Barley Wine Help - Delia Smith Christmas Pudding Recipe

[Emus]

I make Delia's Christmas pudding every year and have never had a problem buying Gold Label beer (Barley Wine) but this year I'm really struggling to find it!

Is there another brand of Barley Wine I can buy (Google has been unhelpful) or something else I can substitute it for?

I've got all the ingredients ready to go and now I'm stuck on this one ingredient!

Guinness is very close to Barley wine, and a traditional Christmas pudding ingredient, and readily available.

Stout/Guinness will work as well.

The recipe already includes stout so shall I just substitute the barley wine for that?

Does your recipe say 75ml of each?
If so just use 150ml of Guinness.

So you are substituting Guinness for Barley wine!

If it's any consolation the cookery writer in The Telegraph didn't know that Barley wine was ale, but thought it was wine!!

It does, yes! I'll substitute it then and hope it doesn't change the flavour too much!

Some of the small breweries do barley wine. The only thing may be how little you can get away with ordering.

Fullers Vintage Ale if available is an example. Chiltern Brewery do as well.

In my Delia recipe she says if you can't get Barley wine (which I haven't been able to get for a long time) to just use more stout up to that amount.

Use Guinness Foreign Extra, it's much stronger and sweeter than the standard stuff.

Thanks everyone 

I made this yesterday and just upped the Guiness to 150ml to make up for the barley wine
But as you’ve made this regularly , can I please hijack to ask a question .
After steaming the pudding looked a little bit dry (more cake like than pudding like) and some of the fat had run out of the pudding basin and into the steaming water
If I try it again what can I do to prevent it ? I had the right size basin and steaming water came halfway up . Any ideas

I think that's normal! I do mine in the slow cooker and the string and water are greasy when it's finished. I change the greaseproof paper on top of the pudding and the string and then outbit away somewhere cool until Christmas Day. You can always feed the pudding with run every week or so if you fancy too.

if I send you some barley wine will you send me some suet?

i'm abroad and can't bloody find any this year....

I did find some on Amazon but they want a tenner to ship it! I might get desperate and buy it anyway

I just bought some in Sainsburys, was surprised to find it there as usually only available in Tesco