Rye Old Ale - Crazy Viscosity

[smithmd4]

I brewed a rye ale 7 days ago (OG: 1.080, 50% rye) and took a gravity reading of it today. Both my hydrometer and refractometer (with adjustment) we're telling me the beer is around 1.014 which should be terminal gravity. Fermented with 1098 and BeerSmith told me terminal should be 1.017.

The beer is CRAZY thick though. Like actual motor oil thick. Beer is super cloudy, which I expected from not doing a beta-glucan rest and forgetting to add whirfloc. If I'm hazarding a guess its a bunch of protein in suspension, but I'm as good as making that up. A quick google search wasn't especially helpful.

Questions:
1) What is causing this thickness?
2) What can I do to get it to where beer "should" be?

Normally I bottle or keg after about 10 days, but I'm not about to do it with this consistency.

 

[badlee]

I do a bunch of small beers with 30% rye malt,which have fg in the ballpark of 1.008 but have the mouthfeel of a beer of 1.020fg.
I have NO problems with clarity,though.
Do you think maybe you got an incomplete conversion and still have a shed load of starches along with the gum from the rye?
Did you use malted or unmaltex rye?
If it were me, I would have me an experiment. Blend half and Brett the other half.

 

[Chadwick]

I would cold crash this beer for a good long while to get most of that to settle out. It won't hurt anything at all but I would do it for the sake of appeal.

 

[Quaker]

James Spencer has done some 100% rye beers discussed on Basic Brewing Radio and video episodes. Gloopy stuff. In his first attempt he described the carbonation bubbles as rising slowly through the morass. Later he made some 100% rye ultra low gravity session beers with still decent body. Doesn't sound like you did anything wrong. It's the nature of rye.

You should contact him to see if time or temp enabled any separation.