Rye Beer Experiment

You can make beer out of all sorts of grains. Obviously the most common is barley. Wheat is also a common addition to beer. But many other grains can be used too: rye, spelt, oats, rice, sorghum, millet.

So I thought we’d better try some to see what they taste like. The most obvious one after wheat is rye. My interest in rye was piqued following a conversation with Toby at Red Willow on Twitter, where he said that he uses rye in his excellent Sleepless American Amber Ale.

So that’s the recipe for Monday’s brewday: a rye experiment. It will be a fairly standard bitter in most respects, except that 30% of the pale ale malt will be replace with rye malt. (This is fairly brave – most people seem to recommend about 20% maximum, but we want to really get a sense of what it tastes like).

So what are we expecting it to taste like? I understand that rye gives the beer an interesting grainy, slightly spicy flavour with a dry mouthfeel. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.