional packet of s-04 since i had a secound tought "maybe slurry is infected, its already 2 months old". god damn this beer is expencive.
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You can have S-04 slurry ready to roll in less than a week. Do up a 5 gallon batch of a low gravity Bitter or Irish Red, pitch packet or two (use the yeast calculator to determine) and let it finish and drop without a cold crash (though you could drop the temp a little to encourage flocculation). Rack the first beer to a secondary and dump your big beer right into the fermenter. Better have a lot of headroom and a big blow-off tube. :)
 
yeah, thats the plan. Im still going to make yerba mate beer first. just on 100% clean yeast.
 
dont use an IPA to prop yeast. At best you will get flavor transfer, at worst your yeasties will be very stressed(hops are not friendly).

If you are going to be close to the abv limit of your yeast you really need to pitch yeast nutrient go heavy with O2 and Over pitch by a fair amount. I would honesty recommend against propping the yeast vs buying fresh dry yeast and overpitching it that way. You will get a better ferment that way then repitching imo.

Your overall efficiency with big beers like this will be significantly lower then a "normal" abv beer.

just my 2cents.
 
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