Rye IPA Recipe Help

Hi all,

Just finished up a brown ale as my first brew and I'm thinking of doing something more my style for the next one -- a rye IPA. Anyways, I came across all sorts of recipes and couldn't decide on one that would work best for me, so I decided to create a bit of a hybrid and put together my own recipe (with a lot of help from other recipes). I wanted to try a partial mash since eventually I'd like to get into all-grain but it is far too early for me to jump into that (money, experience, space, etc.).

Just wanted to run this recipe through HBT and see if anyone could provide some criticism for this! This forum has been a fantastic resource for a starting homebrewer like myself and I have to thank everyone on here for just about everything I've learned up to this point.

Anyways, the recipe:

5.5 gallon, full boil

6 lbs Pale/Gold Extract 48%
3 lbs Rye Malt 24%
2 lbs Vienna Malt 16%
1 lb Crystal 60L 8%
1/2 lb table sugar 4%

1 oz Chinook @ 60 min
1/2 oz Centennial @ 20 min
1/2 oz Chinook @ 15 min
1/2 oz Centennial @ 10 min
1 oz Cascade @ 5 min
1/2 oz Chinook @ 0 min
1/2 oz Centennial @ 0 min

Denny's Favorite 50 yeast (with starter)

Dry hop with 1 oz Cascade and 1/2 oz Centennial for 2 weeks.

End with ~70 IBU
OG ~ 1.069
FG ~ 1.015
ABV~7%

I really wanted to use Amarillo in place of the Centennial but it's either prohibitively expensive or I can't find it anywhere. Anyways, the thing I'm most unsure of is the hop schedule--I've never put together a hop schedule before and I'm not very good at hop combinations, but I wanted something a little skunky/pungent along with a lot of citrus to work with the peppery rye flavor.

All criticism is appreciated, thanks for all the wisdom guys!

Gan

The hop combination should give you what you are looking for. You may need to add some 2row or 6row to help the rye convert, I don't know if the others grains you have will do it...they may be fine though, I do a AG so never had to worry about it.

Vienna can convert it. Rye should be able to convert itself, too. Most bourbon mashes are 80/20 corn/rye, give or take

SouthBay said:

Vienna can convert it. Rye should be able to convert itself, too. Most bourbon mashes are 80/20 corn/rye, give or take

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Actually most bourbon mashes are 70-72% corn, 18-20% rye and 10% barley. The barley handles the majority of the conversion....this is what I was told by distillers at buffallo trace, and it was confirmed by maker's mark, except they use wheat instead of rye.



As for the recipe, I would add a bit of 2 row and maybe cut the rye a bit, unless you want seriously heavy rye flavor. If you want a good resinous/skunky aroma toss an ounce or so of columbus in the dry hop-goes great with rye.

Thanks for the tips, guys.

About how much 2-row should I add to get the conversion going? is 1/2 a pound enough? I know it's a base grain but I'd like to use as little as possible since I'm still adding 6 lbs of pale extract.

As far as the rye goes I might tone it down a bit, but I really like the flavor and a lot of recipes I've seen shoot for ~20% rye. I don't want it to be too subtle. I also figured going a little over would not only teach me a lesson but help me get to know how all the flavors mix. Going WAY over would definitely be unfortunate, though.

I like the idea of dry hopping with Columbus, though I feel like having 4 hop varieties along with the strong rye flavor might over-complicate this beer. I was unsure even about doing 3 hop varieties as I'm still new to brewing.

I think a half pound would do the trick just fine. I don't think you will go way overboard with the rye at 24%, but it will be strong for sure. Personally I have found I don't get a lot of hop flavor from 15 or 20 minute additions, though some others like to do these. If you want some really good hop aroma I would push the 20 and 15 min down to 10 or 5 min. I think it will be a really great beer with the hops you have selected, but will be more on the citrus/floral side as opposed to citrus/skunky. Replacing either the cascade or the cent with Columbus will give it a nice dank and skunky flavor, but you won't go wrong using the hops you have selected either. I usually try to do a 3oz dry hop on beers of that gravity as well to help with the aroma.

Good luck!

ahurd110 said:

I think a half pound would do the trick just fine. I don't think you will go way overboard with the rye at 24%, but it will be strong for sure. Personally I have found I don't get a lot of hop flavor from 15 or 20 minute additions, though some others like to do these. If you want some really good hop aroma I would push the 20 and 15 min down to 10 or 5 min. I think it will be a really great beer with the hops you have selected, but will be more on the citrus/floral side as opposed to citrus/skunky. Replacing either the cascade or the cent with Columbus will give it a nice dank and skunky flavor, but you won't go wrong using the hops you have selected either. I usually try to do a 3oz dry hop on beers of that gravity as well to help with the aroma.

Good luck!

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Thanks for the help! Hopefully I'll be brewing this over the weekend and will update with a final recipe and continue with updates as the beer progresses.

If you threw in 4 oz of chocolate malt, this recipe would be very similar to Hop Rod Rye. Looks great as listed though, I would brew it up!

Here's the final recipe that is brewing as I type this up (the hop aroma right now is amazing):

6 lbs Gold LME 50.6%
2.5 lbs Rye Malt 21.1%
1 lb 2-Row 8.4%
1 lb Vienna 8.4%
1/2 lb Crystal 60 4.2%
An ounce or two of Crystal 80 (started pouring this by accident at the LHBS and didn't feel like putting it back in)
3/4 lb table sugar

1/2 oz Chinook @ 60 min
1/2 oz Columbus @ 60 min
1/2 oz Chinook @ 15 min
1/2 oz Columbus @ 10 min
Whirlfloc tablet @ 5 min
1 oz Cascade @ 5 min
1 oz Chinook @ 0 min
1/2 oz Cascade @ 0 min

Denny's Favorite 50 yeast (made a 1L starter yesterday)

Dry hopping with 1.5 oz Cascade and 1 oz of Columbus

1.066 OG
70.1 IBU
11.2 SRM
7.0% ABV

I'll be amazed if I actually hit 1.066 as this is my first partial mash, but I'm hopeful. Thanks for all the help everyone!

Ended up with an OG of 1.063 that I am pretty happy with. Translates to ~60% efficiency. I mashed at 155 for around 50 minutes, then sparged/teabagged at 162 for about 15. I am thinking that a slightly lower mash temperature and longer mash time would increase efficiency. With these numbers, the IBUs went up to 71.8 and ABV should be around 6.7% (assuming I hit around 1.012 FG).

A few notes: This wort tastes AMAZING, and is absolutely crystal clear. The color is beautiful and dead on at 11.2 SRM. I popped open a bottle of my first batch last night to compare (a brown ale, been bottled for a week), and the brown looks like mud compared to rye IPA. That being said, the brown tasted better than I had expected so all positives there. I will never brew without a Whirlfloc tablet again.

I used my new immersion chiller I put together last week, and it was SLOW. It took almost an hour. After reading why this might have been the case, I realize I should have been stirring it more but I don't know that stirring would make that much of a difference. An hour seems ridiculous. It's also only 20 ft of 3/8" copper, so that is almost definitely an issue as well. The batch was about 6.5 gallons. I may end up buying another 20 ft coil to compensate.

After it cooled I noticed that the wort looked disgusting, almost as if it was full of mucus circulating around. I poured it through a fine mesh nylon bag into my primary and that seemed to get rid of this junk, but I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas what this is from. When I did the partial mash (following DeathBrewer's how-to here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/ ) I used a coarse nylon bag to hold the grains, so I'm thinking that this mucus-like material is extra protein that snuck into the wort from not using a finer mesh.

Thanks in advance for any comments!

I have a 20 foot copper chiller as well and it will get the wort down to pitching temps in about 30 minutes if I stir it every 10 minutes. You can feel yourself how much of a temperature gradient forms, the bottom of my kettle will be ice cold while the top is still hot. A quick stir equalizes everything. I am thinking of getting a small aquarium pump to create a constant whirlpool.

Don't worry about the "snot" it will settle out.

Yeah, next time I'm definitely going to be stirring far more often. I may do an ice water bath as well, or get more vinyl tubing and pre-chill the water in an ice bath before it enters the copper. Or all of the above. I guess when it comes down to it it doesn't need to cool down THAT fast, but it sure would be nice to shave 45 minutes off the brew day. An aquarium pump is a great idea, too.

I'm not too worried about the snot, was just surprised to see it floating in there. What exactly causes this, do you know?

Its probably cold break. BIAB typically allows more "stuff" into the wort than other methods. It all settles out in the end anyways.

i'm a rye head but that's a lot of rye... with extract i don't think it'll matter because i'm convinced extract can balance the tang and astringency of rye very well... and i love the hop schedule. looks like a tasty/tangy beer. mmmm....rye... fasted batch i've ever kicked was my rye ipa. it lasted 13 minutes.

enjoy!