So I made a 100% rye porter waay back in August.
It was super thick, had an almost syrupy mouthfeel along with some of the silkiness you would get from flaked grain. Also it had noticeable saddle leather phenol up front which was actually a pleasant surprise.
So it sat in secondary until the beginning of this month and I finally decided I needed the fermenter and I would bottle it or dump depending on what it tasted like. It had not changed much and the gravity was stable since the last time I had sampled, months previous. The mouthfeel was soo thick it almost got dumped but I went ahead and bottled all of it.
After about a month in bottle it is actually starting to taste like a pretty interesting porter. The mouthfeel is still thick but not the dealbreaker thick it was into bottles. The phenols have laid down a bit and you get more of the fruity esters and a nice roasty toasty finish. Nugget was also a great choice of hops for this beer. I'm not sure why people describe rye as being spicy- unless that's a reference to some of the phenols-this beer has a distinct rye bread crust flavor on the tail end. It's a not-very-photogenic murky brown but I'm not too worried with aesthetics on this one all things considered.
I might lager some of the bottles for a month and see what it tastes like then. All in all I consider this a success although if I brewed anything remotely like this again I would probably just use 8-10% of each, crystal and chocolate rye and use munich or maris base grain for the rest.
I thought this was going to be a stop-gap for holes in my pipeline or a novelty to share with other brewers or beer geeks but this is on the sip-able side of drinkability and in danger of extinction.
It was super thick, had an almost syrupy mouthfeel along with some of the silkiness you would get from flaked grain. Also it had noticeable saddle leather phenol up front which was actually a pleasant surprise.
So it sat in secondary until the beginning of this month and I finally decided I needed the fermenter and I would bottle it or dump depending on what it tasted like. It had not changed much and the gravity was stable since the last time I had sampled, months previous. The mouthfeel was soo thick it almost got dumped but I went ahead and bottled all of it.
After about a month in bottle it is actually starting to taste like a pretty interesting porter. The mouthfeel is still thick but not the dealbreaker thick it was into bottles. The phenols have laid down a bit and you get more of the fruity esters and a nice roasty toasty finish. Nugget was also a great choice of hops for this beer. I'm not sure why people describe rye as being spicy- unless that's a reference to some of the phenols-this beer has a distinct rye bread crust flavor on the tail end. It's a not-very-photogenic murky brown but I'm not too worried with aesthetics on this one all things considered.
I might lager some of the bottles for a month and see what it tastes like then. All in all I consider this a success although if I brewed anything remotely like this again I would probably just use 8-10% of each, crystal and chocolate rye and use munich or maris base grain for the rest.
I thought this was going to be a stop-gap for holes in my pipeline or a novelty to share with other brewers or beer geeks but this is on the sip-able side of drinkability and in danger of extinction.
