Dry Rye Stout

I'm starting a Dry Rye Stout today. Who has tried this beer. What can I expect, I'm hoping to not get a stuck runoff but I think it should be ok. The recipe I am following calls for a 2 1/2 hour mash, I have never done one so long. I will be doing it in my kettle to make sure I can keep accurate temperatures. I am new to homebrewing and I'm not quite sure what first runnings are so Im going to try to seperate wort from grain and take the first gallon that comes out and put it back through. Is this correct I hope so. I will check to see if anyone has responded during my 2.5 hour mash.

I suspect you are talking about recirculating (vorlauf) which means to just take the first few quarts of liquid that come out of your tun and put them bacl into the top.

This is done because there will be grain particles in that first few quarts and you want to put them back into the tun rather than your kettle.

by the way: the looooong mash is probably just to ensure that all of your starch gets converted into not just sugar, but FERMENTABLE sugar. That's what will make the beer dry.

Walker said:

I suspect you are talking about recirculating (vorlauf) which means to just take the first few quarts of liquid that come out of your tun and put them bacl into the top.

This is done because there will be grain particles in that first few quarts and you want to put them back into the tun rather than your kettle.

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that is exactly what I was talking about. I thought I was doing it right I didn't know the technical term for it. I just read about it and try my best to follow what I read. .

My mash ended up being to high of a temperature averaging around 160 but going as high as 170 I hope this does not have detrimental effects on my stout. this is the first stout I have ever made, and I really want it to be tasty.:fro:

Mashing at 160 for 2 hours doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You're mashing a long time to ensure that all the starches break down into fermentable sugars, but mashing at a high temperature ensures that the exact opposite happens. I don't think your stout will finish very dry. You can add some amylase enzyme to the carboy to break those sugars down into easily fermentable ones.

The mash was supposed to be at 152 I just didn't do a good job mashing. It should have been much lower. I just hope it is drinkable in the end I've only done a few batches

It will be just fine. I'm not trying to tell you that your beer is ruined, just trying to give helpful hints for next time.

There's no doubt that adding amylase enzyme into the carboy will dry out the beer. As a matter of fact, it will dry out the beer to TOTAL dryness, you'll have no body at all. Yuck.

Thanks everyone for the comments, I just put the blowoff tube down. For the most part I am satisfied, besides the very high mash temp, took a little longer than usual to cool to but all in all a good brew. I'll post how it turns out after the holidays. I think I might try to get one more batch fermenting before I leave for a week and a half.

I think I am going to retry this recipe again tommorow with a better attention to mash temp, maybe I will try it in the coolertun this time using some of your suggestions.