First Foray with Rye - First FoRye?

There is a definite trend in my brewing decisions that goes along the lines of: I decide what to brew, buy all the ingredients, listen to a podcast/read an article about a different beer, get all enthusiastic about that, change all my plans! So staying true to this my plans to brew a big, possible double, IPA changed at the last minute to a pale ale with a high percentage of Rye.

I've never brewed with rye before, but from what I understand it brings quite an interesting peppery flavour to a beer. It seems like a grain that I should really know a bit more about and could be quite useful in future recipes. This new found interest came about after listening to another episode of Basic Brewing Radio. If you haven't listened to this podcast before I can highly recommend it. James Spencer has a really positive and approachable attitude to brewing, which makes the show entertaining whilst also being packed full of explorations in to the more technical aspects of brewing. I also really enjoy his interviews with local brewers which give some real insight into their approaches to brewing and their experiences home brewing too. James also has a website that runs as a companion to the podcast called Beer and Wine Journal. It updates every week (would that we could all be so reliable) and is required reading for me.

The episode that inspired me here, was about James' attempt to brew a 100% Rye Beer. Rye is apparently very gelatinous and gloopy when mashed, and mashing a high percentage of it in a beer ofter leads to a stuck mash. To get round this, James used the brew-in-a-bag method to avoid lauter issues. Instead of running the wort out through the rye, he lifted the rye out of the wort - cunning! The resultant session beer (another first for me) seems to have been pretty successful, so I decided to give something similar a go.

Now, I'm not really set up for brewing in a bag, and I'm not sure how successful a smaller batch would be in my electric boiler. So I decided to scale the recipe up to five gallons. But I did take on board the inherent problems with Rye, so I made a 50% Rye recipe with 50% Low Colour Maris Otter and threw in a bunch of Oat Husks too, just to make sure I got a good lauter. I had some Citra pellets in the freezer from our last brew-club bulk buy, so I kept faith with James' recipe with them.

Ingredients

Amt Name Type # %/IBU 1.50 kg Maris Otter Low Colour Pale Malt (2.5 EBC) Grain 1 50.0 % 1.50 kg Rye Malt (5.0 EBC) Grain 2 50.0 % 300.00 g Oat Husks (Mash 60.0 mins) Other 3 - 26.00 g Citra [12.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 4 46.5 IBUs 30.00 g Citra [12.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 5 8.9 IBUs 1.0 pkg California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) [35.49 ml] Yeast 6 -

The first problem I encountered was that Rye malt wasn't in Beersmith's list of ingredients, so a quick search was required to find the values for yield etc. Everything else was nice and simple - using only one hop and two grains is great! I really like the simplicity of the recipe, it really suits my aim of getting to know what the Rye contributes.

The night before brew day I set out my brewing water and treated it with some gypsum to help with hop character and some lactic acid to bring down the mash pH. I then added a campden tablet to drive off any chloramines in the water and went out to meet a friend for her birthday.
 

Such a small mash!

 Brew day itself began at 1:30pm with a stonking hangover! Birthday celebrations had gone on till the early hours and all intentions of an early start had fallen by the wayside. So the brewer's friend came into play, the split brew day! Quite early on I decided that I'd leave the mash for the following day, this was not going to be a quick efficient brew as it was, without it going on late.

So, with a little trepidation I mashed in the malt and set the day in motion. I decided to mash with 10 litres of liquor so it wasn't too dilute, but had enough liquid to avoid it gumming up too much. I also decided to fly sparge this one. The thinking here was again to avoid a stuck mash. I thought that if I batch sparged there was a danger that it would all stick together as it drained. So I hooked up the only spare tubing I had for the fly sparge, unfortunately this was a bit too long for my original idea of sprinkling the sparge water. So instead I looped the hose on top of the grain bed and ran the water in slowly. This actually seemed to work quite well and didn't stir up the mash bed.

New sparging technique is not easy to photograph but seemed quite effective.

 

Look, no hands! Fly-sparge in progress.

The pre-boil gravity on this was predicted as 1.022, so you can imagine my surprise when it came out at 1.030! The mash efficiency was 93%, which on my system is unheard of! I can only assume that the yield figures for Rye malt are a bit low, so the prediction was out to begin with. Anyway, wort smelled amazing and it was still on for a sub-3% beer, which was what I was going for, so I wasn't too worried. This was now 7pm, so I decided it was time to pack up, seal the wort up, and crack on with the boil the next day.

The hot break was pretty dense from all the rye and it just kept coming!

The following day I had to work, but as soon as I got home I got the boiler on and got cracking with finishing off the brew 'day'. The boil went well and the citra hops just smelled incredible! I was totally knocked out with how good they smelled, I had to stop myself from eating them! Because of this I upped the 5min addition from 26g to 30g. I was going to go further but I didn't want to over-power the rye. I can do the hop bomb another time.

Citra - well fruity!

The temperature here is still unseasonably warm, so chilling the wort was a bit of an issue. Getting the last of the heat out of it just takes ages and it was already getting late, so I decided on a further split in the brew day. I got the temp down to 26C, ran it off into the fermenter, sealed it up and went to bed! Overnight it dropped the last few degrees down to 20C, so I got up early and switched on the aquarium pump for an hour's aeration and pitched the yeast before leaving for work.

Chiller in the wort, conical flask sterilising on the hob.

 Despite a somewhat haphazard brew schedule I'm pretty pleased with the way the beer's progressing and I can't wait to try the finished pint!

What is Craft Beer?

There’s been a lot of discussion on the internet around a definition for what is Craft Beer and what is a Craft Brewer. So I thought I’d give my penneth worth too!

This is a discussion that’s been rumbling on for a while. In essence the small craft breweries want to hold on to the notion of “Craft”, while the big multi-national breweries want to cash in on it. As an immediate thought you would link ‘Craft’ to size, with only small breweries qualifying. This immediately hits a snag that some small breweries are producing rubbish beer and “craft” is supposed to be linked with quality. It also hits the problem that when good breweries grow, their beer suddenly cannot be called craft beer, despite no difference in the product or process involved.

A good discussion of the issues can be found on the Brew Dog blog HERE. Their post addresses some of the issues and problems, so I don’t think it is worth repeating them all here.The comments are worth reading though as it's a good discussion of what matters to people about this.

Personally, I think the “Craft” moniker should be indicative of an approach to brewing. A Craft brewery should seek to brew the best beer they can and approach their recipes with that in mind. Unfortunately, this is difficult to quantify, evidence and regulate. There is talk of outlawing the use of some adjuncts, such as rice, which are used to reduce the cost of the brew by industrial brewers. But these can be legitimately used in craft brewing too, and I think the last thing we need to do is stifle creativity with a modern day Rheinheitsgehbot. Again, the impact of these ingredients on a brew, and whether or not it is a craft brew, comes down to the intentions of the brewer.

Ownership of breweries is another area that has been explored as a way of classifying which breweries are “Craft”.  Brew Dog suggests no greater than 20% of a company can be owned by a large industrial brewery before it stops being Craft, but this leads back to the argument about brewery size. Just because one of the big-bad-breweries comes in and buys 40% of Kernel, does that mean that their beer becomes a different product? I’m not so sure, though I recognise the danger.

I think the key to the debate lies in what we want “Craft” to stand for, and for me that is quality. Craft beer is a quality product that is made using the brewer’s skill, experience and judgement. When I read “craft beer” on a bottle or can, I want that to indicate a high quality product that is made with a high degree of human input. I don’t think craft beer can be made in an automated process because the craft elements of skill, experience and judgement, are not present. I do agree with the Brew Dog proposal that all ingredients should be listed on the packaging, so any unnecessary adjuncts and fillers are clearly shown, however there are plenty of mass-market beers which can quote their ingredients as barley, hops, water and yeast just like a craft brewer would.

Ultimately, I’m not too worried about which beers “craft beer” is applied to because I suspect that it has more to do with marketing than anything else. What I believe matters is producing a great product and educating consumers. If the idea of craft beer as a product created by craftspeople with skill, experience and judgement, and on a smaller scale, is something that appeals to your consumer then you need to get out there and tell them that’s what your product is! Engagement with consumers is key in this; let them visit your brewery and see how you work; let them know what you are doing through social media and let them feel part of the process; and allow them to compare that to the big industrial brewers. That is how you hold onto the term craft: you educate people, make them care, give them the information to make decisions, and let your intelligent consumers judge for themselves.

Bristol Beer Week

Bristol Beer Week kicked off last night with a cracking night at one of my favourite pubs, the Hare on the Hill. Jack, the landlord, had organised five special brews for the night, each from local brewers.

 Art Brew had brewed a pretty robust 7% Bock, which had an intriguing nutty flavour, I'm guessing from the munich malt involved. There was a brown porter from the boys at the New Bristol Brewery that was full of roasty, biscuity flavours. The contribution from Arbor Ales was a 6% Bier de Garde, with Nelson Sauvin hops and fermented with Dupont yeast. I'm not sure how well it fitted with the bier de garde style, but it was still an interesting beer.

One of the best beers was from Rocket Science, a really light, clean English pale ale hopped liberally with home-grown Progress hops. I know how good a brewer Rich Poole is from drinking his homebrew, so Rocket Science beers are always worth trying I just wish he would brew more! My other favourite beer of the beer week specials was the Bristol Cream Stout brewed as a collaboration between Beerd and Wiper & True. This was a really satisfying milk stout with Bristol Cream sherry added to the cask. Surprisingly it only came in at just over 4%, so was also the most forgiving beer of the night!

The pub was nicely busy all night, with plenty of people in beer week t-shirts. All the brewers were in attendance, so it was great having a chat to them and generally geeking out on beer! Really looking forward to the rest of the week now and all the beer it will, responsibly, bring!