Good Rye Beer?

Since this is a style I am fairly unfamiliar with, I need some advice. I have brewing classic styles and there is a recipe in there for a rye that is about 40% rye malt. I don't see anything on this site that has quite so much. I'm a little hesitant to try it without a good example or critique.

So does anyone have a killer rye recipe? Can anyone point me to a really rye-forward commercial? Has anyone done Jamil's?

I should note that I did a rye last summer that was a Light Rye Ale. I wasn't very happy with it and I felt like it needed more caramel, but like I said, I don't really have a taste for how a rye is supposed to go.

I can't say I've had many commercial Rye' that I was really thrilled about, but here is a recipe I made that went down incredibly well with my old home brew club and was beer of the month. I brew this recipe once in a while to satiate my IPA cravings - its really simple though a bit different with the flaked rye.

75% Pale, Marris Otter
18% Flaked Rye
7% Crystal 40L

All Centennial @ 60, 15, 10, 5, flameout for BU:GU ratio around 1.00.

safale S-05/mash 151F//7.3 SRM//

There is a brew pub here in Michigan that makes a wonderful Honey Rye called Bee Sting Ale. It is around 6.5%ABV and I get a growler everytime I pass by. It is called Waldorfs Pub in Hastings, MI. I got the recipe from them last summer and will try and see were I put it. In the meantime, you may want to see if they have a web site and contact them. The owner is spot on a great beer geek.

The BCS recipe is for the BJCP American Wheat or Rye Beer rye variant. Most of the recipes you see here using rye would not be good examples of that style (as they are other styles with some rye added). There aren't very many commercial examples either. I would try one of the two listed in the style guideline.

I've also heard that the Paulaner Roggenbier is coming back to the US (under the Thurn and Taxis label), which would be another example of a beer with a high proportion of rye malt.

The best commercial Rye beer that I have had is Bear Republics Hop Rod Rye.
A great hoppy rye, amber/red in color.
In fact I am doing the clone of this beer right now. You can get it from Austin Homebrew.

SevenFields said:

Bear Republics Hop Rod Rye.

Click to expand...

+1 I love this beer

Terrapin makes a Rye Pale Ale. Pretty standard down here.

Yeah. I'm listening to the Jamil Show clone of Terrapin right now. I was looking for more of a roggenbier, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of information around for that style. I've had the Hop Rod Rye, but that is also not quite the style. Unfortunately the BJCP guidelines point at Paulaner and Burgerbier, neither of which I've seen around here. There's one place I can go check, but I don't have high hopes.

For comparison, the Terrapin has about 2.5# (10%) of malted rye for a 11 gallon batch where the BCS roggenbier would be more like 11# (40%). These look like completely different beers too. The roggenbier looks like a dunkelweizen with rye swapped for wheat, whereas the Terrapin is a pale ale with some additional character. I'm not sure either recipe is really a traditional example. I'm not completely sure what I'm going to do here. I don't want to invest time and ingredients into something I am this skeptical about, but I do like to experiment.

The BCS roggenbier probably has more caramel malt than traditional.

There are almost no commercial roggenbiers. Paulener was distributed here, is not now, and will be again soon. You are very unlikely to find one in the US today.

I thought you were talking about American Rye for which there are very few commercial examples ever.

A roggenbier is a dunkleweizen made with rye, it tastes about like you would expect. I would do a rest at 104 ish to break down beta glucans or it can get a little thick on you (the mash and the beer) with that much rye.

Most "rye" beers you see including the terrapin example are just other beer styles to which a small proportion or rye has been added. None of these are really traditional as they've only been around for around a decade and they are highly derivative of other styles anyway.

I've done a RoggenBock (Wiezenbock with rye instead of wheat) that was 50% rye. Unfortunately, I only bottled it a week ago so I can't tell you how it turned out for a couple of weeks.

So does the fact that there are almost no rye beers in the US point to the conclusion that they aren't that great? Maybe I'll start out adding a little rye to a pale ale and then move up if I like it.

Maybe sp1365 can make a suggestion once the RoggenBock is ready?

No more than the lack of IPAs in Germany means that they are not very good.

I'll definitely post up once the Roggenbock is ready.

I think as a whole rye beers even in Germany are not very popular, it is just a very underutilized ingredient. I think they are great beers though. One of my favorites is Goose Island Mild Winter.

I have 3 more rye recipes (D-Rye Stout, a Rye-PA and an American Rye Beer) that I have in the hopper that I will be doing over the course of the year.