Bottled: Worm Burner Barleywine
By scot in Home Brewing on Sunday, February 24th, 2013
I brewed Work Burner Barleywine back in November. It was a bit of “garbage” beer as I threw in some malts that needed to purged from the inventory. This beer also was the first one brewed after trying to determine why, at least to my perception, my high gravity home brews were coming across with high alcohol in the aroma/flavor. The beer sat in the basement on a heat pad, connected to a temperature gauge and wrapped in a blanket to keep it at 68 degrees. This process seems to have helped on a taste of the beer out of the barrel. A couple of weeks will be the real test.
Removing the bung from the barrel allowed the character of the beer to come out. It smelled fantastic: vanilla, oak, bourbon and molasses headed the sensation. I couldn’t stop quaffing the beer. Racking to a bottling bucket continued the onslaught of the barrel aging on the nose.
The beer did drop from 1.016 to 1.014 while in the barrel. The taste, of the flat beer, was dominated by the barrel but didn’t kill my palate with alcohol. Success???
I always use the bottle priming calculator from TastyBrew.com. It would probably easier to look back in my notes but the computer is always on; much easier than paging through the note book. 😉 I used 2.7 ounces of priming sugar in two ups of tap water, boiled for 15 minutes.
Because the aroma was so fantastic, I am going to be have a hard time not popping a cap before it is fully carbonated. Now let’s hope it meets my expectations. Enjoy!
Useless Fact: A fully loaded supertanker travelling at normal speed takes a least twenty minutes to stop.
Tags: home brewing, work burner barleywine