Brewing Big Beers Recipies

Ryan gave me a couple of recipies to share with my Patrons from the Brewing Big Beer Episode. Enjoy!

American Barleywine - I designed this recipe for the 21st-anniversary party of our homebrew club (KROC). I wanted to do 21 hop additions to celebrate the 21s years and was probably inspired by Dogfish Head's continuous hopping method. We ran into some logistical difficulties at the venue for our homebrew club celebration and were not allowed to serve kegs of homebrew at the party as we had in the past, so we were "stuck" with a 5-gallon keg of barleywine. We bottled it and I have a couple of bottles to this day (it's well passed it's prime but last I sipped one a year ago it was still pleasant). My friend Nathan and I brewed this, we brewed it on his 3 tier propane system. The water was almost certainly adjusted in Beersmith for "American Barleywine." If you wanted to barrel age this beer, I would likely add some more adjuncts in here to boost the body in order to stand up to the barrel. We made this again a couple of years later and amped up some of the flavoring hops and dry-hopped it. We didn't enter it into competition, but it was delicious.
I didn't see the fermentation temp on the file, but for these I keep an internal temp of roughly 66F until the beer is nearly finished, then I raise it to 68-70F until complete. Pressure transfer off the yeast, cold crash to 32F with gelatin or other finings, pressure transfer to keg, carbonate and enjoy in a bottle or off draft.

This original recipe scored a 44 in the 2016 world beer homebrew competition in Colorado.

Imperial Stout - This recipe is from 2018 and was one of four recipes over two bourbon barrels that we brewed and eventually blended with the goal of making something akin to Side Project's Derivation Series Stouts, which are some of the thickest, most luscious barrel aged stouts around and use a blend of different imperial stout bases aged in different whiskey barrels. 
If I were to do this again with the same goal in mind, I would want it a bit thicker and I would also make some adjustments based on what I've learned about Side Projects stouts since then. I would replace the maris otter with 2 row, scale back the 2 row to 65% of the grist, replace the black patent with carafa II and ramp up the oats to around 15%.
As is, this was a fantastic beer, it gets a ton of great feedback wherever I bring it. For the average stout drinker, this is plenty thick and tasty. It's big enough to stand up to a barrel (we did a 10 gallon, very young and very fresh barrel for 8 months), but it can also work on it's own without any barrel aging.
I added vanilla beans to the rye barrel portion of the blend. The bourbon barrel part I added hazelnuts to the keg. The full blend of both rye and bourbon barrels I drank most of it straight, but saved a small portion and blended it 2-1 with a cherry port wine I made from scratch. The cherry port wine blend took bronze in the 2020 Big Beers Festival for the experimental category.
I ferment the stouts similar to the barleywine above, around 66F until it's nearly complete, then I raise it to 70F to make sure it all finishes out. I don't rush these big beers, it might take 4 weeks for everything to finish up. I cold crash these, but don't usually gelatin dark beers. I add the finished beer to the barrel. 
If you're using oak chips/spirals/cubes, I would recommend charring them first with a torch (jack daniels barrel smoking chips come already charred, though I add a bit more char on them when I use them), then boiling them with water to remove astringency, and finally soaking them in a good cheap whiskey (google "best bourbon or best rye for cocktails" and you'll be on the right track, I like Buffalo Trace for bourbon and Rittenhouse for Rye, barrel strength stuff is a great choice too). If you don't have enough whiskey from your whiskey soaked chips, add 4-10oz of whiskey to a 5 gallon batch in the secondary to reach your final taste. If you're unsure on how much oak or whiskey you want to use, be conservative, but also split your batch in half, douse half of it, that way if you over oak or over whiskey the batch, you can blend the non oak/non whiskey half back in to taste.