rye -> slimy?

I had an odd brewday today, probably nothing but I thought I'd check here to see if anyone has had similar experience...

I brewed a rye apa using grains I have brewed with before: honey malt, victory, munich, 2 row and rye. This time however my wort had a bit of a "skin" on it as it boiled, the wort looked much more like egg drop soup than I have seen before, and there was a slight slime on my spoon when I took it out after I stirred at one point!

When I took the grains out to be composted the spent grain smelled slightly off. I can't explain it very well, but there was a hint of cheese maybe and it was not so sweet & grainy smelling as I am used to. Nothing terrible mind you, but not something I'd experienced before.

Things I did different from normal just in case they might have made a difference:

- I brewed the day before so my igloo cooler mash tun was sill a bit wet when I put in the new grains, though I had cleaned it out fine the night before with a little pbw and rinsed well.

- I milled into the same bag which held the previous days grain - I usually mill the night before into a bucket with a kitchen garbage bag as liner and empty it out in the morning, speeds things up quite a bit for me.

So could it just be brewing with rye ( I used a different maltster for this rye than the last time I think?) Or nothing to worry about? One other oddity was that the preboil gravity was off by 6 points, should have been 1.057 but was 1.051 - I adjusted the recipe to take this into consideration after I took the reading - but really I am never off by this much.

Any thoughts appreciated!

Steve da sleeve

I would say RDWHAHB is the best advice for this situation.

On your lower than normal gravity, it's possible that it's down to your mill not crushing the rye quite as well as it would barley because rye is smaller.

It's just proteins. No worries.

did a rye a couple weeks ago, had .75 lb of rice hull in the mash (too much, in hindsight), had a similar layer from what it sounds like... maybe the rye? who knows... beer is in bottles and tasted fine at bottling.

EBloom97 said:

I would say RDWHAHB is the best advice for this situation.

On your lower than normal gravity, it's possible that it's down to your mill not crushing the rye quite as well as it would barley because rye is smaller.

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Well I had to look up that acronym but yes - that's the policy around here after a brew day! And I suspected the same about the milling but I did a rye brew 2 weeks ago - same proportion of the grist and no issues there. I guess I'll chock it up to the inevitable aleatoric aspects of brewing in Washington DC!!

I had to look up "aleatoric". Thats a fancy word.

Rye is slimy and thicker than "normal beers"

I'm talking high percentages...............50% like in a Roggenbier.

geneullerysmith said:

I had to look up "aleatoric". Thats a fancy word.

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Yeah sorry I'm a composer & incorporate a proportion of aleatoric elements in my work! I think it is a term that fits many situations - including brewing!!

I just brewed a Rye IPA as well and noticed the same thing. I have a "ribcage chiller" and the film was connecting the rings over an inch apart as I was pulling it out of the wort. I bet that's gonna make for some pretty massive mouthfeel.

My friend and I love brewing with rye. We don't have a mash tun so to speak. But we just boil, have everything in a mesh bag, and sparge in water. Wellllllll here's what we learned. I don't know if this stands for everyone. But we read up on rye before using it, and heard that its a greasy grain. So the best thing to do, no biggie, the beer's still good even if you don't do this, just a lack of head... is to skim off the "greasy layer" on top of the boil. Our rye turned out spectacular (Honey Rye) even if it didn't have a greeaaat head retention.

FWIW the rye ale I brewed was AWSOME! Loved by beer lovers and wine people alike at my BBQ Beer party