Rye malt.

[Francis]

Brewing a Black rye ipa tomorrow and plan on doing some water adjustments. Plugging my ingredients into brun water. Is rye malt considered base, crystal or roast malt??

 

[Quaker]

I'd treat it as base malt, unless you got caramel rye or chocolate rye of course.

By the way I don't recommend caramel/crystal rye. It has a very distinct anise or burnt sugar flavor. I have 2 kegs of a black rye saison I'm hoping will lose that flavor with more time. A touch might work in a Belgian dubbel.

 

[Francis]

Sounds good, thanks for your help!

 

[slickfish]

Ill second that about the crystal rye. I ruined a saison with it.

 

[dannysk]

Yet more confirmation, any rye I have ever used that was a dark(er) roast had an unpleasant, nastiness. Light roasted rye is spicy and complex enough. Of course, maybe it was the brewing technique... though I did use very little. Later, I tried to cover it up with dry hopping and things just got worse.

 

[solavirtus]

From experience, about 20% rye in a light (no roasted or crystal malts) saison caused by my pH to be high by 0.2-0.3 compared to my measurements and Bru'n Water estimates. For that calc, I assumed the rye as 2L base malt.

I don't have the time to invest on an experiment with rye pH, but I will keep an eye on it in future brews with an appreciable amount of rye to make better estimates in the future.