Lawrence Brewers Guild

I am bulk aging a barley wine in a corny keg and wondering at what temp. and pressure is considered best.

thanks for the help. Will L.

Will,
Are you doing a secondary in the corny or has the BW already had a secondary? What I would do is do a secondary, then jump it to a serving keg. This way the beer is clear then you can force carb to your desired volumes. Once force carbed, then all you need to do is keep serving pressure on it, 8-12psi. If this is a secondary keg, you will have put enough pressure on it to seal the lid. This can be anywhere from 12-20psi. But the problem with this scenario is that the BW will absorb your co2 so you will need to always check your pressure during its aging. This will also eventually carb your BW over time. So if you want to rack to a serving keg later, then moving carbed beer isn't much fun. I practice scenario one myself.

Thanks for the advice.
the bw sat in the primary on its yeast waste for at least a month longer than it should have but it had a nice co2 banket that I could detect with my nose when I sniffed it. I then racked to a corny, and purged the head space and put about 5 psi on it, the lid seems sealed. I don't mind a little cloudyness and this is so dark the you could probably even notice. Warm, uncarbed it tastes like a really expensive Dogfish head beer which was the the goal.

So its now in my basement ~65 F. I'll just wait and check the lid once in a while does that sound like a good plan?

thanks again

Andy, how long can/should you leave the barley wine in the primary at 42F?

Jdl973 wrote:Andy, how long can/should you leave the barley wine in the primary at 42F?

Hard to say. There is no real definite answer to that. Some say yeast will start to autolysis in as little as a few weeks, others report no signs of autolysis in 5+ weeks. There has been many tests and the results have been variable. I think its better to just practice moving your beer to secondary as soon as you are at FG. Anyone who uses glass for secondary will note that its amazing to see the beer just settle down after its been racked off the primary strain. Cold conditioning will also decrease chance of autolysis and help the beer in conditioning as well.

Will,
I'm not a huge fan of conditioning beer at ambient temp. for any length of time. Even tho you may have done all the right procedures, Lacto thrives at those temps. One thing to note is that beer spoils immediately unless pasteurized which as home brewers we don't do. Therefore your chances of some type of bacteria/spoilage increases. I suggest finding a way to get your keg a little colder, below 50*F would be sufficient.