Rye Pale Ale Take II

 This week I'll be brewing up a low alcohol but aggressively hopped pale ale.  Up until now I've been restricted to bottling hoppy beers and, although I've made some nice ones, I've always been slightly disappointed with how quickly the hop aroma and flavor fades.  With the goal of doing better, I've finally bit the bullet and invested the $$$ and time into building a Chest Freezer based drought beer dispenser.  This will be my first beer using it.

I decided to play around with my own recipe for this beer.  I chose to use Rye malt in this beer in attempt to give the light malt bill a bit more interest.  I had used Rye in a pale ale once before to good effect.  Also added in a bit of Caramel Malt for color and hopefully to accentuate malt flavor a bit.  I'll be mashing pretty low (150 F) on this one as I'd like it to finish fairly dry.  My goal will be to bring this in at 1.045 and ferment down to around 1.012 for an ABV of around 4%.  Sometimes I'm tempted to go for a 3rd beer in the evening which should be just fine at such a low ABV (have to stop at 2 when drinking 6+% beers or I feel a bit ill the next morning).

I'll hop this beer with a combination of Cluster and some home grown Cascades a friend of mine gave me.  I got a 1 lb bag of Cluster from Hops Direct and thought they had a wonderfully bold herbal and pine character.  I'll use these for bittering and flame out.  I'm using the home grown cascades for late flavoring and then dry hops as they have a really lovely aroma (citrus and pine typical of Cascade).  I'll be using a total of 11 oz of hops in this beer:  2 oz bittering, 5 oz post boil for flavor, and then 4 oz of dry hop (first dose in fermenter and second dose in the keg).

I'll be using Wyeast 1028 London Ale with this batch as I had some in storage from recent beers.  This will be a fairly cheap beer to brew reusing yeast (on top of the light grainbill and bulk purchased/donated hops).

I'm really excited to be brewing my first keg beer.  I expect I'll be brewing a lot more sessionable hop focused beers going forward

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 6 lb 2 Row
• 3 lb Rye Malt
• 8 oz Crystal 20L
• 8 oz Crystal 60 L
• 3 oz Acid
• Hops:
• 2 oz Cluster (Leaf, 8.1% AA) at 60 min
• 3 oz Cluster (Leaf, 8.1% AA) at 0 min
• 2 oz Cascade (Home Grown Leaf) as Whirl Pool Hops
• 2 oz Cascade (Home Grown Leaf) as Dry Hop
• 2 oz Cascade (Home Grown Leaf) as Keg Hop
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1028 London Ale Yeast (3rd Pitch)
• Water:
• 10 gal Spring Water
• 5 gal Tap Water
• 1 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Gypsum

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 5.5 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 150 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 70 min
• Fermentation Temperature: 
• 68 F
• Primary Duration:
• 3 weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.044 (Target 1.045)
• Efficiency:
• 65% (Target 72.8%)
• FG:
• 1.016 (Target 1.012)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 63% (Target 73%)
• ABV:
• 3.68% (Target 4.33%)

Brewing Notes:

• 9/7/20 - Brewday - 11:00 AM to 3:40 PM.  Including setup and cleanup
• Brought 5 gal of spring water and 3 gal of tap water to 180 F
• Milled my grain.  The rye is a smaller piece of grain so it didn't get quite as good a crush as the malted barley - hope this doesn't lead to terrible efficiency.  Added CaCl and Gypsum to the grain

Rye Malt

• Added 5 gal of strike water to the mash tun and cycled through the RIMS until the system had settled to 162 F
• Stopped the RIMS cycle and stirred in the grain.  Made sure to break up all dough balls
• Let this settle for 10 min

• Cycled through the RIMS at 152 for the remaining 50 min of the mash.  It settled to 150 F
• Heated 8 gal of sparge water to 190 F
• Performed a combo fly/batch sparge.  Collected 4-5 gal and drained the mash tun.  Then added more water to the mash tun to get back to 5 gal level and let this sit for 10 min (settled at 162 F.  Then drained this off, fly sparging with more water until I'd collected 8 gal.
• Started heating the kettle at 4 gal.  Had the beer at a boil half way through the sparge.
• Added the bittering hops once it was at a boil
• Added irish moss at 15 min
• With about 5 min left I was at a bit over 7 gal of wort.  Decided to extend the boil an extra 10 min
• Took my yeast out of the fridge to warm to room temp.  This was a 1 pt jar of yeast slurry
• Added the wort chiller to sanitize for the last 5 min of the boil
• Added flameout hops
• Chilled the beer down to 180 F and then added "whirlpool" hops.  Let the beer sit for 30 min cooling naturally.  It was down to 160 F by the end of this half hr.

• Chilled down to the 80s
• Transferred into my SS brewtech brew bucket.  Let the wort fall a foot or so to aerate
• Collected 5.5 gal of wort
• Measured the gravity as 1.044
• Moved the beer to the fermentation chamber to chill down to 68 F
• Pitched the yeast once it got down to fermentation temp
• 9/9/20 - Still no signs of fermentation this morning (a good 36 hrs after pitching).  I decided to add a second pint jar of Wyeast 1028 slurry and move the beer out of the fermentation chamber to warm to basement temps (low-70s).  This yeast was slow starting with my English Barleywine as well.  Always frustrating when this happens but I think it's going to turn out just fine regardless of this slow start.

• 9/10/20 - Airlock is bubbling rapidly today and krausen has formed on the beer.  It's producing an overripe fruit aroma on the fermentation that isn't pleasant.  Hope that flavor doesn't carry over.
• 9/19/20 - Measured the gravity today as 1.018 - still bubbling a bit so I imagine it will come down a bit more  The beer has sort of an unusual mineral flavor and aroma with malt and hops in the background - maybe from the yeast.  Doesn't have the overripe fruit from fermentation.  I'm adding the first 2 oz of dry hop to the beer today.  I put these in two muslin sacks weighed down with stainless steel nuts and bolts.  Will leave this for a week while it finishes with fermentation
• 9/24/20 - It has finally happened:  I have an infected beer.  
• The beer has formed a bit of pellicle in the last 5 days.  The unusual mineral flavor and aroma has become a bit more prominent.  It reminds me quite a bit of Brett Claussenii which I used for the first time in a Berliner Weisse
• I checked the gravity and it has only come down to 1.016
• Based on the flavor profile being there in my first tasting I suspect that my original problems with getting fermented started were the root cause for the beer ending up like this - good strong start to fermentation is important to keep other stuff (that probably is always there) from making an impact.  My handling of the yeast was careless and this is the result - should have made a starter
• Anyway, the beer isn't what I wanted but I think I could enjoy drinking it anyway (somehow feel a bit better about the extra flavor component now that I'm aware of what it is).  I'll give the beer a couple more week maybe to see if it drops further.  I believe I'll be bottling it instead of kegging unfortunately

• 9/25/20 - Thought about this a bit more and have decided to cold crash and fine the beer and then keg as originally planned.  I'll dry hop it as well.  Moved it to the chest freezer to spend a few days at 36 F
• 9.27/20 - Added about half a tsp of gelatin dissolved in hot water
• 9/29/20 - Transferred to a keg with 2 oz of dry hops.  I purged the keg with CO2 before filling to try to help preserve the beer better
• 10/7/20
• I've been keeping this keg between 40 and 45 F and force carbonating at 12 PSI.  It has started to carb up for me.  
• After further consideration of the "odd" flavor I'm starting to think that the homegrown hops were the major component.  When I rub the hops between two hands they have a lovely cascade aroma but just the bag has the same kind of odd smell I get from the beer.  As I've come to grips with the smell I've started to warm to it a bit.  I think I'll enjoy the beer
• I forgot to measure an official FG when I transferred to the keg.  Took one today and found it stopped at 1.016.  So, this is a pretty easy drinking beer at 3.6%
• 10/20/20 - Tasting Notes - A really nice sessionable keg beer.  I've had six pints of this on a brew day and was no worse for ware by the end.  This is exactly the kind of beer I was thinking I wanted to start making.  it is flavorful and complex in addition to drinkable.  I've been impressed by the hop character as it's aged - having the hops in the keg is a real help I think (as is being able to purge the keg of Oxygen)
• 10/30/20 - The keg kicked today.  The last few pints were cloud and hap hop particulate matter in suspension but were still very tasty.