Which Rye

[Joewalla88]

So I made a golden rye ale, and it turned out nice, but I'm not getting a lot of the "spiciness" that I generally associate with using rye in beer. It was 25% flaked rye. Is the malt better for getting the flavor ideas looking for, or did I just need to use more?

 

[snowtiger1987]

In my experience malted rye has more spicy rye "flavor" than flaked. You must watch the percentage though, over 25% of the grain bill becomes a sticky mash.

 

[Joewalla88]

Cool, thanks. I'll try rye malt next time around then. Get some rice hulls too.

 

[thehaze]

I've recently used 50% Rye malt in an all Simcoe Rye Pale Ale, and I did get a bit of the Rye malt, but not overly so, as you would expect. The problem in my case was, that the Rye and Simcoe kinda fought eachother. I suggest using Rye as the " star " of the brew.

 

[BrewMan13]

IMO, rye does not have a spiciness, but an earthiness. I made a 100% rye beer (combo of 3 kinds of rye: malted, cara- and flaked), which was a failure, but the sips I had had zero of what I would call spiciness but a pronounced earthiness. I think maybe hop/yeast choices that emphasize that character would help with that kind of flavor.

 

[JohnSand]

I prefer the Rye Malt over flakes.

 

[Beer-lord]

About every 6th or 7th beer I brew is some type of rye. I've still not perfected it but do like rye beers. I normally use 2 to 1 ratio of rye malt to flaked rye. This weekend I did 2#rye malt and 1 of flaked rye. To my taste, the flaked rye seems to give me a slight spiciness that I don't notice with rye malt but others disagree.
I've found the hops and yeast I use are what makes me like some and not the others. C hops are favored to me with a cleaner yeast. I've used 001, 1450, and 007 and like 001 and 1450 more than 007. Soon I'll try 002 yeast just for fun.
I also usually don't use bittering hops when using rye so that I can enjoy the rye flavor just a bit more but I urge you to try different things to see what works best for your palette.