Rye woes!

Hey Everybody,

Well, today I made a roggenbier. I had it all planned out:

6 lbs maris otter
2 lbs brown malt
2 lbs flaked rye
1 lb raw rye
1/2 lb rice hulls
1 oz hallertau @ 45

Mash at 150 for 90 minutes, 1.5 gallon thick decoction at the end to get more color and flavor, and to get it all up to 170 for mashout.

When I vorlaufed and got the runnings reasonably clear, I began to collect wort in my brew pot. About a minute into my collection, the mash stuck and wouldn't flow even if I blew into the tube. (Isn't that a nice image.) I added more water and stirred, trying to thin the mash, but that didn't work either. So, as a last ditch effort before scrapping the entire batch, I ran to the homebrew store and picked up another whole pound of rice hulls (2 half pound bags). When I returned home, I soon found out that one bag wouldn't do the trick, so I added the second bag (now up to 1.5 pounds of rice hulls in a 5 gallon batch of beer!) and added the entire portion of the grist to my boil pot to get everything up to 170. Finally, I had success! It took a long, long time to get the runnings to clear up, but it finally did, and now I have my first rye beer in a carboy downstairs beginning to ferment. Man, I wish I would have known that I needed so many rice hulls!

Hmmm, Barley malt has about 25% hulls, by weight. So, you would need to use 3/4 lb of hulls. I've made 12 batchs of ray without any stuck sparges, using 2# of malted rsy,a nf 1# of rice hulls. But never any raw rye.

The LHBS I use stocks malted rye and rices hulls in bulk. Rice hulls are cheap, 59 cent/lb. Cheap insurance.

What was your conversion time like? You may want to consider doing a separate cereal mash next time if you're going to use raw grain of any type.

Steve973 said:

Hey Everybody,

2 lbs flaked rye
1 lb raw rye

...About a minute into my collection, the mash stuck and wouldn't flow even if I blew into the tube...

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Not sure what you're using (manifold, false or SS braid).

This quicky saved me a ton of times. My Wit was 50% flaked wheat and I had no problems with draining. My drainage is so fast now I have to keep the valve partialy closed for a gentler runoff.

FYI

I'd use rye malt instead of raw rye next time. The only failed sparge I've ever had was with rye.

Chairman Cheyco said:

What was your conversion time like? You may want to consider doing a separate cereal mash next time if you're going to use raw grain of any type.

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I think the Chairman nailed it (the rye, that is). I've done two rye batches now and the last one used 2# malted rye and 1# flaked with nary a problem.

Another thought: I've done a few experiments with mash hops lately and while I'm not sold on the flavor effect, they do make for an incredibly easy runoff. If you have an ounce or two of leaf hops on hand you could stir them in just prior to runoff without having to run back to the LHBS for rice hulls in a pinch.

Chairman Cheyco said:

What was your conversion time like? You may want to consider doing a separate cereal mash next time if you're going to use raw grain of any type.

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Good question! I just added all of my grains at dough-in and let the mash rest at 151 or 152 for ninety minutes. Near the end of the mash, I pulled off about a gallon and a half for a thick decoction, and returned it to mash tun for mashout.

I used 2 packs of nottingham yeast in my 5 gallon batch, and it's not quite a week later and the fermentation is done and the yeast has "flocced" out. I took a gravity reading last night and it has stopped at about 1.018, which is much higher than I normally finish. So, I assume that my conversion wasn't even close to complete.

I'm not very experienced with adjunct brewing, so what would most of you recommend for higher efficiency with rye next time?

Thanks,
Steve

Chairman Cheyco said:

What was your conversion time like? You may want to consider doing a separate cereal mash next time if you're going to use raw grain of any type.

Click to expand...

Hey Cheyco, do you just heat it and hold it in a pot at the same temps? This is a great idea, I hadn't thought about that before. I'll need to do this on my next sour mash ale. pH was too low, I combined the really sour mash with the rest of the mash and conversion took overnight lol.

I just put this rye beer on tap tonight a few hours ago. it's now fairly chilled and beginning to carbonate and wow, I have to say that it's really, really good. I've never done a rye beer before and I have only done a decoction once (about eight or ten years ago) so I don't know what went right among the huge difficulty i had, but I'm very pleased with the flavor. And I do mean that it's busting with great flavor.