Fat Bastard Barley Wine

I think this is one of my first post about my own homebrew. Wow, I cannot believe that being I have been doing it for over 2 years now... then again, I started this blog after I took a little hiatus from brewing and have been going on a commercial drinking spree since.

Well, so I will now tell you about Fat Bastard Barley Wine... yeahhhhhh..., I guess there isn't really much to tell. I wanted to brew a Barley Wine, So I did. I wrote up the recipe around Christmas 2010. It was a very simple recipe pretty much 20lbs of 2 row, a bit of Crystal 120, and maybe some Special B, hopped with Sterling and... Magnum? The reason I question all of this is because I wrote the recipe into Beer Smith and then my computer crashed and I lost EVERYTHING!!!!

I was pissed at the time but everything is all good. I am not too pissed about it. I remember that I wanted to keep the recipe simple and I wrote the hopping schedule down in a notebook that is currently in storage... why I did not write the full recipe, I do not know. But I plan to recreate this brew, especially after taking my first sip of it almost a year later.



This was like the perfect Barley Wine! Ok, I will let others be the judge of that but it is exactly what I hoping for especially after I was super worried about carbonation, infection, I guess all the things brewers are ever worried about. Others who have tasted it in the early stages loved it but we agreed that it was way too young at the time. Just the fact that this brew was in the fermenters for the better part of a year and then in bottles for another 4 months without being touched just really freaked me out.

The carbonation level on this brew was perfect, there were no off flavors or anything that would discourage me from drinking this ale. The nose pretty much burned any hairs I had in there but with an ale that is sitting around 12%, what can I expect? Just perfect. I may crack open another bottle before I leave for proper tasting notes but I still want to give this one some time, especially being that I only have 2 more bottles with me and all the rest from the batch are in storage because I figured that would give me most room in the car on the road trip up here and it would keep me from being tempted to drink them without letting it reach its full potential.


I love the color.

If I post the tasting notes look for them here or just come back here in 6 months or so when I have the opportunity to get back into it and I will be out of training so I can actually crack one open and write about it as I am experiencing it. For now just enjoy these pics and know that I was very, Very happy with the outcome.

I said Hooah!