So time does fly. I did brew in 2024. I brewed a bock, a fest beer, and a Hefeweizen in the Fall. I’ve always held to brewing at least in the Fall before Halloween to have beers for the season. For whatever reason, I just didn’t log them. Which is a shame because they came out great. They’re still in my Beersmith profile and I’m about to rebrew the fest beer so I’ll post it surely.

So I feel like I’ll brew more now. Kids are older, less around my neck on weekends. I decided it was time to brew a beer now due to the fact that I can’t find a single barleywine anywhere in the area. I even went to a Total Wine and requested they order Sierra Nevada Bigfoot. Still haven’t heard back. So you know what, I used to brew award winning barleywines so I can do it again. I looked up the old recipes on this blog and took the one with Rye that really did very well.

Funny how experience and equipment changes things. It was much easier to brew this time around. I was smart enough to use rice hulls. Smart enough to hit the temperatures right. I know now more about how to time hops and temperature, the hydra chiller makes it easier to be on point with bittering. It just went really smooth. The fermentation chamber and starter being made in time. It went beautifully and the brew is fermenting perfectly at this moment. Given my current knowledge on carbonation and clarification via gelatin, it should present perfectly. I very much look forward to how this beer turns out.

However……..

It wouldn’t be a beer of mine without issues. And there were some. Ingredients are different now days. So finding the same crystals weren’t quite the same. So the wort color seems a little different than I recall, less amber. Of course I’m using different base 2-row it seems. I’m not buying at the same stores anymore. So I’m really curious if this will come out like I remember. But with a marvelous hop schedule like this and a rich, on gravity beer at about 1.1….I’m sure it’ll taste the same after beer #2.