Rye Thing

I was eating breakfast with Abby the other day and trying to think of what my next beer should be.   I was trying to think of a small beer (i.e. something with a relatively low alcohol content) that wouldn't have to spend much time aging.   She wound up suggesting the wheat beer that I've made a couple of times.  Then I remembered her pointing out a rye pale ale in the latest Northern Brewer catalog, and decided to basically do the wheat recipe, but with rye instead of wheat.

As a grain, I have only rarely eaten rye.   Occasionally, I have had it as the main part of some sandwich bread, or as an element in some sort of multi-grain thing.   I have always enjoyed Terrapin's Rye Pale Ale, though, and Yazoo made a Rye Saison last year that I think is the best thing they've ever done.   So, I made sure to get a large pinch of rye kernels and eat them while I weighed it out to be crushed.   I was pleasantly surprised by the nutty flavor.  Hopefully, that will carry through into the beer, but at 40% of the grist, I'm pretty certain that the rye will shine through.

This was also my first beer using my new copper-pipe-manifold for filtering the grain.   I was using a piece of stainless steel braid, but it was getting dented and squished from a few years of use.   The manifold covers more of the bottom of the cooler that I use for a mash tun, so I should be getting much better efficiency from my mash.

I was also interested in doing this beer because I made a Biere De Garde last year with the repitched yeast from the wheat beer, which I wound up really enjoying.   In thinking along those lines, I wound up getting Wyeast's 3725, which may be the yeast that Fantome uses.  So I may have a one or two of my next beers somewhat planned out.   (Saison with rye and wildflower honey, maybe?)

To round it out, I decided to use some Amarillo hops in the finish, to give the beer some citrusy character, and Fuggles for bittering, for some underlying "earthiness".


Rye Thing

Batch Size (Gal):  6
Total Grain (Lbs): 11
Anticipated OG: 1.043
Anticipated SRM: 4.2
Anticipated IBU: 20.9
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70%
Wort Boil Time (min): 60

Grain
59.1% --  6.5 lbs. Canada Malting 2-row Pale Malt
40.9% -- 4.5 lbs. Fawcett Malted Rye

Hops
1.00 oz. US Fuggle (Pellet, 5.10% AA) @ 60 min.
0.50 oz. Amarillo (Pellet, 6.90% AA) @ 0 min.

Extras
Whirlfloc - 1 tablet @ 10 min.

Yeast
Wyeast 3725 - PC Bier De Garde Yeast

Water Profile
Clearview, degassed overnight.

Mash Schedule
Sacch. rest 60 min. @ 152F

Notes 

• Brewed Saturday
• Sparge got stuck, so added 2 handfuls of rice hulls when I got everything stirred back up.
• Efficiency wound up at 79%  (Hooray for not knowing how to brew on new equipment)
• Everything else pretty well went as planned, but that efficiency increase led to me getting a OG of 1.051.   Hopefully, the yeast won't have a problem with that.
• Pitched the Yeast around 4PM and set the temperature controller to 67F.
• 7:30AM the Sunday, there were bubbles and a small line of foam on top of the wort.
• By 11:30AM, foam had filled all of the headspace, and the beer has blown off some, but the temperature has maintained at 67F (it's 3:45PM, now, and the temperature is still the same)
• Stepped up to 68F at 8AM Monday. 
• Stepped up to 69F at 8AM Tuesday. 
• Stepped up to 70F at 7:30AM Wednesday. 
• Measured 1.013 on Saturday
• Turned off temperature control at 7:30AM Wednesday.   
• Friday night, racked to a keg got a 2-glass sample, and measured.   FG: 1.007, which is approximately 5.8% ABV.   Right now (still), it has a kind of fruity-nutty nose and a nice sweet foretaste and a reasonably dry finish.     The rye is quite prominent, but I think I like this better than the wheat version I have done in the past.   Unfortunately, it wound up a bit strong to be a session beer, but i think it's still low enough to do what i need.