Barley Wine!!

So on Monday here at Alley Kat Brewery I had the honor or brewing the 2007 edition of the Old Deuteronomy Barley Wine. This is a very VERY big beer, and is only brewed once a year. The recipe is pretty heavy... I can't say what it is, but the initial gravity is supposed to be 24.5 P (but I got 24.8 out of my mash!) and the IBU is supposed to be ~100 (depending on what calculation method you use).

Normally after the boil we are only supposed to have 12 hectolitres, but I finished at 13.5 hL. I think I got so much beer because I spent the extra time to make sure the mash was a solid 78 degC from top to bottom on the mashout (which makes sugars more soluble and protein less soluble, apparently), plus I took a very long time to run off from the mash-tun to the boil kettle (we only took the first runnings from the mash, no sparging... with a longer run-off time the liquid has more of a chance to trickle through the mash bed to the drain).
Anyway, we used a scottish ale yeast to ferment the beer, as the yeast had fermented out most recent seasonal "Kiltlifter Scotch Ale" very well... in previous years the barley wine was done with our house "english" ale yeast, so the switch to scotch ale yeast should be interesting.

Anyway, we're not going to tank-age it for as long this year, look for the 2007 barley wine by mid-March I think :)
Cheers!