AG#41 F-Rye-Day 13th IPA
(Do you see what I did with the name there? That's gold that is, pure gold!)
Well that wasn't without it's challenges! 5 mins before the end of the boil the Klarstein decided to throw an error code (E4 = boil dry?) and cut out! I had just thrown in the last of the hops so effectively they had a 5 min long hot hopsteep, rather than a boil. But I'm fairly comfortable that it won't be too dramatic or have a disastrous impact on the bitterness.
More of a concern was that on draining the boiler I discovered a scorch mark over one of the heating elements (
that was fun to clean - not!). Hopefully the finished beer will still be OK. I found an old post that suggested this could be directly related to rye malt, which I've never used before - apparently the trick is to stir the wort as you bring it up to the boil:
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/scorched-element.76452/#post-746855
Anyway, as the name implies (it does, right?), this is a Rye IPA, tweaked slightly from a Josh Weikert recipe to yield something around 4.5% ABV:
https://beerandbrewing.com/make-your-best-rye-ipa-beer-recipe/
Boiler problems aside, it's my standard full-volume no-sparge mash followed by a 30min boil.
15L tap water, half a Campden tablet, 2g Gypsum, 15ml CRS.
800g Lager malt
600g Pale Rye malt
625g Vienna malt (I added an extra 25g I had spare)
200g Carapils
100g Dark Crystal malt
100g Light Crystal malt
50g Victory malt
2.475kg TOTAL
Mash 60mins @ 65degC.
Boil 30 mins:
5g Simcoe 13.1% 30mins (11.5 IBU's)
15g Amarillo 8.5% 10mins (10.5 IBU's)
15g Northern Brewer 6.1% 10mins (7.5 IBU's)
1g Irish Moss powder 10mins
15g Amarillo 8.5% 5mins (6 IBU's)
15g Northern Brewer 6.1% 5mins (4 IBU's)
(15g Amarillo to follow as a dry hop)
Chilled to 18degC in 5mins and left for 3 hours while the crud settled out. Collected 8L crystal clear wort in the FV, plus 5L crud.
Normally I let the crud settle out over a day or two and then top up the FV. But tonight I tried something different - I passed the remaining crud through a large sanitised fine-mesh hop bag suspended over the kettle, and just gave it time to drip through. In the end I collected about another 4L crystal clear wort which I used to top up the FV, bringing the level to just over 11L of very nice looking burnt gold wort. I'm pleased with this process tweak - I'm getting a bit more wort in less time with less hassle and can top up the FV before it gets going so less oxidation risk.
Despite all the fun and games I hit my predicted OG of 1.043. I pitched a full pack of Crossmyloof "Five". I believe this is essentially US-05 so should be nice and clean and attenuate well - down to about 1.007, according to Brewer's Friend, which should end up around 4.7% ABV which will suit me perfectly.