Scotch Rye - FAIL

There are times when no matter what you do, the brewday goes horribly awry.  Then there are times when it’s flawed from the earliest planning stages.  This was one of the latter.

I’ve waxed poetic here about my experiences brewing with rye, with all the hassles and pleasures inherent in doing so.  My recent all-rye 70/- has actually turned out to be a wonderful beer; I’ll post a tasting on its murky goodness soon.  After having success with session-strength beers in this vein, I wanted to go after a big one: a Scotch ale, aka wee heavy.  Brewing a big nearly-all-wheat beer last winter went well; the failure on that batch was getting it to carbonate.  So I had high hopes for this one.

The recipe was about as simple as it gets: Weyermann rye malt to an OG of 1.075, English hops for bittering to 25 IBUs, and a big slurry of Wyeast 1728.  To further increase the maltiness, boil down the first runnings to a thick syrup during the rest of the sparge and boil.  If only it was simple in execution.

Trouble started early.  As difficult as rye can be to lauter, it’s equally difficult to mill.  My faithful drill peters out when I put it to work on wheat and rye, so it means it’s back to the hand crank for those beers.  This grist made for a LOT of time spent sweating over my mill.  I broke it up into four separate conditioning and milling sessions so I could actually get through it.

The mash went fine, and I was able to run off about a gallon of first runnings to boil down on the stove.  And then everything ground to a halt.  The mash set, and there was no unsticking it.  I decocted several times and infused with the sparge water at a boil to thin the mash and raise the temperature to 170F and higher, but to no effect; only a trickle would come out of the mash tun, and that little bit would stop altogether after a short time.  The wort in the mashtun was incredibly viscous, almost like room-temperature molasses; I should’ve photographed it for posterity.  My best guess is that especially at its high gravity, the rye wort’s viscosity was just too much for my bazooka screen to handle.

In the end, I ended up scooping out the mashtun, running the mash through a colander to salvage what I could of the batch; plenty of extra particulate ended up in the kettle.  After laboriously collecting 5 gallons of wort this way, I went ahead with the boil.  After an ugly 75 minutes, it was even thicker than before; the

refractometer sample was almost comically gooey, and the kettle contents were so viscous they wouldn’t pass through my funnel strainer, so I eventually removed it and dumped everything into the primary.  On top of this, the first runnings cooked down far enough that they scorched the bottom of the stovetop kettle, so crusty black flecks from that also ended up in the carboy.

After all this, I ended up with 3 ½ gallons of post-boil wort, along with all the stuff I would’ve preferred to leave behind, in a 6-gallon carboy.  This didn’t stop this monster from going crazy once the yeast cake it sat atop got to work.  I came home a couple days later to find the fermentation temperature had spiked enough to bring the swamp cooler temp to nearly 70F and blow off the airlock.  Let me repeat this: 3 ½ gallons of wort blew off the airlock on a 6-gallon carboy.  Intense.  It had made it this far, so it only seemed fair to clean up carboy, sanitize the opening, and recover it to let the yeast finish out whatever they could still do this thing.

When it came time to transfer to secondary, less than half of what was in the carboy was beer; the larger portion was trub.  Even after primary, the viscosity was so great I couldn’t get it through the racking cane.  I had to just dump the top layer of beer from the carboy into secondary, a 4-liter wine jug, the only helpful

utensil being the funnel.  I didn’t even bother taking a gravity reading; I pitched some rehydrated champagne yeast to hopefully lower the gravity further and thin out this beast.  If that doesn’t do it, I may resort to a pedio/brett regimen.

This has been a serious learning experience for me.  Possibly barring my experiences with infections, it’s also been my most frustrating batch.  I still have about a third of a sack of Weyermann rye to go; what all I’ll make with it I’m not sure, but it won’t be another beer like this.  I’ve had success with all-rye beers as well as with high-gravity beers; I plan to brew more of both, but I probably won’t combine these two concepts again.  Every batch has something to teach; some just deliver their messages more indelibly than others.  For the record, I do NOT recommend this recipe; it's here for posterity.  It definitely deserves a "brewer beware" mark of some type; if I come up with a good one, it'll appear here.

Scotch Rye

Batch size: 3.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.091
Projected SRM: 14.3 (not accounting for boiled-down first runnings)
Projected IBU: 39.3
Boil time: 75 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 55%

Grains
 100% - 20 lb Rye

Hops
1 oz Progress (6.2%) (75 min)
.5 oz Northdown (7.2%) (75 min)

Yeast
WY1728 Scottish Ale yeast - cake from Toasted Rye

Extras
1 tsp Irish moss (30 min)
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)

Water additions (mash)
 15 qts RO water
1 g Gypsum
1 g Salt

Brewday: 16 October 2011
Mash-in: 152F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 5 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 19P (1.079)

First gallon of first runnings reduced to a thick syrup on the stove, charring to a degree; added back before boil

HELLACIOUS LAUTER FAIL.  Multiple decoctions & infusions did little.  Eventually scooped & crudely strained through a colander to 5 gallons before starting boil; refractometer sample was unbelievably viscous.  Was so thick it wouldn’t even go through strainer, so everything went into the fermenter

Fermented in swamp cooler at 55-60F ambient



18 October 2011: Even though the beer only filled about half the carboy, it blew off the airlock and spiked the swamp cooler temp to 68F.  Cleaned up and replaced airlock with tin foil, back in swamp cooler at 55-60F

22 October 2011: Massive amount of particulate matter finally settling out; rye keeps beer from clearing, but there’s now liquid separate from the break, hops, and other junk in the carboy.  Out of swamp cooler at 65F ambient

Bottled: 17 February 2012
FG: unmeasured
Still incredibly thick; couldn’t start a siphon and ended up pouring it into the bottles.
Bottled 3/4 gallon with .6 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast.