rye questions

[Bert1097]

My American rye beer never cleared but I wanted to leave it cloudy. Didn't used whirlfloc and used Denny's Fav 50

 

[bengerman]

quick update - took a sample today (i was intending to do a hydro reading, but my thief isn't holding liquid well for some reason...)
it tastes like beer!
it's still a little chewy, but now within a drinkable range.
tossed some polylcar in, gonna let it sit a while longer then into bottles it goes.

 

[bengerman]

for those playing along at home -
the polyclar didn't do anthing at all.
racked and added isinglass and cold crashed with almost no change in clarity.

bottled ~a week ago, set for highish carbonation.

tried one this evening and it was actually pretty darn good. pretty fruity and a little spicy, but very smooth (and not jsut because it was flat )
i am going to try this brew again with some better water chemistry, a protein rest, and a higher gravity.

 

[bengerman]

So I brewed another t batch of this yesterday, bumped the grain bill up to 9 lbs rye and the rice hulls up to a whopping 2 lbs. Went with a cooler style mash tun instead of biab. Did a decoction mash with a 35 minute protein rest and a 45 minute sacc rest.
Used a whirlfloc at 15 minutes, wort chiller got it to 80 in 8 minutes, whirlpooledand let it rest for 20 minutes.
Came out less muddy than last time, but the cold break wouldn't settle out. Put it in the fermenter anyways, aerated the hell out of it and pitched the yeast.
Left it on the counter for and hour or so and about 2 thirds of the break material started to settle and the rest started floating to the top.
Started showing signs of fermentation in less than 30 minutes, filled the coke bottle used as a blowoff with beer overnight.

Rye is crazy.



anyway. The big part I'm trying to overcome is the break material. Anything else I should try? The only thing I can really think of would be to go no-chill on it, but I don't have a cube. Otherwise I guess I'll just have to count on a huge fermenter loss on it. (The first batch lost 1 gallon out of 2.5 put in.)

 

[thegerm]

I had a similar experience with my roggenbier 50/50 pils/rye experiment. So much break material. I didn't do a protein rest though. sucks that your protein rest doesn't solve the problem. sounds like maybe straining the break material post chilling and pre-pitching might be a way to go. I'd have to imagine that might be difficult to maintain sanitation. but then again you could always re-heat it the next day after straining to re-sterilize the wort.

or just increase your batch size. or brew at a higher gravity and ibu and dilute by 20% or so at packaging to make up for the expected loss.