Barley Wine

Tasting Notes

Traditionally, British brewers used the term "barley wine" to describe their strongest ale, brewed from the first mash runnings, where a single mash produced multiple beers of descending gravity and alcohol. Barley wine is the richest and strongest of British ales, with a wine-like alcohol content. They usually vary in color from bronze to mahogany, though there are some golden versions. They are malty, heavy, and full-bodied, and they have lots of fruitiness that is usually balanced with a high rate of hop bitterness and low aroma, both of which may diminish during aging.

Ingredients

Ingredients include pale ale malt or American two-row malt, which make up the majority of the malt bill (80-100%), along with caramel, dextrin, and amber malts. Dark malts should be kept below 2% of the total grain bill. Some commercial brewers will add sugar or malt extract to the kettle to achieve higher gravities.

Brewing Techniques

Traditionally, in order to achieve high alcohol content, the beer was left to mature in the cask for many months, being rolled from time to time to rouse the yeast to convert more sugar to alcohol. Most barley wines are aged after bottling from 1 to 2 years and some for as long as 10 years.

The information on this page was provided by beer-brewing.com (http://www.beer-brewing.com).