Rye Wine Tasting

This beer was supposed to be the Barley Wine equivalent, but poor execution appears appears to be to blame. While this beer is not bad, its not exactly what I was going for and I think it was a bit overzealous to try and work in a parti-gyle without any real planning.

Let me describe the beer and get to the lessons learned at the end:

Appearance: Dark brown with hues of red in the light. Darker than I planned for sure. Head cascades through the beer when poured, but this could be because it was just force carbonated. Moderate size bubbles and excellent lacing.

Aroma: Slight spiciness presumably from the rye and bit of astringency. Has an interestingly sweet smell that feels off too me, but not sure what it is.

Taste: a bit of spicey malt on the front, smooth center, and growing astringency at the end that lingers. Definitely missing some sweetness to balance out the astringency, but overall smooth drinking.

Mouthfeel: Decent body but still drinks fairly smooth. Could use a tad more carbonation to beef up the effect.

Notes: Nothing really stands out in this beer as excellent. I was hoping for a bit more rye flavor coming through because not much is apparent. Things I would change next time:

• Do a full beer and skip the parti-gyle. This beer needed more gravity so the achohol could balance out the astringency and bring out the flavors of the rye. Another 20 gravity points would have been perfect.
• Mash higher to get sweeter wort. This beer is just too dry (1.013 sg) to really draw the flavors out. I wonder if the sugar in the rye is more fermentable for some reason.
• Use a different yeast. The California Ale yeast is awesome, but it feels too clean. I’d like something spicier to complement the rye.
• Stop the runnings at 1.020 sg. The rye seems overly astringent and I was certainly topping of my kettles to save sugar when the gravity was low towards the end of the sparge. This was likely a mistake and indicates that maybe rye has some artifacts that you want to avoid.
• Don’t do a beta-glucan rest. Not sure on this one because we had not sticking problems, but I can’t help but wonder if the long rest at 110 caused some negative side affects in the end.

Hopefully with some age this will improve. I was planning on bottling some of this on Brett, but now I’m not so sure.