Brewing Dark Rye

Before this blog was conceived, I brewed a Dark Rye beer in November around thanksgiving. I brewed it to pair with my annual St. Patty's day homemade corned beef. I thought the spicy-smooth, malty rye would be a good option to battle out the saltiness in the beef. But I also have some sours on hand if the rye beer is no match. I guess I'll have to wait and see. 

This is my second Dark Rye. Last time was a disaster. It's difficult to count all the things that went wrong with the first beer, but I'll try. First, I was brewing outside and it was quite cold, so I left the heat on the burner as low as it would go during the sparge, and the bag burned a little. I was about to dump the beer right then and there, but for some reason I continued. I remember having to scrub the burnt nylon off the pot for what seemed like an hour. 

The next mistake was during the fermentation. I brewed the beer right before I left on a four week hiking trip. I was worried about high krausen while I wasn't around (krausen is the foam that forms on top fermenting ales), so I used a blow-off tube, which is basically a wide tube that allows for more space and ends in a bucket of sterilized water. Well, the fermentation must have been vigorous because when I came back home after the hike, the tube was out of the bucket on the ground. This means the beer was exposed to oxygen for who knows how long. 

I tasted the beer and it wasn't terribly bad, so I bottled it. But after a month there was no carbonation, so I re-opened the bottles and dropped a few particles of dry yeast in each. After another month, the beer was carbonated and ready to go. 

Despite all these mistakes, I felt like I learned an incredible amount from this batch and so I had an affinity for it. The beer, however, was absolutely terrible, although I did learn how to identify a beer with too much oxygen exposure. 

Anyway, I figured I'd give it another shot. This time I used British ale yeast instead of London ale. I did not use a secondary for the beer, but left it on the primary for about two months and bottled it in the middle of January. It's been sitting at cellar temperature for a little over a month now.

Dark Rye

5 Lb Pale Ale DME 

1 lbs Rye Malt 3L

3 lbs  Caramel 60 L

1 lbs rolled rye

2 oz. Black patent malt 580L 

1.5 oz. Tettnanger 60 min
1 oz Magnum 20 min 

Original Gravity: 1.056

Final Gravity: 1.014

Bottled with 1/4 cup brown sugar

I'll do a tasting for it next post.