Rye me a river BIAB

[eluterio]

I just have to share this cause Im bored at work. I recently was given a 55# bag of Rye, unopen. I had a Rye IPA awhile back ago and hated it. Tasted like crap so ive been turned off on rye ever since. Since acquiring this bag I thought I would give it a chance.

A few weeks ago I brewed 2 separate 5 gallons batches of american and german wheat beers. I used Wyeast 1010 and 3068, figured since I have these fermenting I might as well use the yeast cake. This will be my first time ever attempt to use a yeast cake. Since I have a full bag of rye to use I am doing one 10 gallon batch of 60% rye and 40% 2 row with Northern Brewer and Perle hop. Ill dump half on each of the yeast cake and see how it turns out.

Now why im I putting this on the BIAB forum well heres the deal.

I have done several wheats on my current AG set up and when using wheat it takes me for ever to fly sparge which is fine. After research Rye I found out that this stuff becomes sticky as hell. No so sure I would be able to get this big a of a grain bill and use 1# of rye through my gravity feed system. Let face it im scared as hell im going to get a stuck sparge with my luck it will happen ill be out there working away for 14 hours and divorced afterwords.

I decided to do a BIAB with the rye. Since I have 2 converted kegs to MLT and BK Im going to use both to mash 1/2 in each and put them together in the end. Ill be taking some photos of my process and putting on here just to share my experience with everyone here.

I plan on kegging both in 14 days and have them ready for christmas so if I dont like it I can force it down other gullets during the holidays.

 

[HowardMBeers]

This sounds awesome. Is it malted Rye? Is that such a thing? I've heard of people doing BIAB to do high % wheat beers (100% even), but this is something new!

 

[RM-MN]

Got a recipe? I've made a rye beer with malted rye but I have access to quite a bit of unmalted rye and wheat and while I know I can use unmalted wheat with some 2 row and get full conversion I haven't tried with unmalted rye.

 

[HowardMBeers]

Now I can't get the idea of a 100% rye wine (ala wheat wine) out of my head. Has this been tried before? Google....

 

[HowardMBeers]

James Spencer. Thank you again, Mr. Spencer!

http://beerandwinejournal.com/100-rye-pale-ale-take-two/

 

[HowardMBeers]

This from the comments of the 100% Rye brewing write up:

Bryan Boyd says:
September 4, 2013 at 10:18 PM
Rye Is full of beta-glucans, that is what makes it so slimy, and can transfer through the brewing process into the finished beer. You should try to do a step mash, starting with a long-ish Beta-glucan rest at 120-130 for about 20-30min, then do an infusion step to get up to mashing temps. Also if you are milling, double mill your rye to get it good and broken up for maximum wetting during the mash.

Looks like you might want to do this rest thingy if you don't want to have 10 gal of goat snot.

 

[eluterio]

This sounds awesome. Is it malted Rye? Is that such a thing? I've heard of people doing BIAB to do high % wheat beers (100% even), but this is something new!

I believe its malted rye and looking forward for the big sticky mess. Thats why im using paint strainers bags that I can toss. 55% rye is what im using but I did think of using 60% or even higher but decided this is big enough. Ill be taking pictures!

 

[eluterio]

Got a recipe? I've made a rye beer with malted rye but I have access to quite a bit of unmalted rye and wheat and while I know I can use unmalted wheat with some 2 row and get full conversion I haven't tried with unmalted rye.

45% 2 row
55% rye

23 lbs total

Boil for 60 hops
Northern Brewer 60 mins
pearl at 15 mins

pitch onto wyeast 3068 and 1010.

 

[eluterio]

This from the comments of the 100% Rye brewing write up:


Looks like you might want to do this rest thingy if you don't want to have 10 gal of goat snot.

I not sure what im going to do all yet. Ive been told mash at 150 you'll be just fine since Im using 2row. Ive seen step mash from 90 for 20min rise temp to 120 then to your final 150.

I think I plan on doing a rest at 120 and since im doing it via bag I can turn the temp up to 150 without burning the bag cause I can PULL IT OUT A BIT!!!

Ill probably be drunk when I start so who knows whats going to happen. Looking forward to it!!

 

[eluterio]

I'll be posting my experience soon, just havent had time soo much clean up and other things. Lets say it was an adventure and my first 10 gallon batch of Homebrew!

 

[HowardMBeers]

Looking forward to hearing how this went!

 

[eluterio]

Stage one the set up. This was me using both my converted keg as mash tuns.

 

[eluterio]

I hit my stike temp and mash temp although it was cold outside it took awhile but boom mash started. I mashed with 5 gallons each keg. Nothing out of the ordinary while mashing I sat back with a newbie enjoyed some home brews as I showed him how to bottle. At the end of the mash I did lost about 3 degrees of temperature its usually just 1 but with the colder weather creeping in i wasnt surprised.

One think to note on using rye it has a very different smell to it that is somewhat well, rye like. The color of the mash was a dark army green color and was referred by the newbie a st patties beer! I ended up pulling out the grains from the one mash tun and had 3 gallons of wort. I found out that Rye absorbs more water than I anticipated.

To think I was making my life easier I put the grains from the first keg into the second. Now, I thought of just dumping boiling water into the keg to increase the temp to 170 to sparge with but I didnt have a big enough pot to have 7 gallons and sure didnt want to lift it up, no pump. I thought I would tech the newbie what continuous sparge was aka fly sparge.

I needed according to beer smith 13 gallons of wort to make 11.0 gallons of beer per my equipment eff. I think I put too much in and should have been closer to 12 gallons, my error. Never have done a 10 gallon batch before so, chalk it up to a new experience.

We ended up fly sparging close to 8 gallons the grains really sucked up a lot of water. This caused my efficiency to really be poor. ended up with pre boil gravity of 1.035.

I drained the wort as slow as possible and still wasnt able to get better efficiency and I used more sparge water then anticipated.

This is what i ended up with when I hit 13 gallons.

No worries about grains in my boiling kettle I used a hop sack to catch anything that went through and surprising there was very little grains. The paint strainers from home depot worked well as a screen. I had grains on top but very little came out.

 

[eluterio]

You cant tell and sorry for the poor picture I think the steam was adding to the distortion.

The next picture was the foam that I took off the top. One thing I noticed was the foam was slick like mold and not really sticky. Im not sure if it was because I did a poor job in doing extraction or its because the amount of rye I used.

You can also see that its is a dark green!

 

[eluterio]

So I ended my brewing session about 2:30 in the morning, started at 9 pm and a lot of time standing around waiting for the mash temp to be right and boiling to start so by midnight I was feeling great!

Knowing your system is key. I should have just boiled 12 gallons instead of 13. I extended the boil 30 minutes to increase my og and to get the amount of wort I was looking for 11 gallons. I filled up one carboy with 6 gallons and the other with 4.5 gallons but unfortunately left way too much wort in my boiling keggle. 10.5 gallons I think is still good for me.

OG 1.046 added some DME to raise the OG it.

I ended up using two different yeast wyeast 1010 and 3068. I had brewed two weeks ago 2 5 gallon batches of wheat beers. I ended up just pouring 3068 into a mason quart jar and using that entire jar on one of the carboys. The other I used just 200ml of slurry and that was 1010.

As you can see they are not green and looks like beer. I tasted the sample and it was a bit on the bitter side with an in your face spiciness. With it being a low level alcohol it should be an interesting holiday beer!

Thinks I could have done better would be less pre boil wort. zip ties on the paint strainers, maybe if I would have used 7 gallons of water in each pot and allow the grains to drain I could have ended with a higher efficiency. Overall it was fun I and I had great homebrew while doing it!

I hope this helps others out there learn from my mistakes!

CHEERS

 

[RM-MN]

We ended up fly sparging close to 8 gallons the grains really sucked up a lot of water. This caused my efficiency to really be poor. ended up with pre boil gravity of 1.035.

Rye kernels are smaller and harder than barley so the are difficult to crush properly. Unless you double crushed them or crushed them really fine, they are the reason for poor efficiency. I use a Corona style mill for all my BIAB and wheat and rye give me no problems with efficiency.

I wanted to do an all rye ale but my rye is unmalted so I'll be using a bit of 2 row to convert the unmalted rye when I make mine. My previous attempt at a Roggenbier had 2 pounds of malted rye and 8 pounds of 2 row in a 5 gallon batch. This new batch will have 3 pounds unmalted rye and 1 1/2 pounds of 2 row in a 2 1/2 gallon batch (no guts, I gotta drink whatever it makes).

The paint strainers I got at Home Depot have an elastic top that just fit around the top of my turkey fryer pot and my 20 qt pot so they don't slip down in. I don't think that would have helped with your pot size though.

 

[eluterio]

Rye kernels are smaller and harder than barley so the are difficult to crush properly. Unless you double crushed them or crushed them really fine, they are the reason for poor efficiency. I use a Corona style mill for all my BIAB and wheat and rye give me no problems with efficiency.

I wanted to do an all rye ale but my rye is unmalted so I'll be using a bit of 2 row to convert the unmalted rye when I make mine. My previous attempt at a Roggenbier had 2 pounds of malted rye and 8 pounds of 2 row in a 5 gallon batch. This new batch will have 3 pounds unmalted rye and 1 1/2 pounds of 2 row in a 2 1/2 gallon batch (no guts, I gotta drink whatever it makes).

The paint strainers I got at Home Depot have an elastic top that just fit around the top of my turkey fryer pot and my 20 qt pot so they don't slip down in. I don't think that would have helped with your pot size though.

When I crushed my grains I made the mistake by adding the two row with it after I read some where to double crush the rye. Everything you said makes sense to this guy and love the "I GOTTA DRINK WHATEVER IT MAKES". Thats how I am with this batch it was purely experimental and on top of that it was 55# of free rye. I like the idea of doing an all rye maybe next time ill try it.

 

[eluterio]

Just raked the one that had yeast 1010 last night. It was only in for 12 days but finished off at 1.006. It actually was quite tasty, you can surely tell theres rye in it! Raking the next one this weekend looking forward to see what the finished product will be using yeast 3068. I fermented these together at 66 degrees.