% of Rye Malt in a Pale Ale?

Beer Recipes
1

I’m just starting to play around with recipe building…I’m thinking about an APA using some rye malt, 2 row Pale and a little crystal 40. I’ve got some homegrown chinooks that will be ready soon too, and I’d like to incorporate those as a late addition kettle hop, mayhap with cascades or amarillo. Warrior or magnum for bittering.

So…howzabout…

1.050 OG
35ish IBU
001 or 007

80% Pale
15% Rye
5% Crystal 40

Is that enough Rye? Too much? Will it play well with Chinook, or maybe a Chinook/ Cascade blend?

Thoughts, idears, etc welcome and appreciated.

2

Id get the rye up to closer to 20-25%. Chinooks IMO are great for bittering ok for flavor/aroma and great for dry hopping.

I would bitter with Warrior, aroma/flavor with Cascade and dry hop with 2 oz or so of your Chinook. But experiment!

3

Thanks for your thoughts Jason, I like the dry hopping idea a lot.

4

Another question…rice hulls?

5

15% rye is good for a present but subdued rye flavor.  Adjust to your tastes.  Whether or not you need hulls will depend on your equipment.  FWIW, at 15% I really doubt you’ll need them.  I’ve gone as high as 40% and I’ve never had a problem.

6

Batch sparging, round cooler with a false bottom. I haven’t had any sticking issues with it so far

7

Then you should be fine.  Round coolers can be a bit more prone to sticking sue to the grain bed depth, but this mash shouldn’t be any more difficult that any other you’ve done.

8

Cool, thanks for the “pragmatic” input

9

My rye pale uses about 30-35% rye malt and is a real crowd pleaser, especially if people don’t know it has rye in it.  My wife’s usual comment is that she hates rye bread.
I also don’t use rice hulls, but I do have some on hand if I need to add them.

10

No problem Drew! And I agree with above on the rice hulls but that will be system dependent.

FWIW I did a roggenbier with about 40% rye in a round Gott type cooler without rice hulls and didn’t have any issues.

11

More thoughts…

Since I’m trying to build this to my tastes from scratch, should I leave the crystal malt out to begin with? I’m not sure why I had in in to begin with to be honest, other than most pales have some crystal in them.

Would some victory or Munich be more appropriate than the crystal in a beer with rye?

What I’m shooting for is a session-able Rye Pale, fairly hoppy but not too far out of balance. Decent body to it, but not overly sweet.

12

5% crystal is certainly appropriate. Munich and Victory have their own distinct flavor. Whatever is to your liking!

Ive done 1 Rye Pale in my brewing days and it had 70% 2 row, 20% rye, 5% crystal-40, and 5% biscuit FWIW.

13

Heres what I decided to go with
80% Pale Malt
15% Rye Malt
5% Crystal 60
mashing at 156
40 IBU
.75 oz Warrior @ 60
.50 oz cascade @ 5
.50 oz Amarillo @ 5
.50 oz cascade @ 0
.50 oz amarillo @ 0
1 oz of the above each for DH
WLP001 @ 68f

14

Kegged this up the other night. It’s not bad, maybe a little thin for my tastes. Seems to need a little more bittering and maybe some munich for more malt backbone.

15

Thanks for the follow up. I would have never guessed that 15% rye could still end up thin. What was your OG/FG?

You could always swap your base grain for Marris Otter for more maltiness as well…

16

OG was 1.046, FG 1.009. Its not fully carbonated yet, but yeah its does seem a little thin in spite of mashing at 157. I’m thinking of adding 3/4 pd of munich and going with a no sparge for round 2

17

Another observation: Its not very clear at all. I’m wondering if that is common with Rye Malt? It sat for a week at 33f and I fined with gelatin along side an IPA that was dry hopped heavily, and the IPA is crystal clear.

18

I am curious as to what your final observations are. I recently did a pale ale with 15% rye. After two weeks in the keg the rye character was prominent. After a couple more weeks it really mellowed out and was barely noticeable by the time the keg was kicked. I ended up liking a more mellow rye character that seemed to add more complexity than anything else.

19

My rye beers are never clear, there are probably a lot of proteins in rye, like there are in wheat.

20

[quote]I am curious as to what your final observations are. I recently did a pale ale with 15% rye. After two weeks in the keg the rye character was prominent. After a couple more weeks it really mellowed out and was barely noticeable by the time the keg was kicked. I ended up liking a more mellow rye character that seemed to add more complexity than anything else.
[/quote]

It was never more than a background note in my beer, you really had to look for it. It was more noticeable in the nose than anything.