In order to brew high alcohol beers, three challenges must be addressed. The first is the production of wort with the potential for a high degree of fermentation. The second challenge is producing high gravity wort. The combination of high original gravity with high degree of fermentation gives you the chance of producing the big beers you seek. The third challenge is carrying out the fermentation without problems from unhappy yeast. Brew Your Own’s Technical Editor Ashton Lewis offers tips on brewing and fermenting beers with a high alcohol percentage.

As the year heads towards the end, our thoughts turn to the fancy of a big beer. “But isn’t it too late? You need to brew big beers months prior.” Much like a tree where the best time to plant it was a decade ago, the second-best time is now. Of course, with modern brewing practices you don’t always need to wait a year to drink your giant beer.

Definitions first: What’s “big?” For ease of this discussion, we’ll put our floor at 1.080 OG. Ceiling? Let’s say maple syrup levels of 1.320 OG. Actually, if you made a beer that strong, we’ll applaud your reckless enthusiasm for very dumb projects. (And we’ll wonder how you plan on fermenting that monster.)

Now, we’ve both brewed big, stupid things like Drew’s now infamous Samichlaus clone called “Falconsclaws” and Denny is routinely creating bold Belgian beers. To say we have some experience is underselling it, but even with all that experience we’re still confounded with the changes that happen! 

When you go big you will find new challenges. Your previously well-documented and well-behaved mash tun will become reluctant to give up the sugar it shared freely before you fed it a gluttonous diet. All that grain takes up unexpected volume when mixed with water — messing up your intuitive sense of water amounts. How much do you collect? How long do you need to boil? And even, or maybe especially, your old reliable favorite yeast strains will require extra attention and coaxing to fulfill their life’s purpose. 

In other words, things get wibbly when you go big.

The Recipe

Your first challenge when brewing big is structuring a recipe that will work. Your first inclination will invariably be “let’s go BIG!” A lot of this, a little of that, etc. Being silly lends a goofy air to our choices with the exuberant energy of a kid hopped up on cotton candy at the local carnival. 

We caution you to remember that “this, that, and, oh, that too” adds up to a lot in a beer that by definition will have a lot going on. Use what you need, but sparingly so, because there will be a literal tun filled with base malt. 

Taking a cue from history, Bass No. 1, usually credited as the first beer named “barley wine,” was reputedly made from 100% pale malt. Having made several barleywines in this fashion, we can say you get a very lovely beer when you choose a characterful base malt. In other words, don’t expect the same results from 100% domestic Pilsner malt as 100% Maris Otter. 

If you do add character malts, tread lightly. If 100% pale malt gives enough character, you really don’t need much more! Our general rule of thumb about crystal malts is to keep them less than 10%, but for a bigger beer, we’d recommend starting even lower.

One thing that is definitely a nice touch is adding sugar. It has other advantages (more on this later), but from a recipe perspective, sugar’s clean fermentability leading an air of “dryness” is a boon to those attempting to make a less sweet final beer. 

The Mash

Mind the Volume 

We usually don’t have to think about our mash tun capacity as most projects don’t approach the extreme limits. When you’re going big, you need to mind the volume. Remember the rule of thumb that each pound (0.45 kg) of grain will take up roughly 0.13 gallons of volume (or 0.9 kg will take up 1 L) . When we brew in our 40-liter system (~10.5 gallons), we can fit nearly 30 lbs. (13.6 kg) of grain in that vessel. 

How much grain you can fit in will also vary with how much water you add. While you can gain some room by reducing the initial amount of water, remember that will make your mash harder to run off and impact efficiency if you push too far.

Adjust Your Expectations

Brewing science and brewing calculations are brilliantly on point when you’re doing something “normal” (e.g., beers in the 4–7% ABV range). So, we have a tendency to think, “I plug the numbers into my recipe calculator and those will be what I get.” Then we get upset when the physical universe refuses to confirm to the theoretical possibility. 

Go into this project with the knowledge that you probably won’t get what the calculators say and in fact will probably grossly undershoot. Drew’s experienced his usually reliable 75–80% efficiency plummet to 55–60% when going large. In part, this can be mitigated by adding more grain or sugar, but even when compensating gravities don’t play fair and square. So, prepare to accept lower original gravities or go for a longer boil and lower volume if the number is dead set important for you.

Sugar is Your Friend 

It wasn’t that long ago that any adjunct was looked down upon by craft and homebrewers as “lesser.” As stated earlier, sugar is your friend when going big, and that includes malt extract. Even in commercial breweries it’s not uncommon to use it for 10–20% of the sugar content to boost gravities. (For most homebrew-sized batches this would equate to 1–3 pounds in a 5-gallon batch or 0.5–1.5 kg/19 L.)

It’s not cheating, and it can make for a better final product. Besides, if you don’t use sugar in making a strong Belgian beer, you’re making your life more difficult for what?

The Ferment

Baby Your Yeast

We’ve repeatedly banged the drum that “Healthy and Vital Yeast Forgives a Number of Sins!” In other words, give your beer enough healthy yeast and you can screw up in a lot of ways and still get a decent drop at the end. That mantra becomes carved into a stone tablet of deity-derived wisdom when it comes to your large beer projects. Starting with an inadequate supply of yeast because you’re trying to save time or money is running straight into the arms of a bigger waste as your beer suffers for your penurious ways.

If you’re short on time, at least buy several packs of yeast to jumpstart your beer. For our money, the best thing you can do is plan ahead and create a “starter beer” — aka a beer brewed with the eye of generating a yeast cake. It’s a wonderful idea, because you get two beers out of one silly “big beer” idea. Just brew a low- to moderate-strength beer, say 4–6% ABV, transfer, and use a portion of the resulting yeast cake to ferment your big beer. You don’t want to use all of the yeast cake! When making his big Samichlaus-inspired strong lager, Drew brews a 5-gallon (19-L) batch of schwarzbier and splits the resulting yeast cake across 30 gallons (13.6 L) of the big stuff. (And remember, lagers are recommended to have higher pitching rates!) 

This is also a really good time to cozy up to your favorite brewery and very politely ask the brewers if they’re getting ready to dump yeast. Bring them a sanitized growler or jar and get more healthy yeast than you can shake a stick at. 

One other advantage to large amounts of healthy yeast — it simplifies the oxygen game. We used to recommend adding copious amounts of oxygen at pitching time and 12–24 hours after pitching — the idea being to encourage enough sterol production to create flexible new cell walls to handle the intense fermentation event. While we still think adding oxygen when you pitch is a good measure, we no longer recommend the later additions due to fears of staling and contamination.

Keep Your Cool

Big beers have a reputation for some aggressive fermentation characteristics — and we don’t just mean rollicking kräusens threatening to shoot out of your airlock! But because of the harsh fermentation stresses, yeast cells will often secrete compounds we consider “off-flavors” — think your phenols, esters, and fusel alcohols. Pitching a ton of vital yeast is step one in warding off those problematic sensations. 

The second is keeping your ferment cool, at least for the first part of the process. When the yeast is in the lag/reproductive phase is when a number of those stressor chemicals are produced. To combat that phenomenon, we recommend keeping your fermentation consistently chilly early on. Think 63 °F (17 °C) for an ale ferment. If you hold there for at least the first three days of fermentation, you’ll keep the yeast relaxed and slow down the chemical processes that cause extra heat and stress. After those first few days, you’ll want to allow the fermentation to rise in temperature to encourage a complete fermentation. 

Stay Patient

How much time your beer will take is one of those fun debates. In the older days, the recommendation was “seal up the fermenter and wait a few months.” It feels like most of those rules were needed due to poor yeast health. 

With all that vitality you threw at your beer, you should be fine to follow a slightly extended version of your typical fermentation schedule — think a month or two for your primary fermentation. After that, get the beast out of your fermenter and into kegs or bottles (assuming of course that your gravity has stopped changing). We do this to avoid tying up the precious resource that is a fermenter, but also to get the beer off any remaining yeast. While we’re not normally worried about the meaty flavors of autolysis, months spent on a bulk of yeast strikes us as a bit “extra.”

Your beer will be ready to drink, for certain values of that notion, as you go to package. Homebrewers tend to hold onto romantic notions of long aging times and while we agree there’s value to it, you’ll only learn how things change when you also try the beer young. So, package, try one, wait a couple weeks and try again. Rinse, repeat, and make it a regular ritual like your dental checkups!

Fixing Problems

No matter what you do, you will probably run into a problem or two as you make a larger beer. Here are our solutions:

Missed My Gravity (Low) 

First, ask yourself if your missed gravity is actually a problem. If you missed low and want to raise it, reach for the sugar we talked about earlier. You can also boil longer if you’re over volume or don’t mind producing less beer. If you’re at the end of boil, just make a sugar syrup and mix it into the still hot wort. If you’re in the fermenter, you might want to ask why is this now a priority?

Missed My Gravity (High)

Most folks would be happy to have this problem! It’s also fairly easy to fix with a small judicious dilution of water. You can calculate this as a straight dilution of 0 sugar points. For example, 5 gallons at 1.100 + 1 gallon of water would be (5 x 100) + (1 x 0) / (5+1) = 0.8333 or 1.083 OG. If you want to dilute later in the process, make sure your water is freshly boiled to avoid contamination.

My Beer Stopped Fermenting

This is probably the big scary one!

Is Your Beer Actually Done Fermenting? It’s not unusual for a beer with a high OG to end up with a high FG. Many mega-monster imperial stouts end up with final gravities near 1.050. Those are outliers, but don’t be surprised if your big malt bomb ends up with an FG in the 1.020–1040 range. (Remember a little extra sugar isn’t terrible — it can hide the extra burn of alcohol!) 

Use a Fast Ferment Test. When you start your fermentation, hold a portion to the side in a flask or growler. Put it on a stir plate or give it a regular swirl and don’t control the temperature on it! After a few days it should be done fermenting. You’ve optimized for fermentation completion, not flavor. The resulting gravity will tell you your rock bottom baseline. A good flavor-oriented ferment will end up a little above the base. If you’re more than 5 points off, then your yeast still has work to do!

Give It A Swirlie. If you still need to ferment a few more points, the right place to start is with a gentle swirl of the beer to rouse the yeast back up. No, this doesn’t always work, but it’s the least invasive way to get it fixed.

Still Not Done? Give it some fresh yeast. Whether from a re-hydrated pack of dried yeast or more yeast slurry from another batch (or brewery). Pitch a fresh dose of yeast and give it that swirl. If you have extra concerns, a little pinch of yeast nutrient may not ensure a further ferment, but it might calm your addled mind. Repeat until either the beer surrenders or you do.

It’s Still Not Done! Well, darn! First things first – give it a taste. Does it taste complete? You may be able to run with it! Consider other options – would dry hopping help cover any sweetness (and maybe re-kick fermentation)? Would a spirit like Bourbon add the additional potency and watering down needed to make the beer pop? Fruit? Spices? Etc.? Ultimately, with this stubborn brew, you’ll need to find some way to make you happy and anything’s fair game.

The Nuclear Option. Brew again. This is really the last resort, but it’s a possibility. Brew a beer to blend in with the recalcitrant biggie. Make something smaller, more hoppy, etc. to punch up the characters of your first beer. This isn’t without precedent — many great British strong ales are blends. But while we remind you that this is a possibility, we’ve both only done it in cases of mortal peril!

There’s your five-minute course in the art of making a big beer. Remember, lots of everything — malt and sugar for fuel, hops for break, yeast to turn your dessert soup into dessert beer, and a mix of patience and perseverance to drag it across the finish line. You’ll also quickly discover that playing with the big bold notes of these beers opens up other possibilities, whether it’s strange techniques like reiterated mashing to pull more malt sugars into the beer or the endless combinations of barrel aging and flavors that brewers are adding to the bold bottles. 

Keep your wits about you and stay calm to steer your big beautiful barleywine from mash tun to snifter glass!

Early-boil hop additions are often called “bitterness additions” as adding bitterness is the primary purpose of this hop charge. That doesn’t mean variety and other factors shouldn’t be considered at this stage. While some brewers may just grab the hops with the highest alpha acid content, others think more critically about the final impact these early hop additions will have. Two pros share how they approach bitterness additions in their beers.

Chris Kirk: Banded Oak Brewing Co.

Chris Kirk co-founded Denver, Colorado’s, Banded Oak Brewing Co. in 2017. In 2025 he partnered with restaurant and bowling alley The Werks to start Paramount Beerwerks in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. 

I like to use Hallertau Magnum as my typical bittering addition hop. I will also often use CTZ or Chinook in my IPAs and double IPAs. However, if I run out of a certain hop variety I would typically use for my bittering addition, I don’t worry too much and will substitute another variety to get me to my goal. Choosing a variety with a similar alpha acid percent is ideal, but a quick calculation can make a hop swap no sweat.

In my experience there will be a slight contribution of hop character that is reflected in the final product from your bittering additions — specifically tannins and phenolic acids. Especially if you’re bittering with a lower alpha acid hop for higher IBU beers. Bittering additions are typically economical decisions for me, but there are a few beers, typically with high protein additions like wheat or oats, that I like to add more hops with lower alpha acids to create a tighter bind in the boil with more polyphenols, resulting in a tight trub cone in the whirlpool and cleaner knockout. 

My bittering additions are typically T-90 pellets. I have used T-45 pellets for bittering additions — the difference is the weight needed to get you to the same IBU. A small bag of hops can go a long way with T-45, but they typically cost more so the economics only make sense if you can find them for a really good price. 

I definitely consider the early additions (75/60 minute boil) my main contributors to my IBU levels. I do attribute some bitterness to the flavor and aroma additions though and will factor that into my recipe development. In order to avoid too much contribution, I will design a heavily hopped beer so that I can use top up water at the end of my boil and pump in cold water to get my boil down fast at flame out and will add my whirlpool additions after the temperature of the wort gets down to around 200 °F (93 °C) to reduce isomerization. 

I was around during the IBU wars of the 2010’s with things like the Alpha King Challenge and tongue numbing bitterness battles that breweries were participating in. I can remember trying beers with upwards of 500 IBUs. Now it’s just the opposite and breweries are trying to create massive dry hopping loads in the juicy and hazy IPAs. While my understanding of bittering has not really changed, my practice and philosophy has changed to meet the market demand. I still prefer to make and offer American and West Coast IPAs, but I have dialed my IBUs way down. My first IPA recipe that I was brewing in 2017 when we opened Banded Oak was 65 IBU and now it’s down to 26 as I’ve moved a majority of those early additions to late-boil  and dry-hop additions. 

My last bit of advice for homebrewers: Watch your pH levels. Alpha acids will have a slower isomerization rate in higher pH worts. And if you’re using hop substitutions, always calculate your weights to stay consistent with different alpha acid percents: 

New weight = old weight x (original AA/new AA). 

Josh Nard: Liquid Mechanics Brewing Co.

Josh Nard is the Head Brewer for Liquid Mechanics Brewing Co. in Lafayette, Colorado.

I have found hop variety decisions related to additions early in the boil are very important. Oil content, alpha acid content, as well as the amount of certain types of alpha acids play a vital role in bitterness quality of the resulting beer. These “bittering” additions can’t be thought of as only for adding bitterness —some hop character definitely makes its way through the boil process from early-boil additions too. I have found the percentage of cohumulone, as well as alpha acid percentage, typically make the biggest impact on the finished beer from this addition. IPAs in particular benefit from the “cleaner,” more refined bitterness of a low-cohumulone hop variety, so I usually use Warrior or Simcoe® for IPAs. For traditional lagers or low-ABV ales, I have found lower alpha acid noble varieties impart a more pleasant bitterness. I usually use Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, Tettnanger, or East Kent Golding T-90 pellets for these types of beers. If I really need more alpha acid, I supplement the noble varieties with Zuper Saazer or German Magnum. 

For IPAs I have switched to some CO₂ extract for bitterness. The extract seems to bring a little less vegetal bitterness than pellets. It also helps lower the quantity of vegetal matter in the kettle, allowing for better yield. Extract can create an oil slick in the kettle, though, so I typically throw some pellets into the boil with the extract to give that oil something to grab onto and incorporate into the liquid better.  

I don’t do my bittering charge until 60 minutes into a 90-minute boil for West Coast IPAs. I get about 50% of the IBUs from that 30-minute addition of extract and pellets. I typically round out the rest with T-90 pellets at 15 minutes or later, and I always do a whirlpool addition. 

Early in my career it was beaten into us that you need a 60-minute addition for IPAs. That later changed to a first wort hop. I did first wort hopping for a very long time, but it seemed the perceivable Bitterness Units (BUs) varied. I still like a first wort hop addition, but I use them rarely, simply for the ease of IBU calculation. Now, I like a 30-minute bittering addition, followed by lots of late additions. They used to call this “hop bursting.” 

The landscape of IPA has changed a lot in the last decade or so. People (me included) seem to enjoy lower IBU IPAs with higher dry hop expression. I’ve learned a lot from brewing New England IPAs. It’s all about perceived bitterness and not particularly the calculated IBUs. Bitterness is one of the five basic tastes, and it’s not a very pleasant one in most cases. Figuring out how to incorporate bitterness into an enjoyable and refreshing experience is really the key. The less you boil, the more character you get from the hops. Just remember, it also means you get less BUs from the hops, which creates more hop load in the kettle, which I make up for with hop extract.

I have done mash hopping and I really enjoy doing it with whole cone hops. Pellets tend to stick up the mash. I usually wait for the sparge and just cover the top of the grain bed with whole cones. We’ve done several collaborations where we use mash hopping to mimic a hop back. I don’t think it makes a huge difference in the flavor of the beer, but we’ll take any opportunity to add even the most subtle hop character. At the very least, it makes the brewery smell amazing!

Let me leave homebrewers with a few pieces of advice. I enjoy the ease of calculating IBUs but it’s not something you should be beholden to. Trust your palate and adjust from there. You may find your IPA tastes best at 30 calculated IBUs rather than 80. You may find your Pilsner tastes better at 40 calculated IBUs rather than 30. 

Don’t be afraid to experiment with all of the new hop products either. Professionals are still figuring out how to incorporate these new products, and homebrewers have a lot of flexibility in how they can experiment with them too. These products are definitely here to stay.

Lastly, make changes incrementally and always experiment. Change one small variable (variety, IBUs, hop product, etc.) and take notes. These small changes will inevitably inform a better product.  

Dry hopping isn’t just for IPAs anymore! A dose of citrusy, herbal, or tropical hops in the fermenter can be a wonderful addition to West Coast Pilsner, barrel-aged saison, or amber ale. While one approach to dry hopping might work for a hazy IPA, you may want to adjust your process for other styles. You can trade off concentration, temperature, agitation, and time. Higher concentrations, warmer temperature, increased agitation, and extended time all extract more aromatics . . . but also compounds you may not be as excited about like astringent polyphenols, grassy aromatics, and bitter alpha acids. Let’s take a look at how each of those parameters change the finished beer. 

Hop Evaluation

The first and most important step in dry hopping is to evaluate your hops. Whether it’s a new variety or hops you’ve used before, give them a smell! The quick and dirty way is to rub a few pellets between your palms. I find this to be a more “true” representation of what the hop will contribute to the beer compared to smelling the bag. Rubbing also gives you a chance to evaluate the pellets themselves. Denser pellets are more likely to sink and require agitation to suspend them into the beer. Another option is to follow the American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) method of steeping the hops in cool water for 20 minutes in a French press before pressing and smelling, which we previously covered in “Ingredient Sensory Methods” found online here. 

If you don’t like the aroma of the hops, reseal the bag and use them for a whirlpool addition on your next batch. In most cases a little “weirdness” from the hops will blow off with heat or be scrubbed away by fermentation. 

Combining Hops and Beer

There isn’t anything that ruins a good hazy IPA like oxygen exposure. While the deleterious effects may be more subtle in other styles, I treat all of my beers with the same oxygen-phobia. While brewers (rightly) focus on transfers and packaging, one of the most important and treacherous steps is dry hopping. For our first double IPA at Sapwood Cellars I poured the hops into the top of a 10-bbl tank through the “dry hop port.” Within seconds a plume of hoppy foam was shooting at the ceiling (and raining back down onto me). Think 300 gallons (1,100+ L) of Diet Coke and a case of Mentos . . . After that we learned to add a pound or two of hops, close up the tank and allow it to degas. At home it’s rarely so dramatic, but be careful if you are dry hopping a beer that was spunded or fermented under pressure!

We now use a hop doser from MARKS that attaches to the dry hop port, allowing us to purge the hops with CO₂ and then add them to the beer under pressure. Some homebrewers have similar contraptions fashioned from a sightglass and butterfly valve, and they are a great option if you use a conical or a modified keg with a tri-clamp fittings on the lid.

Another great option is to transfer the beer onto the hops. At the brewery we do this in our infusion tank or brinks (both fitted with mesh screens on the outlets to keep the hops in). We add the hops to the empty vessel, purge it with CO₂, and finally fill it with beer under pressure. As a homebrewer, I did this in a Corny keg with the hops in a tube screen. Fill the screen less than halfway to allow room for the hops to expand and extract. Even still, this may reduce aroma extraction — one study found a 50% drop in extraction of linalool from bagging hops.¹ 

If none of these are options with your equipment, dry hop during the tail end of primary fermentation. Active yeast will uptake oxygen quickly and prevent most of the damaging effects of oxidation. Just be warned, active fermentation dry hopping can promote hop creep (discussed later) and will make it more difficult to harvest and reuse the yeast. 

Temperature

According to that same study, extraction of linalool (fruity aromatic) was nearly as rapid at 39 °F (4 °C) as it was at 68 °F (20 °C). The advantage is that colder temperatures reduce the extraction of the harsh/bitter resins and polyphenols. This study was conducted on a small scale. When we tried it on a commercial scale, we found that the cold extraction requires increased agitation to promote contact between the beer and hops. After our first attempt we found whole unextracted pellets at the bottom of the tank.

Colder dry hopping imparts a more “true to pellet” aroma, with fresher, more intense hop aromatics. That said, it can smell like sticking your nose right into a hop bag, rather than highlighting the citrusy and fruity aromatics. This is because warmer mid-to-late fermentation additions lead to a reduction in myrcene (woody/herbal). I prefer colder dry hopping in beers that are drier and less likely to “stand up” to astringency, including most drier or lower-alcohol beers (e.g., West Coast Pilsner, saison, non-alcoholic beers). For hazy IPAs we usually perform one dry hop addition after soft crashing and another close to freezing to get some of each character. Warmer dry hopping also promotes haze formation by releasing more polyphenols to bind with yeast mannoproteins.

Amount of Hops

Higher dry hopping rates result in diminishing returns. A beer dry hopped with 1 oz. per gallon (7.5 g/L) isn’t twice as aromatic as one with 0.5 oz./gallon (3.8 g/L). That is because it is more difficult to fully extract a larger dose of hops, some compounds saturate, and the green material of the hops reabsorbs compounds already in solution. 

To deal with the extraction issue, you can add dry hops in multiple stages. However, if you don’t have a way to remove the spent hops and introduce another dose without oxygen ingress you may be better off with a single dose. My preference as a homebrewer was to add half of the hops loose to primary and the rest to the keg in a weighted metal tube screen. The hops in primary settle out with the yeast, while the tube screen reduces issues with clogged poppets (at the expense of lower extraction). 

For the absorption issue, advanced hop products can help. I often like to replace 25–50% of the traditional T90 pellets with concentrated/lupulin “enriched” pellets like Cryo Hops^®, T45, CGX^TM, and LupoMax^®. Generally, we use traditional pellets for the first dose and concentrated for the second. Concentrated pellets tend to be higher in oil and more finely ground, and as a result stay in suspension longer even at colder temperatures.

If that doesn’t get you the intensity you are looking for, then hop extracts, oils, and terpenes like Yakima Chief Hyperboost^TM, Abstrax Quantum Brite, and Spectrum from BarthHaas are a great final addition. These are ideal because they can be dosed to taste, even in the glass (an easy way to make hop water if you have a keg of seltzer). While they are often sold for breweries looking to maximize yield by reducing reliance on hop pellets, none of them can completely replace dry hopping. IPAs without actual hops just don’t have the right mouthfeel or breadth of hop flavor and aroma. To my nose they tend to “brighten” the aroma, covering up dull aromatics with more fruitiness. 

Replacing some hop pellets with oils can also lead to a more durable hop aroma. Hops include a variety of compounds that can accelerate staling (e.g., metal ions). Hops can also have air trapped inside the pellets. Adding oils reduces these risks and creates a beer that still smells “hoppy” well after a heavily dry-hopped beer would fade. Extract companies have suggested to me that 2 lbs./bbl (1 oz. per gallon/7.5 g/L) is around the sweet spot for saturating the beer with a variety of hop compounds, and then topping up with oil; though we still most often add 4–5 lbs./bbl (2–2.5 oz./gallon or 15–19 g/L) for IPAs and double IPAs, and I can taste the difference. 

Agitation

There are many options for agitation: Dissolved carbonation in the beer, physical agitation of the fermenter, rousing with CO₂, recirculating pumps . . . I’ve even attached a Mighty Dwarf speaker onto a fermenter, which generates sound by vibrating the object it is placed on! I hooked it up to a tone generator and adjusted the frequency until it created a resonance with the beer.

The most traditional method is to simply allow the trapped carbon dioxide in the beer and produced during the tail end of fermentation to agitate the hops. The risk here is that the CO₂ exiting the beer can scrub out delicate hop aromatics and the yeast can pull some of them out of suspension. That said, the more fragile aromatics tend to be “green” like myrcene, and as a result less desirable in many styles. While I had decent results as a homebrewer with mid-fermentation dry hopping, it never seemed to work for us on a commercial scale. The aroma just never popped, and if we tried to agitate the hops we’d get harsh astringency. These days we rely on whirlpool hops and flowable CO₂ extracts (Incognito^®, DynaBoost^TM, or TerpSauce^®) for “saturated” fruity hop flavor.

As a homebrewer, I would wait a few hours for the tail end of fermentation to purge out the fermenter’s head space after dry hopping. Then I’d rock the closed fermenter to increase contact and resuspend the hops. With 620-gallon (2,350-L) tanks that isn’t an option, so at Sapwood Cellars we use a high-flow CO₂  regulator to bubble CO₂ through the beer for 1–2 minutes several times. I’ve talked to other brewers who will pressurize a piece of hose to send one large “blast” of CO₂ through their beer. 

As tanks become even larger, the only option is to recirculate the beer with a diaphragm pump to keep the hops in suspension. Impeller pumps can pull in air if the seal leaks and can increase astringency by beating up the leaf material. Peter Wolfe’s thesis “A study of factors affecting the extraction of flavor when dry hopping beer” found most hop aromatics peaked between 6–24 hours at room temperature.² This was on a small scale with a relatively low dry hopping rate. Mitch Steele (New Realm Brewing Co.) suggests that anecdotally, he has achieved the best results with “periodic” agitation over the first 48 hours after dry hopping.

If you have an opaque fermenter, pull a sample after rousing to check that the hops are in suspension. Check again in an hour or two to see how well they are staying in suspension to determine how frequently you need to rouse. 

Exposure Time

Traditionally, English brewers dry hopped in the cask until the beer was consumed. Most American brewers now prefer one to three days (although I’ve heard as long as seven). Again though, that really comes down to time, temperature, and agitation. Taste the beer each day and consider stopping your agitation or crash chilling if you’ve achieved the aroma you are looking for or you’re worried about extracting more astringency or vegetal aromatics. Both of these can be difficult to judge on a flat sample, but you’ll learn by tasting and taking notes.

Hop Creep, Diacetyl, ALDC, and GM Yeast

Hops contain amylase enzymes that turn unfermentable dextrins in the beer into fermentable sugars.³ If you are dry hopping warm with active yeast it could happen to you. Zach Bodah of Allagash is credited with investigating this and drawing attention to hop creep in 2017 after a dry-hopped beer over-carbonated during bottle conditioning.⁴ 

In addition to lowering the final gravity slightly, this renewed fermentation can lead to diacetyl (buttery off-flavor). Bob Kunz from Highland Park (Los Angeles, California) suggested we add Alpha Acetolactate Decarboxylase (ALDC) enzyme to a warm dry-hopped West Coast Pilsner we brewed in collaboration with him. ALDC prevents diacetyl production by “skipping” a step and using up the precursor (alpha acetolactate) by converting it to acetoin. As a result, it has to be added at the same time or before the dry hops, as it isn’t effective at removing diacetyl once it is created. Another option is to ferment with a brewing yeast that has been genetically modified to not produce diacetyl (sugh as Omega Yeast’s “Plus” series of strains). 

Hop creep is not a new concept. Gareth Young from Epochal Barrel Fermented Ales in Glasgow, Scotland, showed me a 19th century Scottish brewing textbook that spelled out the exact same issues. Gareth uses the technique at his brewery intentionally to create uniquely delicious mixed-fermentation beers, allowing the enzymes from the whole hops in the barrels to free sugars for an extended mixed fermentation while the hop aromatics interact with the Brettanomyces.

At Sapwood Cellars, dry hopping cold after dropping out the yeast has prevented hop creep . . . but then we store our beer cold after packaging and don’t send much beer out to distribution. As a homebrewer, you can do the same.

Evaluating the Results

IBUs

For a recent triple IPA we targeted 40 IBUs/ppm of isomerized alpha acids in the kettle. That drops considerably through fermentation, and absorption by the green material in dry hops. After dry hopping we sent a sample to Hopsteiner for analysis with HPLC (High-Performance Liquid Chromatography). The result was only 7 ppm of iso-alpha in the finished beer. However, all of the additional hop compounds from the dry hopping added 90 IBUs. The problem is that while alpha acid, humulinones, and xanithohumol are detected as IBUs with the traditional tests looking at light absorbance at 275 nm, they don’t taste as bitter as iso-alpha — that puts the approximate bitterness perception at 27.9 IBUs. All that is to say, it’s easier to talk about the perceived bitterness than the actual “number” of IBUs (especially because residual sweetness, polyphenols, alcohol, and other factors affect how bitter a beer tastes).

pH

Dry hopping raises the pH of the beer. Our solution is to acidify with phosphoric acid in the kettle into the high-4s at the start of the boil. This has the added benefit of lowering the rate of Maillard reactions in the kettle, producing a paler, less “malty” wort. Be warned though, it also lowers alpha acid isomerization (~10% fewer IBUs at a pH of 4.8 compared to 5.2 in one study.⁵ Fermentation drops that pH further into the low-4s. Dry hopping generally raises the pH back to 4.5 or so. That works for us — and helps promote beer stability — but in the end I’d be more concerned about how the beer tastes to you. A little lower pH can help a double IPA read crisper and more drinkable, while a higher pH can cause a pale ale to read richer and fuller. 

Sensory

One of the most important things you can do to improve your beer is to drink it critically and evaluate the results. Whenever I can, I sit down with our freshest batch next to something similar from another brewery. I try to be analytical, noticing trends (are my beers always more astringent, or contain a certain aromatic?). Do I notice a particular note from one of the hops that carried through, or are there aromatics that were lost? Almost as important is the hedonistic “enjoyment” (which beer do I find myself going back for another sip of?).

Tips and Tricks

For a long time, I underappreciated how much the right yeast strain could enhance hop aroma. Don’t be afraid to think like a Belgian when it comes to maximizing yeast character. Consider warmer fermentations, manipulating pitching and aeration rates, and blending yeast strains! Pair a hop variety with a complementary yeast strain. Here are some examples: 

• Cosmic Punch with Galaxy^® (passion fruit)

• Conan with Amarillo^® (stone fruit)

• London with Strata^® (grapefruit)

• Sacch Trois with Citra^® (orange)

• Hefeweizen with Cashmere (banana)

• Belgian with Krush^TM (bubblegum)

Don’t confuse adding more hop varieties with increasing complexity. Most hops contain the same set of aromatics in different ratios. Blending four or five varieties often creates an “average” hop aroma. That’s great if you are a big brewery trying to make a consistent core beer, but not if you want something unique and varietal. Stick to dry hopping with no more than three varieties in a single beer unless you really have something specific in mind. 

Hoppy Time

It’s easy to forget that homebrewed dry-hopped beers start with a huge built-in advantage — freshness! I get to go to Yakima to select hops each fall, have all the equipment and gizmos, and package beers with <30 ppb total package oxygen (TPO), but if that can sits warm for a month it loses that amazing “fresh” hop aroma! Like home cooking, homebrewers also have the advantage of using the ingredients and process that create your ideal beer without worrying about sales, marketing, or consistency! 

References:
¹ Mitter, W. and Cocuzza, S. (2013) “Dry Hopping — A Study of Various Parameters,” Brewing and Beverage Industry International, March, pp. 70–74. www.shorturl.at/CwWEF

² Wolfe, P. (2012) “A study of factors affecting the extraction of flavor when dry hopping beer.” www.shorturl.at/QeiCt

³ Young J, Oakley WRM, Fox G. (2023) “Humulus lupulus and microbes: Exploring biotic causes for hop creep.” Food Microbiol. www.shorturl.at/4LVhY

⁴ Hieronymus, S. (2020) “Brewing with Hops: Don’t be Creeped Out,” Craft Beer & Brewing, October.  www.shorturl.at/FhYn3

⁵ Jaskula B, Aerts G, De Cooman L (2010) “Potential impact of medium characteristics on the isomerisation of hop α-acids in wort and buffer model systems. Food Chem. Vol. 123, Issue 4, pages 1219-1226. www.shorturl.at/TTjLM

Time for a confession. This story was supposed to be a short “Tips from the Pros” column. It was straightforward: I’d find a couple pro brewers who make well-regarded barleywines, get some insight homebrewers can apply on their own systems, and turn it into two pages. That’s what “Tips from the Pros” is — some quick hitting info, ideally from brewers with different approaches on a subject. I ask the questions, they respond to each with a couple sentences, and I turn their answers into a column. 

That plan went off the rails pretty quickly. I found four brewers whose barleywines are amazing and I wanted to include each. There was a good chance one or two wouldn’t respond to my emails, and I’d be all set with two or three brewers for the column. 

Well, they all eagerly agreed to share their insights, and I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to hear what each had to say. That was the first factor in changing my approach. The second was they all had more to say than I anticipated, and it was all really great info. As I tried whittling down the answers to fit in the column space, I couldn’t do it. It was apparent each brewer spent a lot of time with their answers. Each has their own approach to brewing barleywine, and it was clear they all hold this style that is becoming harder and harder to find on store shelves close to their hearts. 

So we had to change the plan. Scrap the column this issue, and instead transform it to an additional feature, as told by four brewers who aren’t afraid to fill their mash tons to the brink, extend boil times, throw a bunch of sugars into the boil kettle, and sometimes wait years before tasting the final result. I think you’ll agree with the decision to share their responses in full. As you’ll see, even pros approach this high-octane style in different ways.

How important is the choice of base malt for a style like barleywine that often relies so heavily on specialty malts, and what’s your preference?  

John: Using your favorite pale malt is just fine. Barleywine can be any color you want except black. Unless it’s a black barleywine. Using some Munich in the 10+ Lovibond (°L) range can build up the toasty malt flavors in conjunction with your pale malt. If making a golden barleywine I would go for a darker pale ale malt and also Munich, and maybe some honey malt to really build that deep rich golden color

Ned: I prefer to split the base malt allocation in half between Maris Otter and 2-Row. For me, this helps reduce some earthy/dirty tones I pick up from an all-Maris Otter base malt bill. 

Brad: I have had great results using all Maris Otter or all Golden Promise for the base malt. I have also used these malts in a blend with 2-row. For Munichwine, I use Munich malt (10 °L) as the base malt, which is super good too.

Bobby & Tyler: We’ve tried a variety of combinations when it comes to base malt, as we have made barleywines with 2-row, pale ale malt, Munich, and Maris Otter. They all tend to lend their own nuances to the beers. Most of the time we go with 2-row as our base malt and then add in more specialty malt (Munich and crystal malts) to bring the flavor and maltiness to the beer. We don’t see a ton of difference between 2-row, pale ale, or Maris Otter because when you are adding in specialty malt, you can lean on those malts to do the heavy lifting on the flavor. Specialty malts will mask the flavor contributions that Maris Otter provides when compared to 2-row. We have never brewed a barleywine with just straight base malt, but we believe this is where a malt like Maris Otter would shine and bring those flavors of a traditional malt barleywine to the beer.

How many/what specialty malts do you usually include in barleywine recipes?

John: Orange Giant, which just won Gold at the 2024 Great American Beer Festival, features a very rich orange hue. I have made others through the years that were more of a deep red color. These colors come from caramel or crystal malts. I find layering different Lovibond colors helps build the caramel flavors. Say 40 °L for a clean, light caramel and up to 80 °L for a rich flavor. Once you start using 120+ °L malts you must be careful about getting a burnt flavor, unless that is what you want. Using some Weyerman Carafa^® dark malts can help bend the color without adding too much flavor in very low amounts. It really gets down to how much of the depth of caramel you are looking for. 

Ned: Our barleywine, Chris Barley in a Little Coat, uses six different malts. We start with a 50/50 split of Maris Otter and 2-row. Beyond that it’s a combination of four different medium- to high-Lovibond crystal malts in rough increments of 5% of the grain bill each, which help to layer a bit
of complexity.

Brad: There is always some Munich, oats, caramel malt (120–135 °L) such as Simpsons DRC^®, Dingemans Special B^® or Weyermann Special W^®. I will also use chocolate malt, honey malt, or aromatic sometimes. I work with about eight different barleywine recipes at Private Press, and they are all a little different.

Bobby & Tyler: Typically, we like to include anywhere from 3–6 specialty malts in our barleywine recipes, depending on the barrels we are using for aging. These malts will have an impact on the flavors and color contributions we want to come out in the finished beer. We will add 15% Munich or Vienna malt to add a touch of maltiness, 10% light crystal malt (10–40 °L) or honey malt to add a nice sweetness, 3–5% medium crystal malt (50–80 °L) to bring in caramel and toffee notes, and 1–2% darker crystal malts (90–180 °L) for more complex caramel and dried fruit flavors. Sometimes we have brought in 0.5–1% of pale chocolate or brown malt to give slight flavors of coffee or chocolate in the finish.

What IBU range do you target, and are hop additions simply for bitterness in this style, or do you do any late hop additions too? 

John: The higher, the better. Orange Giant is just shy of two years old when released. IBUs over 70 will really allow the beer to age out. It makes for a sharp beer at release, but all the hops will meld over time with the malt character and really allow the beer to shine. Where you add them is a brewer’s choice. A good, stiff, upfront charge and a big whirlpool dose is what I like. Another thing to consider is dry hopping. A good 2 lbs. per bbl (1 oz./gallon or 7.5 g/L) will allow the hop flavor to help with the aging. If you plan on aging the beer in tank for a while it’s best to wait to do the dry hop
before packaging

Ned: A good target for IBUs in barleywine is roughly half of the intended original gravity (OG) decimal point number. This helps keep the beer from being too malty-sweet, and perceived bitterness remains subdued. For instance, if we plan the OG to be 1.090, then I would try to build our calculated IBUs to around 45. Most of the IBUs come from high-alpha acid, early boil additions, however, I don’t mind an end-of-boil addition of East Kent Golden (EKG). Chris Barley uses a 0.4 oz./gallon (3 g/L) end-of-boil addition of EKG. I like this because it provides noticeable changes in the drinking experience as it ages and that late addition fades away.

Brad: I shoot for around 25 IBUS, with just one hop addition early in the boil for bittering.

Bobby & Tyler: We typically aim for around 65 IBUs for the barrel-aged versions of our barleywines. We tend to use a standard bittering hop like Hallertau Magnum, which is added into the kettle for the last 60 minutes of the boil. We have done a couple barleywines where we have played around with a whirlpool addition of Galaxy^® (20–30 IBUs) and we have gotten some great results. It adds a great citrus/ orange character to the beer, which was still quite prevalent after 18 months in the barrel. We haven’t tried any other type of hops but we feel like fruit-forward hops might work well here.

What OG are you usually targeting, and what approach do you use to help get there?

John: Some say you start with only pale malt and boil it for a couple days to get the color. That’s hard in a production scenario. I believe in getting terminal below 2.5 °Plato (1.010 specific gravity), 2 °Plato (1.008 SG) if you can. Do the math to figure out where your OG would be to hit target alcohol. I find 9% ABV is a good starting point for right away drinkability. If you want to age it out, push it above 12% ABV. I find a 2-hour boil is good for these beers.

Ned: Chris Barley comes in around 1.113 OG. We do use some light brown sugar and corn sugar to reach that high gravity. Combined, they make up about 14% of the fermentable ingredients by weight. Our boil is the same as any other beer we make,
60–90 minutes.

Brad: I am shooting for 32–35 °Plato (1.139–1.154 SG) for my OG. I always add some sort of sugar — brown, dried malt extract, liquid malt extract, honey, or maple syrup. I don’t boil much longer than 2–3 hours, so sugar is my friend.

Bobby & Tyler: We’ve found that our best results have been when we targeted a window of 1.132–1.144. To do this, it takes two brews to hit our gravity. We take the first runnings from our first brew, which is around 1.092, and start boiling that right away. We collect the second runnings on the first batch and use it for the mash water on the second batch. This bumps up the initial gravity on the second brew to around 1.116. On this next batch, we collect the first runnings and add it directly to the boil kettle. By this time, the wort from the first batch has already been boiling for around five hours and the combined wort is around 1.116–1.120. This is when we start our 3-hour boil timer and add all of the different sugars. We will add demerara or turbinado sugar (5%), and then sometimes we add dark Belgian candi syrup (5%). These will bring in those nice molasses-type characters that tend to go really well with the specialty malts. Depending on where we want our desired OG to land, we can either extend the boil or add golden light dried malt extract to bump up the gravity. Overall, our total boil time is usually around 8 hours for our barleywines.

As a homebrewer, would you (or did you) approach brewing a barleywine differently than you do now?

John: There’s not really any difference. Your equipment will limit you. If you have no refrigeration, keep the beer under 77 °F (25 °C) during fermentation at max. If you have temperature control then 70–72 °F (21–22 °C) is good.

Ned: As a homebrewer on a smaller brewing system, I think I would entertain the idea of a longer boil time than what we can do and have time for on our production system. Smaller systems have a faster boil-off rate, and possibly achieve a harder boil as well depending on heating source. I think that would be a good way to yield some complexity in the malt flavors. Or they could try only collecting the first wort runnings and stick with that for a high-gravity style like this.

Bobby & Tyler: As a homebrewer, I never had the opportunity to barrel-age my barleywines in an actual barrel. Typically, I would brew the beer, give it around 10 days to ferment out completely, then I would crash the beer to try and get all the yeast out of suspension. After a couple of days at 32 °F (0 °C), I would transfer the beer to a Corny keg that had been purged very well with CO₂ and add my oak cubes (1–2 oz./5 gallons or 30–55 g/19 L). I preferred using medium- to heavy-toast American oak that had been soaking in some of my favorite whiskey/Bourbon for a couple of months. I would let the oak cubes sit in the Corny keg for a couple of months at ambient temperature, then I would place the beer in the cooler. I would clean, sanitize, and purge another keg and transfer the beer into the new keg. There might be a bunch of sediment in the initial tank if the beer was not clarified, so be sure to pour through that before filling up the new keg. After transfer, I would adjust my CO₂ regulator to around 6.5 psi and let it force carbonate to around 2.2–2.3 volumes for a week and then enjoy it.

Do you have a preference for English/American yeast? What characteristics do you look for from the yeast?

John: Chico yeast has been great to get a clean ferment and good terminal gravity. Pitch twice as much as you usually do.

Ned: I think both are very similar, to be honest, especially in a big beer like a barleywine where the strengths of the other ingredients are going to be most noticeable. I would suggest using the variety that favors the barleywine style you are aiming for — American vs. English. We’ve used English with great results.

Brad: I like using a combination of Chico and Wyeast London Ale III. About 75% Chico, 25% London III, which keeps the fermentation moving and doesn’t throw too much green apple, even at 68 °F (20 °C). There are some recipes that use all London Ale III, which I ferment at 64 °F (18 °C).

Bobby & Tyler: Our go-to yeast for barleywine is London Ale III, which is also our house yeast for hazy IPAs, as we prefer the smooth caramel flavors and low bitterness of the English-style barleywines. We tend to ferment barleywine at around 66 °F (19 °C), which is on the lower end of the range for this yeast, but it adds great mouthfeel and also brings some nice esters that go really well with the specialty malts. We tend to mash around 144–148 °F (62–64 °C) due to the lower attenuation (60%) of this yeast when fermenting these bigger beers.

Do all of your barleywines get barrel-aged? And how long do they age prior to release?

John: Not all need to be barrel-aged. If you do barrel-age yours, make sure to save a portion of straight barleywine so you can compare how the two different versions aged out. The best barrel-aged barleywines, say in Bourbon barrels, take at least 11 months. What happens is at first you get the heat and fire of the Bourbon. Some will pull off then, and the beer is harsh. You need months, say 5–11, or more, to get all the wood character in the beer. Oak, vanilla, smoke, they all
take time.

Ned: No, we usually don’t mess around with barrels. We have done so in the past, but the barrels were rather neutral and contributed very little barrel characteristics to the final beer. If anything, it might have helped give the beer a more velvety mouthfeel.

Brad: I do not release any barleywines that are not barrel-aged. My barleywines range from 10–30 months spent in barrel.

Bobby & Tyler: We have never released a barleywine that hasn’t been barrel-aged. The amount of bitterness that we put into the barleywines does not lend well to a non-barrel-aged version. If I were to make a non-barrel-aged version, I would probably bring the IBUs in around the lower 20s. 

Our barleywines age for 18 months at a minimum, but they have gone as long as 36 months. We sample the barrels twice during the 18-month period. After sampling, we decide if the beer should sit longer or if we are going to rack it into another barrel or package the beer with or without adjuncts. We have done some double and triple barrel-aging, which adds to the complexity of flavors as well. When barrel-aging for this long, you will have to account for barrel loss (the angel’s share). We do not top up our barrels, so as the water evaporates it concentrates the flavors, raises the ABV, and adds to the mouthfeel of the beer.

What changes do you taste in these beers as they mature over months or years?

John: The beer will start to oxidize, and if all goes right, only in the good ways. The caramel flavors will get richer and the hops mellower. Late in 2023 I tapped a 1998 Full Sail Old Boardhead barrel-aged barleywine keg. Perfect aging conditions. It was outstanding and surreal at 25 years old.

Ned: As mentioned before about the late hop addition we add, the younger the beer is the more that is noticeable at the start. Within six months or so, the late-hop character gives way and more of the malt depth comes through. In terms of years, I tend to notice the perceived sweetness continues to climb. After a few years or so, I don’t notice any notable changes.

Brad: I look for oxidation to calm the intensity of the base beer and the barrel. There is a zone where the beer becomes softer and more palatable, which is what I look for.

Bobby & Tyler: Beers that have aged in barrels that are younger tend to be more spirit-forward and have woody character. Barrels with a lighter toast tend to have more fresh wood, hints of vanilla, coconut, and even some herbal notes. Medium-toast barrels have more spice notes like cinnamon or nutmeg, and caramel, toffee, and dried fruit characters such as fig or dates can also be present. Heavy toast brings out more of the chocolate, coffee/espresso, spice, campfire, marshmallow, and tobacco characters. American oak tends to have more vanilla character than French oak. Aging a beer for a longer period in barrels will allow the beer to extract more flavors and layers of complexity. Knowing what a certain barrel’s character will give you will not only help with deciding if the beer is ready to package or spend more time in another barrel, but also with recipe development.

Any unique spirit barrels you’ve aged barleywine in that you’d recommend homebrewers try to replicate?

John: Bourbon or a dark spirit barrel is good. Gin barrels that had Old Tom are good as well.

Brad: Bourbon always works! Cognac has been fun, and Port can be a nice blending component as well.

Bobby & Tyler: One of our most unique releases was a barleywine that we aged in French oak barrels with a medium-toast level. These barrels were first used to age Port wine and then Bourbon. The outcome was complex flavors and aromas of dark fruits, berries, dark chocolate, a hint of espresso, almond, vanilla creaminess, cinnamon, and toffee. Additionally, the tannins from the Port gave it a slightly dry finish. We also aged a barleywine in oak barrels that contained Bourbon, then aged maple syrup. This imparted huge flavors and aromas of maple syrup, butterscotch, cinnamon, campfire, and marshmallow with a sweet candy character finish. If you wanted to try to replicate these at home, but didn’t have access to barrels like these, we’d recommend soaking oak chips or cubes in Bourbon for a good length of time, then soaking in Port wine or maple syrup.

Any other barleywine brewing advice for homebrewers?

John: Keep the tradition going. It’s hard to find these beers nowadays.

Ned: 1. Try to stick with ingredients originating from the country for the style you wish to brew.

2. Use a variety of specialty malts in different Lovibond colors to layer complexity. Stay away from roasted malts though.

3. Mash in at 150–152 °F (66–67 °C). The beer will already be malty and sweet, so you don’t want to promote under-attenuation with a higher mash temperature.

4. Pitch incredibly healthy yeast and lots of it, and maybe even consider a second pitch once fermentation is 50% done. And use yeast nutrients.

5. Don’t be afraid to boil longer if needed to reach a higher OG. Or add sugar. You don’t want to leave yourself with too low of an ABV in the end, especially if you plan to age the beer for a year or two.

Brad: Don’t overthink it. Barleywine is more about the age, oxidation, and depth. It is not about hop profile, adjuncts, or genetically modified yeast. Start with high-quality European malt and take your time with it.

Bobby & Tyler: Try different types of wood. Make a 5-gallon (19-L) batch of barleywine and split it into five different 1-gallon (3.8-L) batches, each on a different type of wood, different toast level, or with oak alternatives aged in different spirits. You will be able to see what each version brings to the table and which you prefer. 

If you use a small barrel, like a 5-gallon (19-L) barrel, you have to remember you will have a bigger oak surface area and it will take less time to extract all the barrel characters you are looking for. Be sure to purge out the barrel with CO₂ before you rack the beer to prevent initial oxidation. 

Another thing to try is experimenting with different sugars. There are a lot of sugars out there that have very unique flavors to them, which could add a nice complexity to a barleywine. 

I started my book Brewing Barley Wines — Origins, History, and Making them at Home by defining the style. I thought this would be the easy part of this book before digging deep into its history, brewing ingredients and methods, and offering recipes for homebrewers. But the more I considered it, the less certain I became. The style seems to have had something of a murky past, with modern definitions being somewhat arbitrary. We do know, of course, that it is originally an English style, but one which has been taken up in relatively recent times by American craft brewers. There is a complete and rather long section in the book where I look at the history of the style and at modern versions of the beer and tried to determine what the parameters of the beer should be.

I’ll provide a definition, but I want you to understand that these defining measurements are my numbers and reflect my dislike of trying to pin down beer styles too precisely. I know I have written previously on putting numbers to beer styles in my books, but I have always regarded such attempts as mere guidelines — no one ever handed me stone tablets with specific instructions carved into them. 

But, because numbers are required to understand styles, here you go:

OG = 1.080–1.140+ (20–32 °P)

FG = 1.025–1.035 (6.1–8.8 °P)

ABV = 8.5–13.5%+

IBU = 40–100

Color = Copper to dark red/brown

That is a rather broad description that includes a variety of beers (other than imperial stouts) with differing designations and which may not be regarded as barleywines by others. For example, double and triple IPAs would fit those parameters. Barleywines are best long matured so these IPAs would lose all their hop character on aging. They would then taste like a barleywine with a high hop bitterness. Indeed, I came across a double IPA from a local brewery and when I took a taste, I said “this is really a barleywine.” The brewer agreed with me and said he called it a double IPA because his customers preferred IPAs!

In making this broad definition, I looked at the history of the style and at commercial examples and concluded that there is a huge variation in strength and bitterness in these beers and that a broad definition was appropriate. Besides, when brewing for your own pleasure you do not want to be limited by more narrow definitions such as those espoused by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) — you only need to follow those when entering competitions. 

My definition could include styles such as old and stock ales, audit ales, October and March ales, Burton ales, Scotch ales, some double and triple IPAs, and even wheatwine. I realize this selection is quite arbitrary and if you have doubts about my selections, read the first chapter in my book where I go into the matter more deeply.

One of the oddities about commercial barleywines is that they may not be named that at all. From England we have Thomas Hardy Ale, J.W. Lees’ series of Harvest Ales, and Fuller’s Vintage Ale. 

Brewing Barleywines

Let’s get away from the what and look at how and why. 

Grains

Pale malt is, of course, the basis of barleywine. If you are going to go the all-grain route, any good 2-row pale malt, U.S. or English, is fine. If you want to be as traditional as possible and use English malts then go with the Maris Otter variety (or even Golden Promise). I am not sure it really makes any difference as I have also had good results with American 2-row pale malt. It is advisable to use a malt that you know what extract it gives you on your brewing system because this will help to ensure that you meet your target original gravity (OG). 

It is important in brewing a barleywine from all-grain that before you start you make sure that your mash tun can hold the required volume. For example, let’s assume that you want your barleywine to have an OG of 1.110, that you are going to sparge and collect a full 6–7 gallons (23–26.5 L) of wort, which you will boil down to 5 gallons (19 L), and that your brewhouse efficiency is 70%, so you will get a yield of 1.026/lb. (0.45 kg)/gallon (3.8 L). Then:

Total points required = 110 x 5 = 550

Weight of pale malt = 550 / 26 = 21.2 lbs. (9.6 kg)

That is a lot of grain that has to fit in your mash tun, and it will be accompanied by, say, 1.25 qts. (0.6 L) mash water per lb. grain, or 21.2 x 1.25 = 26.5 qt., or 6.6 gallons (25 L). That will be a total volume close to 10 gallons (38 L) and means you had better be sure that all this will fit into your mash tun before you start the brew. If you have only a 5-gallon (19-L) mash tun, you must obviously brew a lesser volume, 2.5 gallons (9.5 L) in the example above, or 3 gallons (11 L) at a lower original gravity. Check the volume of your mash tun by filling it with measured amounts of water. I know that is a bore and a pain, but you only have to do it once and it will avoid a lot of trouble down the road!

In fact, given that barleywine will be kept a long time and will be drunk only in small quantities and the work involved in handling such large amounts of grain, keeping to 2.5–3 gallons (9.5–11 L) is a good idea if you are new to the style. There are ways around this sizing problem if you do have a smaller mash tun, however, which I shall discuss later.

Caramel/crystal malts can be, and often are, included in a barleywine grain bill, although opinions differ about the wisdom or need to do so. The idea behind their use is to add some caramel and nutty flavors and, depending upon the caramel malt used, some red color hints in the finished beer. But such malts also contribute sweetness and some unfermentable sugar, both of which can make the finishing gravity of the beer higher than desirable. Caramel malts above 80 °L will be much redder in color, but can also be harsher in flavor and not, in my opinion, really suitable for barleywine. I would choose a 60 or 80 °L caramel malt if I were adding one, but some brewers prefer to use those at the lighter end of the range, say, 20–40 °L, since there is going to be significant color development due to Maillard reactions in a long boil, such as 3 hours or so as may be necessary in the basic method of barleywine brewing.

Malt extracts

If going the extract route, the first choice would be to use a pale extract to correspond with the pale barley malt used in all-grain brewing, especially if you wanted your barleywine to be on the pale side. Any good quality malt extract will be fine, but you should check with your supplier or the manufacturer as to exactly what yield a particular sample will give. Many brewers consider that Maris Otter grain malt is the best (and traditional) choice for barleywine, and there is a liquid extract available made only from Maris Otter. But if you want something darker in color, what do you do? You could, of course, steep a medium-grade of caramel malt (say 80 °L) in hot water at around 150 °F (66 °C) for 20 minutes or so, run the liquid into the boil kettle, rinse the grains again with hot water, add the rinses to the first running, then dissolve the malt extract and bring the wort up to boil volume.

Hops

Hop aroma and character are not necessarily a part of barleywine flavor and aroma. If these beers are to be long matured, perhaps for a year or more, then any hop aroma and character will have largely dissipated by the time the beer is drunk. Most of what you want from the hops is bitterness. I know that is something of a sweeping statement, and that some brewers, especially commercial brewers, might not wish to keep the beer so long before selling it. In fact, at Brewport Brewing Co., where I assist in brewing, we have matured a barleywine for just over a month before serving it on tap in the bar. That was partly because it was at the low end of the barleywine OG range (1.088) and partly because of limitations on tank availability, and we did put some of it into a couple of casks for longer aging. The point is that in the case of short maturation time you can late-hop or dry-hop your barleywine if you so wish. 

But first, let’s deal with bittering hops, and a couple of basic points. First is that alpha acid extraction and isomerization are not very efficient processes in worts of very high specific gravity. Or to put it another way, hop utilization is low in barleywine. In an all-extract brew, you can improve utilization by adding a good part of the extract towards the end of the boil. The second point is that hop residues hold up some of the wort after the trub settles out at the end of the boil. This means that you want to use as small an amount of hops as possible to avoid such losses. Therefore, for bittering you should use only hops high in alpha acid, say at 10% alpha and above. This limits your choice somewhat, but for bittering purposes you do not need to be too picky regarding hop variety. Note that I am not saying that low alpha acid hops cannot be used in barleywines, because of course they have been, especially those brewed before the latter half of the twentieth century. I am simply saying that the most practical and efficient use of hops requires that they be high in alpha acids.

You can use any high-alpha variety from any source: American (such as Columbus, Centennial, Magnum, Warrior, etc.), English (such as Admiral), German (such as Magnum, Polaris, etc.), Australian (such as Galaxy^®), or New Zealand (such as Waimea^TM and Green Bullet). Others you may consider are Galena (~12% alpha), Amarillo^® (~11% alpha), Mosaic^® (~12% alpha), Simcoe^® (~11% alpha), Bravo (~13% alpha), Pacific Gem (~14% alpha), and so on. You might also consider  Cryo^® hops or other Type 45 pellet hops, which contain up to 26% alpha acids. Although most brewers use Cryo^® hops for aroma these days, the original purpose of T-45 — or lupulin enriched — hops was to simply increase alpha acids by removing cone plant matter before pelletization. I have used Ekuanot LupuLN2^® pellets as a bittering hop in brewing an all-extract barleywine at OG 1.094 with good results. At 22.8% alpha acids, it took only 1 oz. (28 g) in 4.7 gallons (18 L) for a nominal 90 IBUs, and gave a remarkably small amount of trub, minimizing wort loss on separation of the latter. 

Calculating IBU levels is difficult because the utilization varies according to the gravity of the wort. Depending upon the brewing method used you will achieve only 10–15% utilization, so use the lower figure for OG above 1.110 and the higher value for OG 1.090–1.110 and plug this into whatever equation you use.

Yeast

Yeast plays a critical role in the brewing of barleywines. It can, of course, add flavors to the beer, depending upon the strain and on fermentation conditions. But the most important thing yeast must do in barleywine brewing is give good attenuation by pushing the final gravity down to less than 1.035, and preferably around 1.025, depending upon OG. In other words, you need it to ferment down to at least 70–75% of the OG or your beer will be cloyingly sweet, and the sweetness will overpower all other flavors. With most other styles and yeast strains this is not a problem, but in the case of barleywines the yeast is producing a lot of alcohol, to the extent that the alcohol can actually “poison” the yeast and inhibit it from forming more alcohol. That means that you need to pitch the wort with a lot of active yeast grown from a strain known to give good attenuation and ability to ferment high-alcohol styles.

What exactly does “a lot of active yeast” mean? Well, a commonly accepted requirement is to pitch with 1 million cells/mL/°P, (see, for instance, Barley Wine, Fal Allen and Dick Cantwell, 1998, Brewers Publications). For high-gravity beers a rate of 1.4 million cells/mL/°P is suggested in Yeast (Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff, 2010, Brewers Publications), and I would agree with that. This means that 5-gallons (19-L) of barleywine at 1.100 (23.8 °P)  needs:

1.4 x 10⁶ cells/mL/°P x 19 liters x 23.8 °P x 1,000 mL/L = 600 x 10⁹ cells

That is 600 billion cells, and that is what I mean by “a lot of active yeast.” 

Table 1 gives yeast requirements for different original gravities, rounded for convenience. Looking at the table, you’ll see a requirement of pitching about 6–8 packs of a liquid yeast, assuming 100 billion cells per pack. Further, these packs lose activity on storage so they need to be as fresh as possible. In practice, of course, you would not want to use so many packs and would probably prefer to make a starter. 

Dried yeasts have the advantage of being quite stable when stored for long periods, losing perhaps only 10% of its activity over a year if stored in a refrigerator. One standard packet (11.5 g) contains about 200 billion active cells, so you would need 3-4 packets for a 5-gallon (19 L) brew if you are pitching it directly. Dried yeasts are generally less expensive on a single pack basis than liquid yeasts, so are even more economical on an active cell basis, so you may well be content to use four packs and not bother with making a starter. The disadvantage of dried yeasts is that not all strains are suited to the drying process, so there is a narrower range of strains available than is the case with liquid yeasts.

You want a strain that will give you at least 70–75% attenuation, and for barleywine an ale yeast is pretty much mandated. I like the Chico yeast — for example, the liquid Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) or the dried SafAle US-05 — as well as Lallemand Nottingham Ale yeast. I have also had good results with Wyeast 1098 (British Ale) and SafAle S-04. You should also use a yeast nutrient for all barleywine fermentations and oxygenate the wort before pitching if using liquid kräusen.

Remember that, in general, higher fermentation temperatures tend to result in more ester formation. Barleywines generate quite a lot of heat during fermentation, so try to control the temperature as much as possible. You need a good deal of head space in your fermenter as these beers generate a very high head of kräusen.

Brewing Methods

There are at least five methods that can be employed to reach the high original gravity required for barleywines that are practical for homebrewers: 

Method I

Use only malt extract. This is very simple, does not take a long time, and adding half the extract towards the end of the boil permits improving hop utilization, so this method is good for reaching high bitterness levels.

Method II

Straight grain mash, collecting all extract with sparging, then boiling down to your desired OG. This is the classic method for brewing barleywine, with the boil lasting hours. It is straightforward but very time-consuming. This method does result in the formation of Maillard products, which many regard as giving the best barleywine flavors.

Method III

Straight grain mash but collect only first runnings as in above example, then boil down to desired OG, or adjust gravity with extract or sugar to target value. Simpler and quicker than Method II but yields a smaller volume and less in the way of Maillard products. If you collect the second runnings from the mash you can brew a “lesser,” lower-gravity beer with the second runnings – this, of course, is parti-gyling.

Method IV

Do two concurrent straight grain mashes, collect only first runnings from each, combine them and boil down or adjust with extract/sugar as required to reach target gravity. Obviously, this is quite complicated and time-consuming but, again, you could parti-gyle the second runnings from each mash. If you happen to have two mash tuns, you shorten the time!  

Method V

Do a straight grain mash of medium target gravity, collect all wort and use as mash water for a second straight grain mash, collecting all run off with no sparging. Some brewers call this method reiterated mashing. On paper, this technique is additive, where a 12 °Plato (1.048 SG) wort used to replace mash water in the second brew results in a 24 °Plato (1.101 SG) final wort gravity (assuming the same grain bill). In practice, the second mash is not as efficient and you need to monitor wort gravity during the boil to hit your target. While not additive, it is close.

I would recommend Methods I and II as the simplest and most practical approaches for homebrewers, and I am providing a recipe using each method on this page. Whichever way you choose, a good barleywine is a wonderful, tasty sipping drink that will reward your efforts in brewing it.

This article is adapted from Terry Foster’s Brewing Barley Wines: Origins, History, and Making Them at Home Today (Skyhorse Publishing, 2024).

On a recent scuba diving trip to Bonaire in the Dutch Caribbean, I had several great conversations with Wilco Landzaat, Master Dive Instructor at Captain Don’s Habitat, about beer, diving, and brewing. Wilco is one of a small handful of brewers on Bonaire and has brewed for many years at home and, for a shorter period, for Bonaire Blonde, a nano that made the decision to focus on selling imports because of high production costs. I asked Wilco what his biggest challenges of island brewing are. His top three challenges are sourcing and storing malt and hops, obtaining liquid yeast, and fermentation temperature control. Although brewing with kveik strains works for him, he likes using other yeast strains that produce better beer in a controlled environment. For those readers who share Wilco’s challenges, what follows is for you!
— Ashton Lewis

From time to time, I take space in my column to write about something timely and exciting to share. Wilco’s dilemma is a challenge for me because there is a limit to reducing production costs when living on a small island where everything is a challenge due to the cost of shipping, energy, and warm average temperatures. Even if you aren’t living on an island, I think my advice may be of benefit to a number of readers in remote or hot locations, or who wish to cut the costs of their hobby.

I will start with the low-hanging fruit: Yeast. Liquid yeast is expensive, not just for those living outside of countries like the U.S. where specialty labs produce a diverse and exciting selection of strains, but for all homebrewers. Yes, homebrewing is a hobby, and the goals of hobbyists are not the same as commercial brewers, but there is a limit to how much folks are willing to sink into 5-gallon (19-L) batches of beer. I am proudly frugal and like to spend less on raw materials for a batch than buying commercially produced beer. In today’s world, that is somewhere around $100 per 5-gallon (19-L) batch, depending on where you live. Beer taxes are all over the place and are something to factor into this metric. Bottom line is that liquid yeast can eat up a big chunk of the raw material total when express-shipped to Bonaire. In fact, the “cheapest” FedEx envelope rate to Bonaire is $80!

Here are a few things to reduce the cost of yeast. I am skipping the details of how because we have covered this in many previous issues of BYO. For starters, find a friend who can be your courier to bring you yeast, general purpose micro media, a few test tubes, and dried malt extract (DME) when traveling to your remote/expensive location. This is gonna cost something, like a nice lunch or a few beers, but will save you big time!

Once you have yeast in hand, prepare some media slants for later use. When you do brew, which should be soon after your prized shipment has been delivered, use a microbiologist’s “loop” to transfer yeast from your ”empty” liquid package onto the surface of the slants, allow the surface to grow for a few days, cover with sterile mineral oil, close the test tube with a sterile cotton plug, and chuck the tubes in your refrigerator for future use. The DME will be used to make your own liquid pitches for future brews. If you want to have several strains on hand, ask your friend to bring whatever you want for the future.

Another cost-saving suggestion is to have your courier bring you a wide selection of dried yeasts and take advantage of the long shelf life and simplicity of using dried yeast. When brewing in expensive parts of the globe, you need to choose your brewing battles wisely and dried yeast these days is a terrific option.

Let’s move onto hops, another ingredient that is hard to find in places with a small homebrewing scene and with few established breweries. Although the weight of hops used in most beers represents a small weight, shipping can add to the cost. Again, having a friend make hop deliveries is an option. If relying on visitors to bring hops is not practical, consider using hop extracts for bittering purposes, augmenting pellet additions with hop aroma extracts, using lupulin enriched hop products like Cryo® hops, and focusing on styles that don’t require large aroma additions as a few ways to cut back on how much “stuff” you either need to import or have stuffed in your friend’s suitcase or carry-on.

Another hop option is to replace hops with locally available herbs, spices, and fruits. This strategy can work whether brewing “hoppy” styles with bold and fruity noses or dry, crisp, and spicy styles. Looking for a big, juicy, mango and pineapple hop aroma in your hazy IPA? Instead of seeking out those fruit aromas from hops, go straight to the source and add mangos and pineapple juice to your beer! Remember that pineapple contains the foam-destroying enzyme, bromelain, and to either somehow cook fresh pineapple before use or to use canned pineapple. How about a nice witbier after a hot day on the dive boat? Those wonderful spicy and fruity notes can be found at the local market. The sky really is the limit when it comes to hop replacements, because hops replaced herbs and spices commonly used by brewers when hops were just “wicked weeds” crawling about in the wild. 

Now that the low-hanging fruit has been plucked, it’s time to venture on to the real challenges: Malt and refrigeration. Seasonal temperature fluctuations and the access to ice sources during the winter months relegated beer brewing to latitudes greater than about 40º until the advent of commercial refrigeration allowed brewers to ferment, age, store, and ship beers in hotter climates. Once the temperature problem was solved, barley, primarily grown in latitudes greater than 50º, was shipped to warmer climates for malting to serve the growth of breweries around the globe.

For those readers not familiar with Wilco’s island-home, Bonaire is situated 12º north of the equator and 68º west of the prime meridian. That’s about 1,925 miles (3,100 km), as the flamingo flies, south of 40º north latitude. While I could expand the definition of beer to include seltzer, like the tax-collecting office simply known as the TTB has done, and conclude with clarity, I’m going to press onwards with beer-flavored beer.

Malt is bulky and, outside of water, is the main ingredient in beer, both in terms of weight and functionality (sorry hop heads!). Malt brings us enzymes, a ready source of starch that is easily converted into fermentable sugar through mashing, nature’s own wort filter media, color, foam-stabilizing proteins, body-building biopolymers, and those wonderful malt aromas and tastes. To brew relatively normal beer, there is no way around dealing with this bulky ingredient. But don’t lose hope!

Lower-ABV beer styles, styles traditionally containing ~20–50% unmalted adjuncts, dry malt extracts, and brewing enzymes are a few of the things that can be used to lighten the malt bill when freight costs simply become too great to bear. Start by taking a trip to the local market and seeking out ingredients that can be used as adjuncts. Maize (corn), rice, sugars, flaked cereals, and locally produced grains like millet may cost less than malt. Brewers often assume that adjuncts are cheap, but when compared to malted barley and malted wheat, they are often more expensive and not as easy to use.

Brewing enzymes, like alpha amylase powder and liquid amyloglucosidase/glucoamylase, are very handy because of their power per weight and because they permit higher adjunct usage rates. If locally available adjuncts are indeed less costly than malt, enzymes can be a big help for just about all ingredients outside of sugars. Keep in mind that higher adjunct ratios dilute wort nutrients from malt; if brewing with more than about 25% adjunct, nutrient additions will help your yeast with fermentation and will also keep certain off-flavors in check.

The last hurdle to brewing in Bonaire and other hot climates is temperature control. Island brewing has the additional challenge of expensive electricity. The two easy solutions are to ferment hot using kveik strains or to bite the bullet and ferment in a refrigerator. Those ideas work, but Wilco told me that he wants more variety than offered by kveik strains and would like to do something that does not always require a refrigerated space.

One thing about modern living in hot climates is that most places have air conditioning, and one of the more popular types of cooling uses so-called “mini split” units where the evaporator, or cold side of a cooling system, is installed in the wall of a building with the compressor and condenser, or hot side of a cooling system, is located somewhere outside. These small window-style units separate the hot and cold portions of a cooling system, like larger units that use air ducting, hence the name “mini split.” These systems are handy because homes often have multiple mini splits. A single room in a home can be closed off and kept at below-average temperatures during active fermentation. Once active fermentation is complete, the room temperature can be returned to normal, and the doors open to other rooms.

Another idea is to use evaporative cooling to remove heat from fermentation via a DIY swamp cooler. All that is needed is a wet towel (I have used paper towels for this) partially submerged in a tub of water, a fan, and a temperature controller. The water wicks up the towel, the fan evaporates water, and the water vapor carries heat away from the surface of the fermenter. This only works with single wall fermenters and works best when the relative humidity is less than about 60%, making this perfect for use in a conditioned space or in a dry climate. 

There are other ways to economize on cooling, like pumping water from a reservoir placed in a refrigerated space to a stainless fermenter immersion cooling coil, but most of these methods do require some sort of refrigeration system. For those hardcore project folks looking for something that does not require much electricity, check out vapor absorption refrigeration systems. The main energy input
can be supplied by a fuel source, like propane, solar heat, or waste heat energy coming from other sources. This type of refrigeration is used in some recreational vehicles to cool refrigerators.

If you are like Wilco and brew in a hot, remote place, hopefully you’ve picked up some helpful tidbits here. And if you don’t have these challenges and are just checking this out, you should feel lucky! 

You’d be forgiven if upon hearing the phrase “dip hopping” your first thought was “wait, like Skoal or Copenhagen?” After all, that was Drew’s first reaction. 

But no, dip hopping (also called hop dipping) is yet another technique in the non-stop attempt by brewers to efficiently jam more hop oil into their brews (you know, the stuff that tickles the nose and tongue without being bitter). The technique was first described a decade ago by Japanese brewers and researchers at Kirin. 

Let’s stop for a second and talk the why and wherefore of all these hop techniques. We can add hops to the kettle, we can add hops at different points in the fermentation or the package. All of our choices are driven by our desire to generate bitterness and to extract aromas and flavorful oils. At the homebrew level, we have a free hand with our hops. What’s adding another 5% of hops to capture more flavors? A few dollars more on a batch is just a few dollars more spent on our hobby.

But for the pros, using five percent more means their beer is that much more expensive and less profitable. Costs scale rapidly when you’re brewing 40–100 times more beer in a go than in a hobbyist’s lifetime. For Kirin, any additional efficiency in aroma hop usage is big money.

We know that adding hops to hot wort off the boil dissolves aromatic oils into solution, but that same heat will cause those volatile hop compounds to fly off into the atmosphere. You know that wonderful hop aroma in your brew space (or awful depending on potential partner’s opinions)? Yeah, that’s wasted oils because they’re not sticking around to hit your nose when you pour a glass of finished beer.

Dip hopping takes advantage of the dissolving properties of heat, while capturing the aroma volatiles in an enclosed environment with less agitation, leading to less “harsh” sulfurous compounds in the final beer. (Want to avoid oniony aromas – apparently dip hopping is the way! Don’t like the “green hop” character of myrcene? Dip hop!)

What about IBUs? Aside from our well documented assertion that “The IBU is a Lie,” dip hops are a bit wibbly to calculate. Dip hops are a “hot” addition at whirlpool-adjacent temperatures — but without the agitation of a whirlpool, and that’s an important factor in any chemical reaction. Having said that and knowing that at the end of the day what we care about is the aroma and flavor oils and not the bitterness so much, we just calculate them as a “coolpool” addition for the length of the stand and get on with it. Is it exact? No! Will your taste buds know the difference? Again, no!

At its most basic, dip hopping involves putting hops in hot wort, where the aromas stay in solution. But let’s take a closer look at how this is done on a homebrew scale.

The Practical

Let’s start with equipment. You’ll need a heat-safe closed vessel. This could be a sturdy plastic bucket, a stainless steel keg, or conical. Don’t use glass.

The proper dip hopping process involves then adding your dip hops to the vessel — roughly 0.5 oz. per gallon (4–5 g/L). Purge the vessel with CO². Early in the boil, chill and transfer 10% of your wort (e.g., 2 quarts or liters for a 5-gallon/19-L batch) to the vessel at a temperature between 160–180 °F (71–82 °C), no higher, and seal the vessel. (Note: While 10% is the recommended rate from research, plenty of brewers use smaller quantities (e.g., 1 quart/L), but keep in mind when you do that, you’ll drop pretty quickly from the hotter temperatures you want for the process.)

While the dip hops steep in the wort, continue to boil, whirlpool, and chill the remaining 90% of your wort. Ideally, the dip hops are allowed to steep in the fermenter for an hour. After that, transfer the chilled wort into your fermenter to mix and cool down the hopped wort. Since the dip hop wort will still be warmer than fermentation temperature, the wort you transfer on top of it should be cooler than normal. Once transferred, pitch yeast and continue as normal.

For the average homebrewer, the proper process might be tough to pull off. How to chill wort while brewing? What if I ferment in glass? (Insert Bernie Sanders meme “We are once again asking you to stop fermenting in glass!”)

As long as you follow the basic process, there are a few different ways to pull this same general idea off. 

“I can’t easily siphon off and cool 10% of the wort during the boil.” Instead of using wort to steep your hops – you can use freshly boiled water cooled to 160–180 °F (71–82 °C) in your fermenter. Bring 2 quarts (2 L) of water to a boil and allow it to cool for ~10 minutes. Check the temperature with a thermometer and transfer to your fermenter over the hops. Allow to steep for the length of the boil.

If you intend to use water for dip hopping, remember to compensate for the diluting power of water. A half-gallon (2 L) of water added to 5 gallons (19 L) of 1.065 wort will yield 5.5 gallons of wort at roughly 1.060. 

Instead of water, you could also generate a small separate wort with extract and allow it to chill while bringing your main body of wort to a boil.

All of that said, most systems will allow you to at the very least ladle out some wort that can be cooled reasonably quickly in an ice bath in the sink.

“I Don’t Have a Suitable Fermenter.” If you really must use glass (*sigh*) or you have plastic fermenters that aren’t heat-safe (like many of the thinner-walled clear fermenters), you can steep in a separate vessel and combine with the rest of the wort when it’s transferred to your fermenter. For instance, steep the hops in a separate pot with a tight-fitting lid. Transfer your cooled, post-boil wort to the fermenter and then gently add the hop slurry on top of the wort (siphon is the most ideal). You could put the steeping liquor and hops in a keg, steep in the keg and then transfer the resulting slush via CO₂ (remove the poppet on the keg post to avoid clogging the post during transfer). Note that, in theory, you’ll lose some of the benefits of dip hopping due to the transfer agitating the hop tea, but it might still be worth a shot.

Hop Varieties

While we briefly mentioned that myrcene is a compound impacted by dip hopping (its perceivable character is reduced, which may or may not be desirable), the two big compounds focused on are the terpenes linalool and geraniol. These two components have long been targeted by brewers and hop aficionados as desirable. Both are key providers of fruity and citrus aromas and mixes of flowers and berries. 

Using hops rich in linalool and geraniol with dip hopping gives an increased perception of the fruit characters as loved in modern West Coast and hazy IPAs. So look to use hops like Cascade, Amarillo®, Centennial, Motueka®, and the number one craft aroma hop – Citra®. 

Another piece to consider while choosing hops is biotransformation. Using hops in dip hopping, in conjunction with a yeast that can perform biotransformation, will unlock a different set of flavors to your mouth. (Hence the extra perception of tropical fruit notes from these hops.) 

Hop Forms

The other consideration when dip hopping is what form of hops to use and how that will impact your process. While there are a few breweries that use whole cone hops for dipping, by and large pellets are the king. 

When looking at concentrated hop products like Cryo® and Lupomax®, be careful to consider the increased IBUs you’ll generate even at 170 °F (77 °C). In the October 2023 issue, we wrote about creating the Denny Kong IPA with North Park Beer Company, which used a “flowable” product from Yakima Chief Hops – Trial 702, now called DynaBoost^TM. It and similar products like Incognito® work like a charm with dip hopping and have the added benefit of even less hop matter and better availability of compounds for dissolving.  

The good news is that no matter your hop form or variety, the process doesn’t change. Now the only thing to do is get out there and sing “Da’ Dip” while dipping your hops. It’s certainly a smoother flavor experience than putting just a pinch between your cheek and your gums and sipping a beer. 

You Dip, I Dip, We Dip West Coast Pilsner

(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.055  FG = 1.009 
IBU = 55  SRM = 3.5  ABV = 6%

This West Coast Pilsner is meant to showcase the twin powers of the all-around craft hop – Citra – and the power of dip hopping. This is a crisp, quick pilsner with a zippy hop presence that leans into the more tropical citrus and pineapple notes of Citra®. Don’t have the ability to lager? Choose your favorite neutral ale yeast and ferment as cool as you can. It won’t be as “lager polished” but it will still be tasty!

Ingredients
10.7 lbs. (4.8 kg) Rahr North Star Pilsner (or other characterful Pilsner malt)
8 oz. (230 g) Carapils® malt
4 oz. (113 g) Citra® hops (dip hop) 
2 oz. (56 g) Citra® hops (whirlpool)
SafLager W-34/70 or White Labs WLP830 (German Lager) yeast
¾ cup corn sugar (if priming)

Step by step
Use a single-infusion mash with water that has balanced chloride/sulfate levels. Mash at 152 °F (67 °C) for 60 minutes. Conduct a 170 °F (77 °C) mash out step. Vorlauf until your wort is clear, then run off into the kettle. Sparge the grains with 168 °F (76 °C) water to obtain 6 gallons (23 L) of wort.

Total boil time is 60 minutes. After boiling 10 minutes, remove 2 quarts (2 L) of wort and cool to between 160–180 °F (71–82 °C). Add the dip hops to your fermenter and then add this cooled portion of wort on top. Close the fermenter and let it steep.

When the boil is complete, turn off heat, add the whirlpool hop addition to the kettle and give it a vigorous stir to create a whirlpool in the kettle. Cover and let sit for 20 minutes. Then cool this wort to about 50 °F (10 °C) and transfer to your fermenter on top of the wort and hops already in it. 

Pitch yeast and ferment at 55 °F (13 °C) for one week. Then raise to 65 °F (18 °C) for 3 days. Crash to 40 °F (4 °C) for another seven days. You can dose the beer with gelatin/biofine during this period for extra clarity, if desired. Package as per usual. 

Extract with grains version:
Replace the Pilsner malt with 5.85 lbs. (2.65 kg) dry Pilsner malt extract. Add carapils malt to a mesh bag and place in your brew kettle with 6 gallons (13 L) of water as it warms to 170 °F (77 °C). Remove grains and bring to a boil. Turn off heat and stir in malt extract. When totally dissolved, return to a boil and follow the remainder of the all-grain recipe.

Q: For the last few years, I have been growing my own hops in the backyard and using them to dry hop a hazy IPA. I recently finished Backyard NEIPA #3 and the issue that I am encountering is that I seem to be consistently oxidizing my brew. I have tried a few different techniques centered around purging the hops with CO2, but I always seem to end up with a sad, discolored, albeit dry hopped, final product. I tend not to dry my hops before using them, which I know can result in grassy flavors, but it is a convenient process — pick, purge, and rack the beer on them. Can you offer any tips to stop the oxidation? Is there a bit of equipment out there that I can use to process my hops into pellets to better remove oxygen before use? I am considering a vacuum bagger, but I don’t plan on storing so this seems wasteful.
— Chris Calcraft • Melbourne, Australia

A: Oxidation associated with dry hopping is a challenge faced by homebrewers and commercial brewers alike. The frustrating thing about this problem is the thin body of solid references related to the topic. Most brewers rightfully focus on moving hops into the fermenter with as little oxygen as possible. Strategies include the ones you reference; i.e., purging hops with CO² and/or vacuum packaging, the use of special dry hop dosing chambers equipped with gas purging, and the use of pellet dissolving chambers/tanks where oxygen-free water is used to dissolve hops, possibly followed by CO² purging, before adding to beer. These are solid approaches assuming that the root cause of oxidation is oxygen from the hops.

Metal ions, especially iron, copper, and manganese, are another cause of beer oxidation. Although brewers are generally not focused on metal ions in hops, hop cones are indeed possible sources of metal ions, especially when copper-containing fungicides are applied to hops. Although metal ions and hops sound like a possible smoking gun to explain oxidation associated with dry hopping, recent studies have concluded that beer oxidation is unlikely to be associated with metal ions from hops (Impact of Copper Fungicide Use in Hop Production on the Total Metal Content and Stability of Wort and Dry-Hopped Beer, Benjamin J. Chrisfield, et al.).

Another possibility, and one I can find no references about, is oxygen production from photosynthesis. This seems like an obvious possibility, but given the absence of any references about the subject leads me to believe that there is nothing to it. However, if we briefly peek down this rabbit hole there are a few possibilities to consider. Here is the idea: Hop cones picked while very green may contain more active photosynthetic enzymes than hops picked later in the season. You are adding wet hops, as do many brewers not wanting to mess around with hop kilning, and it is possible that photosynthetically active hop cones are adding oxygen to your beer. Sounds like a research project for an eager and hoppy young brewing student!

My last idea is that an exceptionally high hopping rate associated with a bumper crop of hops amplified the oxygen contribution that typically comes with dry hopping. Because you did not mention when you dry hopped, I will take the opportunity to speculate and guess that you added towards the end of fermentation when yeast activity had slowed. If this scenario is accurate, try adding your hops before the end of fermentation for next year’s harvest and allowing your active yeast population to mop up oxygen introduced by your hops. Hopefully one of these darts is close to the bullseye!

If you don’t have a barrel but want to brew oak-aged beer, barrel alternatives are great options, as these two experts share.

Jamil Zainasheff is an award-winning brewer, author, beer judge, and podcaster.

I have used granules, chips, cubes, sticks, spirals, staves, as well as small and large barrels. There are even extracts that you can use to dose a beer. Generally, the smaller the format of the wood (e.g., granules versus cubes) means more surface area in contact with the beer and quicker extraction. While quicker extraction might be useful in some circumstances, more important is the quality of the wood and the quality of the process used to make it. My favorite is spirals from The Barrel Mill, which I have used extensively. This format is easy to use and much easier to remove from the beer when done. Spirals come in various lengths and they are easy to break into shorter pieces if needed.

In general, American oak has a bolder flavor with more vanilla notes. French oak has a more subtle oak flavor and an overall sweeter impression. Hungarian oak has what some consider to be smooth or more subtle vanilla notes. Regardless of the origin, those flavors of vanilla, caramel, and butter-
scotch depend on the toast or char level. Firing the wood creates melanoidins as heat from the fire breaks down carbohydrates into sugars. It is toast or char that creates flavors ranging from light vanilla to espresso and more. 

My go-to favorite is a blend of light-toast American and medium toast French oak, but I also really like using Spanish cedar, cypress, sugar maple, and amburana. The only problem with some of these wood species is that they are available in limited formats.

If you are new to wood aging beer, start with higher-alcohol beers (>9% ABV), as they will not sour as quickly should there be bacteria or wild yeast introduced with the wood. Imperial stouts are always great with wood aging. The residual sweetness is a nice counterbalance to the tannins from the wood, and any vanilla and caramel notes from the wood are nice with the chocolaty notes of the stout. 

I also like wood-aged Pilsner, golden ale, Kölsch, or hefeweizen with woods like Spanish cedar, cypress, sugar maple, and amburana. You can try wood with anything. Using chips or cubes, you could experiment with just a growler or Mason jar of beer to see how well a particular wood affects the flavor. If you like it, then you can age the rest of the beer. 

Longer extraction times create different flavors in the beer. The general consensus is that the beers can become more tannic with longer extraction times. Taste the beer each week to see how it is progressing. Once the flavor is right, get the beer off the wood. One trick to maximize extraction and reduce waiting time is to recirculate the beer across the wood. Commercially, they use a pump, but homebrewers can swirl the vessel or invert the keg every few days to accelerate and maximize extraction.

I don’t recommend soaking oak alternatives in a spirit in hopes of replicating the flavor from a spirit barrel. The oxidation and development of flavors over time in the wood is not something you can recreate in a sealed bottle over a short time. Instead, soaking the wood in the spirit leaches out the wood flavor you want to add to your beer. You might as well just pour the spirit into the beer instead. If you do soak the wood in a spirit, then consider pouring all of that spirit into the beer too, so you retain the wood flavor. Some folks soak their wood in a spirit hoping it will kill any organisms present, but that is not a good reason to do it either. Heat, in the oven or through canning, is the best option for ensuring sanitary wood products.

Desi Hall is a sales associate with The Barrel Mill in Avon, Minnesota.

When choosing barrel alternatives, the first thing I consider is availability: Can I get these again if I like them, and how consistent is the product? I also consider volume displacement for the vessel I am using (do I have enough room to add the amount of the alternative I need to achieve the contact rate for aging?). And clean-up: How much work is it to get the alternative out of the vessel? Toast level is another consideration. Lighter toast tends to give the perception of fruit while the darker toast lends more sweet notes (caramel, butterscotch, toffee).

When you’re looking for the added flavor and complexity of a spirit along with the oak you should remember to drink the premium spirits and use a good-quality budget brand for soaking your oak alternative. Use the smallest vessel possible to soak a spiral and use only enough liquid to saturate the spiral. The goal is to add spirits to the spiral without leaving anything behind in the soaking vessel, but if there is some left behind it can be added as a liquid oak extract or tossed out.

When considering contact time, depending on the species of wood, you can achieve the desired flavor in as little as 24 hours, but in most cases four weeks will give full extraction from a spiral. Something I tell everyone that wants to use any barrel alternative is to always taste it early and taste it often. Many times brewers get bad results because they wait too long to take the first sample and end up over-oaking.

You can get the oak and spirit flavors from alternatives, but the thing you don’t get compared to a barrel is oxygenation. Oxygen has a large effect on the final taste, aroma, and mouthfeel of the finished beverage. There has been a lot of experimentation around micro-oxygenation, and by forcing oxygen into the solution we can get much closer to resembling a barrel.

Of course, barrel alternatives go beyond oak. One of my favorite combinations currently is a pale ale aged on Spanish cedar. The Spanish cedar adds notes of citrus, grapefruit peel, and a light spice.