Feedback and ideas wanted - Red Rye Ale

Algernon · Aug 13, 2013

My local makes a delicious rye beer which has proved popular with SWMBO, so I am going to try to clone it. I don't expect to get too close first time round, but I'd like to make a nice beer, even if it isn't perfectly what I am aiming for.
They were kind enough to tell me the hops involved, and give some hints as to the amount of rye (less than they started with, after finding it hard to work with). The rest they have left up to me to find out.

Grain Bill:
4kg MO
1kg Pale Rye Malt
250g Weyermann Carared EBC 40-50
500g Pale Wheat Malt
50g Roast Rye malt
Hops:
60 mins Chinook 20g 13.3%aa & Campden Tablet
Citra & Chinook 30g each 15 mins & Irish Moss
Chinook & Citra 20g each flameout
Citra 20g Dry Hop in FV (use bag â remove after 7 days)

IBU's - 67.7
Length 23L
Target OG - 1.056

Let me know any modifications, suggestions etc.
Many thanks as always.
: cheers:

Algernon · Aug 14, 2013

Just going to gently nudge this, since I posted it late last night...

mike77 · Aug 25, 2013

I'm interested to know how this worked out as I am working on something similar. My last batch was about 15% Rye with 10g of Roast Rye malt which produced an amber ale. I'll keep upping the Roast Rye malt by 5g until I get the red colour that I'm aiming for. The Roast Rye malt is quite powerful stuff, my first attempt at a red ale resulted in a black IPA

JKaranka · Aug 25, 2013

Cool, what beer would it be a clone of? It looks good to me. I would up the Citra dry-hop to at least 50g. Have you tried crystal rye? Could do it for colour, but it does have a sort of aniseedy flavour. You could also replace some of the pale malt for British Munich malt. Rye is fairly sticky, the mash might end up like porridge and difficult to sparge with just 20-25% of it in the bill.

Algernon · Aug 25, 2013

Not tried this one yet. The last brew was a NZ Pale Ale with some strange new hops (Wai-Iti) along with Pacific Jade. It's still in the FV, but looking nice.
This is probably going on next, which will hopefully be this weekend, depending on work.
I'll do it as a BIAB, so sparging as such is not so tricky. That said, I don't relish the thought of standing there holding 5kg (dry weight) of wet grains up until it's drained through. Time to fit a skyhook, maybe?
I will probably keep the recipe as is for now, but maybe up the Citra dry hop as suggested, simply because I have all the ingredients already. I like experimenting though, so unless I hit it dead-on first time, which is wildly unlikely, I will give the British Munich a go. I have been playing around with Abbey Malt and Optic as well, which are a little more flavoursome. They are not conditioned yet, so no detailed feedback available on them yet.
Definitely a good idea to go easy on roasted rye. In my naivete I bought a crap load by accident, thinking I had rye malt. I ended up making Olde Peculier. Goes to show though, as long as you keep your stuff clean and don't do anything REALLY stupid, beer is difficult to mess up.
The beer I am aiming for is this one: http://www.perfectpint.co.uk/real-ale-b ... ry-Red-Rye although the link doesn't give much detail about it, it is delicious. Happily they do it on keg and cask, so I can have the nice flat warm beer I like, and SWMBO can have the cold fizzy stuff she likes. Result all round.