How Much Rye is Too Much Rye--Brewed--But...

Original thread here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/how-much-rye-too-much-rye-385919/

Nowhere NEAR target gravity. I haven't missed an OG like this since switching to AG.

I went with 47.5% Rahr 2-row, 47.5% Weyerman rye malt, and 5% rice hulls. Looked like my gravity was a little low pre-boil (but not drastically) so I just boiled a little longer...and came out with a similar gravity to my pre-boil!

Only thing I can think of is that something didn't convert. The wort was really cloudy going into the boil kettle (I'm guessing due to high protein content from the rye), had a very heavy hot break, and came out clear (fat layer of break/trub at the bottom of the kettle...my bane). I'm thinking that that protein content gave me a higher gravity reading pre-boil and then after it broke up and precipitated out, I got a more accurate reading with only the sugars.

Maybe crush finer? I didn't get any of the thick gummy wort people warn about with high rye content (actually wished I hadn't used the rice hulls).

Brewhouse efficiency of ~38%...dismal. I typically have a lot of kettle loss (need to figure out how to get more clean wort to the fermenter) but this one's just awful.

For Kettle loss, I just dump in buckets post-boil with a sanitized paint strainer and then squeeze the liquid out into the fermenter (with sanitized hands). The only AG wheat beer I've done took a huge eff hit. I think it's because wheat (and rye?) is smaller than barley, so it doesn't get crushed as finely with the same setting. If I do another wheat or rye beer, I might mill that bit separately and tighten my mill down beforehand, then re-adjust for the barley.

tennesseean_87 said:

For Kettle loss, I just dump in buckets post-boil with a sanitized paint strainer and then squeeze the liquid out into the fermenter (with sanitized hands).

Click to expand...

Does this seem to leave most of the break material behind? Kinda defeats the purpose of using moss/whirlfloc if I'm just going to end up with it in the fermenter anyway...