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Flavor Fever: Barleywine of the Old Style

Brewing up something big and ponderous, and looking for inspiration? The British barleywine tradition offers more quirks than you might think, including more funk, more hops, and more time.

Randy Mosher Mar 27, 2023 - 13 min read

Flavor Fever: Barleywine of the Old Style Primary Image

Photo: Matt Graves

Any strict definitions for the term “barleywine” are of fairly recent origin—and, according to respected beer historian Martyn Cornell, it’s dubious to apply the word to a style. For centuries, it was simply a poetic way of referring to the stronger sorts of pale-ish beers available in Britain. It didn’t appear on a label until about 1900, in connection with Bass Brewery’s No. 1, a 10-plus percent ABV Burton-style ale.

Its name notwithstanding, brewers have been making very strong beers for ages. Many were kept for a considerable period of time before release; others were sold as soon as they hit the cask. This crucial distinction was consistently applied: “Mild” simply meant an unaged beer, regardless of strength or color. “Old”—or, in some references, “stale” beers—were aged long enough to dry out and acquire a “vinous” character. The brewers didn’t want too much acidity, for which remedies abounded. Aging required at least a year, and in estate-brewed beers often much longer: A character in George Farquhar’s play The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707) described his ale: “’tis smooth as oil, sweet as milk, clear as amber, and strong as brandy; and will be just fourteen year old the fifth day of next March, old style.”

The Inner Life of Barrels

With porters and stouts, “vatted” meant aged versions, stored in large tanks rather than barrels. By the 1850s, Tizard uses “old” and “vatted” interchangeably and notes in his day a “general change in public taste in many places, from new to old.” His advice for vessels for “production of a pale, bright, aged, and sound article” is “underground tanks ... lined with slate, to contain from 500 to 5,000 barrels.”

The unique aged flavor in these old ales is usually attributed to “wild” Brettanomyces yeast, whose name, after all, means “British fungus.” Because its natural habitat appears to be in oak trees, its presence in wood-aged beers makes sense. But slate-lined tanks? It’s hard to reconcile, but Tizard indicates some brewers used a spontaneous process, which “consists in merely vatting the worts directly from the coolers, trusting in their native ferment, and that left by the former gyle.” He also mentions a solera-type method in which a portion of old beer is removed from the tanks and replaced by fresh wort. It’s easy to see how persistent-but-slow-growing Brett would be able to establish itself by either method. (For a contemporary approach to the old method in Britain, see “When Scotch Ale Is Stock Ale,” beerandbrewing.com.)

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A Brett species called Brett. claussenii is most often associated with these beers. It’s typically said to have a tropical character; I get pineapple candy. While beers can be completely fermented with Brett, the norm these days is to use a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain first, then pitch the slower-growing Brett after racking the beer into its maturation vessel.

Barrel-aged beers of today are unlike those of centuries past. Today’s are generally “rested” for months rather than aged for years, normally in second-use spirits or wine barrels of about 50 U.S. gallons (189 liters), while larger, beer-specific “butt” casks of about 130 gallons (492 liters), or larger tuns or vats, would have been the historic norm. Prior contents and surface-area-to-volume ratio each impact the resulting flavor.

Hue and Strength

These strong British ales can be almost any color, unless they’re inky enough to be called stouts or porters. The origin of the grand family of pale-ish, highly hopped beers that eventually became India pale ale was a brew called “October” or “March beer,” named for its brewing season. These were brewed for wealthy gentlemen on their estates—the ultimate homebrew. Tizard recommends the palest possible malt and minimizing color development with steam—as opposed to flame-fired—kettles.

“Nut-brown ale” was an imprecise poetic term for a beloved, brownish, strong brew that was especially popular in the North. Long before it brewed a drop of India pale ale, Burton-upon-Trent was famous for a strong, ruby-colored ale that was sold in “mild” and “stale/old” versions, similar to what we would think of as a Scottish-style “wee heavy.” By the end of the 19th century, according to Cornell, “old” became a synonym for Burton ale, especially in London.

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These were all strong beers, often marked with XXXX designations. In 1833, William Black gives a recipe for an equivalent “best” that works out to 21.6 pounds (9.8 kg) of pale Chevallier malt per five-gallon (19-liter) batch; an estimated 1.130 OG at 80 percent efficiency. About 15 years later, George Amsinck lists a “No. 1 Burton” from that era at OG 1.112.

Big Malt for Big Beers

High-gravity beers can be challenging. In any brewery, only a limited amount of grain will fit into the mash tun, limiting a beer to perhaps 8 percent ABV unless the system is optimized for strong brews. To solve this problem, a brewer can supplement the grist with malt extract or some form of sugar. Half-batches with more malt can be brewed and then combined if needed. Until industrialization, brewers in Britain solved the problem with “parti-gyle” brewing—using the first- and possibly second-run worts for the strongest beers and, with a fresh infusion, third and often fourth runnings for small ones. Typically, these runnings would be blended for consistency and to produce a range of strengths.

Parti-gyle brewing is complex but entertaining. This results in a smaller batch, using only the first third or half of the runnings, which will get you half or two-thirds of the extract, respectively. A recipe that yields a 1.075 gravity for the entire batch will get to 1.150 for the first third of the runoff, or 1.1167 for the first half. Unless you’re shooting for a particularly light- or heavy-bodied beer, normal mashing temperatures of about 150°F (66°C) will do. (For much more on the method, see “Practical Parti-Gyle Brewing,” beerandbrewing.com.)

A laborious earlier method called “double” brewing used the strong first runnings to mash a batch of fresh malt. It’s time-consuming and inefficient, but it will produce the strongest possible wort purely by mashing.

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Brewers in Britain may have had access to a spectrum of pale ale malts, from white to tawny, including a “high-dried” variation of pale possibly similar to today’s mild ale malts. “Amber,” often called “biscuit” today, was available in two shades, although Amsinck describes it as being made “nearly obsolete” by the introduction of black malt. Brewers were certainly using crystal malts from the mid-19th century onward. However, since their greatest utility is adding heft to weaker beers, they’re rarely needed for something as big as a barleywine.

In the old days, it was uncommon for brewers to use more than a single malt in a pale beer, except for sometimes “capping” the last runnings with a darker malt to give it a little color and character. Because brewers often malted their own barley, it was simplest to malt for what they brewed rather than making different malts and blending them, as they would have done for porters. J.W. Lees’ Harvest Ale uses nothing but Maris Otter pale malt and East Kent Goldings hops—a clear lesson that a long list of ingredients is unnecessary for extreme complexity.

If you want some color, you might use a bit of amber/biscuit, but if you want to brew something similar to the darker Burton ale, mild ale malt might make sense. If you can’t find that, Vienna shares a lot of its round, malty characteristics. Amsinck used “New Burton Pale” in his Burton No. 1 but blithely reports, “Boiled the liquor overnight,” which is where the color came from. Crystal should be used with a very light hand unless you’re aiming for something more typical of American craft examples, such as Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot. Fair warning: Crystal ages poorly.

Sugar, Hops, and Yeast

British brewers were allowed to use sugar in their beers after 1847. Both raw types and syrups derived from cane (and possibly palm) were enthusiastically employed in pale ales and IPAs, at least sometimes. Amsinck suggests a maximum of about 17 percent of gravity. Although I can’t document its use in barleywines, it wouldn’t be heretical in my opinion.

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The “October” forerunners of old ales were often hopped at very high rates. William Ellis, in his 1762 The London and Country Brewer, gives his preferred recipe for “keeping beer,” which translates to 23 pounds (10 kg) of malt per five-gallon (19-liter) batch, using only the first of four runnings, with half a pound (227 g) of unspecified hops added each half hour of the 90-minute boil. By modern calculations, this equates to more than 200 IBUs, a more-or-less impossible number.

For the same batch size, Black’s “best” of 1835 included 11 ounces (312 g) of Goldings hops: half at full boil and half in the last 10 minutes, yielding about 72 IBUs. Historically, brewers preferred Goldings types and saw them as higher quality. Modern interpretations of the darker variants are lightly hopped, but Amsinck’s Burton used almost 14 ounces (397 g) of “East and Mid-Kent” hops per five-gallon (19-liter) batch.

Recently developed cultivars of Goldings such as First Gold are available, and there are now some delightful English alternatives if you can find them—Jester, with hints of apricot and berry, and Harlequin, with fruity and tropical notes. Dry hopping makes sense for these “mild” strong beers, but it’s optional in long-aged ones.

Beers stronger than 10 percent ABV need special attention to their yeast. First, choose a strain that is tolerant of the alcohol range you want. Second, it’s a good idea to re-pitch from the active fermentation of a less-strong beer because that generates a lot of yeast and helps to ensure a quick, clean fermentation. Lacking this, anything you can do to put more yeast into the fermentor is helpful. If you are adding Brett afterward, be aware that it’s a slow grower, taking several months to fully develop flavor and chew through any complex carbs that the S. cerevisiae left behind.

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Replicating oak-aged commercial beers of any era is an extreme challenge in very small batches. If you’re homebrewing and want the unique character of oak, I recommend adding toasted oak cubes or chips. The manufacturers often suggest usage rates to replicate larger barrels. I’ve gotten best results adding them right at the beginning of fermentation, which seems to speed up development of vanilla character. If you rack for storage, add fresh oak.

Also: Be patient. Those in Jolly Old England sometimes waited decades for their masterpieces to mature. A year in the cellar should be just enough time to work up a worthy thirst.

Further Reading

Want to dig deeper on this topic—possibly in your favorite armchair, with a snifter of barleywine at your side? Here are some books to seek out.

Amber, Gold and Black: The History of Britain’s Great Beers

By Martyn Cornell
The History Press, Cheltenham, UK, 2010

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In Praise of Ale

By W.T. Marchant
George Redway, London, 1888

The Theory and Practice of Brewing: Illustrated

By W.L. Tizard
Published by the author, London, 1850

A Practical Treatise on Brewing

By William Black
Smith, Elder and Co., Cornhill, London, 1835

Practical Brewings: A Series of Fifty Brewings

By George Amsinck
Published by the author, London, 1868

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