AG#65 GH Rye Beer
Well, after that I think it's fair to say me and rye malt are no longer an item and are going to start seeing other beers! If this ends up yielding anything remotely drinkable then I'll be very surprised!
Let's start with the grist, scaled down from GH:
1500g Pale Rye Malt
1250g Golden Promise
17L tap water, 2g Gypsum, 15ml CRS, half a Campden tablet
Full-volume no-sparge mash 2hrs @ 67degC
I have done a rye beer before, though the rye made up under 50% of the grist (actually more like 25%) - and that wasn't trouble free either!
First up I had trouble with the bag squeeze. It was just a big sticky mess and held on to 750ml liquor or more compared to what I'd normally expect.
On to the boil - 30mins as standard for me:
25g Chinook (leaf) 11.9% AAU 20mins
All went fine until I added the protofloc with 5mins to go - then "beep" "E4 boil dry" warning. To be fair I had half expected this from my last rye beer and exactly as I expected, later on when I came to clean out the kettle I found a nasty scorched heating element (kettle settled fine later on once I had given it a thorough clean, so that's a positive).
Anyway, I threw in my flameout addition:
20g Amarillo 8.3% AAU
Originally planned 10mins @ 85degC
Ended up doing 30mins @ about 90 down to 80degC.
Chilled it down to 20degC and left the kettle to stand a few hours to let the crud settle out...
Except when I came back 3 hours later it had settled barely settled out at all! Instead I ended up draining 13L of inexplicably thick gloopy viscous syrupy stuff to the FV.
I pitched half a pack of BRY-97. At pitching I also threw in another 20g Amarillo dry hop - yep, that's right, dry hop at yeast pitch. It's something I heard about recently on a podcast and thought it would be a fun experiment to try.
Threw it in the brew fridge at 20degC and dropped in the Tilt to keep track what it's doing. So far it looks like about 3L clear wort on top and 10L viscous slimy crud. But I'll let it ferment out and hope for the best before fining the crap out of it with gelatin!
On the plus side I pretty much got my target OG 1.045, mash pH a touch high around 6.5-5.6. I had originally calculated around 25-30 IBUs in BF but the extended whirlpool along with that much Chinook will no doubt push it higher - certainly the hydrometer sample tasted pretty bitter. I didn't notice any burnt flavour due to the scorched element so maybe I'll get lucky.
So overall a challenging brew day and not one to remember. In fairness I've been lucky and they mostly go pretty smoothly. Don't think I'll be tempted to bother with rye again, really not worth the agro. But as I often tell people, it's a hobby not a space shuttle launch so onwards and upwards!
who just happen to have a spare one lying around.
