I’ve been trying to find a decent recipe for an extract/steeped grain Roggenbier, but no luck so far. Most of the threads I have found have involved mashing to some extent. While I would love to say that that part of homebrewing is in my realm of skills, I can’t. I have a tiny apartment, and everything has to be contained in my kitchen, so no real room for any kind of mash tun. Is there a way to STEEP enough flavor/extract from the rye, etc to make up a recipe just using the “one giant (15.5 qt) pot to steep grains and boil wort” method?
Can you steep at 150 +/- for 30-45 minutes? with the grain just covered?
That is called mashing, or more correctly partial mashing.
To add to Fred’s reply, you want to hold the temp at 150F for 30 to 45 minutes, and you want to have around 1.25 to 1.5 ts of water per pound of grain. For this you will want to do a mini-mash of the rye, as there aren’t many rye extracts. Rye can convert itself, as it has plenty of enzymes. Rye is very sticky, and the addition of rice hulls (can be found at most homebrew stores) will help you drain the liquid out. If you have a grain bag, you can rinse it with water in the 168-170F range to get a little more out of the mini-mash.
Good luck. Rye can be frustrating to mash due to it being sticky, but the finished beer makes it worth it.
Edit, the advice above is for malted rye. If you can only buy/use flaked rye (no enzymes), you need to mix that with some barley malt to get the enzymes required. Use at least a half pound of barley to pound of flaked rye, a 1:1 ratio would be better.
I deplore the idea of running a mash which contains approx 50% rye…My cooler would never handle the runoff and would become stuck forever…So for my Roggenbier, I just stove top mashed 6 pounds of rye in one pot, and the 7 pounds of ‘husked’ grains in another. After the mash, both were run through a large strainer, those grains were then sparged with a 2 quart pyrex vessel. Those grains were then discarded and the strainer was refilled again. This process continued until both pots were empty and all the grains had been ‘rinsed’ in this manner. I ended up with over 9 gallons in the kettle which was barely enough for a 90 minute boil (pilsner was one of the ‘husked’ malts)… Maybe you could incorporate some of this into your brewing process??? just a thought… cheers!!
You sound like a good candidate for a brew-in-a-bag mash. Basically, you mash in a big grain bag that you lift out of the pot and allow to drain when conversion is complete. It works much like a no sparge mash except that you remove the grain from the mash vessel rather than removing the wort.