My Rye Wine Experience

High such a high OG, I would absolutely give that many months of aging. I also would not shy away from oak-aging. I would get a variety of chips/cubes/spirals sitting on different liquors and wines asap.

You didn't mention your batch size, but I would consider splitting off a gallon here or there for different oak treatments. In terms of actual liquors to use, go wild. If you are experiencing spicy flavors, why not age some on chili peppers?

 

Seems like an odd mix of malts to me. Why the GP and Munich and Pils?

 

Yeah, agree with wspscott...just seem like a far too complex grain-bill. I have been guilty of similar.

If you aren't adding anything to secondary, I would have just bottled after making certain fermentation had ceased. The beer won't age any better in the carboy, and bottles give you a little extra protection and require less monitoring.

 

It seems like it is, but if you look at it, its 40% rye malt, 24% base malt, 15% Munich and a small percentage of crystal. Not saying that Pilsen and GP taste the same, but the difference in flavor of two pale base malts isn't huge enough that I'd expect a ton of clashing flavors. The rest of the bill is simple sugar and rice hulls which have little flavor. I'd be more concerned about the Rye being oily or slick at a percentage that high and I think 50 IBU is pretty low bitterness for 1.088. I would shoot for something like 70+ to balance the sweetness of that.

But I can't imagine it would get worse with age and he seems to like it. But I agree, just bottle it up and let it age in the bottle. There's no practical benefit of long-term bulk aging vs. bottle aging.

 

It wasn't that I think his grain-bill won't work, but that he could have gotten similar results without using a bunch of different grains.

I would either have removed the pilsen and munich and replaced with GP, or removed the GP and pilsen and replaced with all munich.

I'm sure it will turn out quite tasty.

 

Its personal preference, but when I do rye beers (rye barleywines, rye IPA, Imperial red w/ rye) I tend to bitter them lower than the corresponding beers lacking rye. For whatever reason, rye seems to really enhance the perceived bitterness.

That being said, it really depends how the beer ages out. If you're planning on keeping this around for the long haul, when the bitterness starts to fade with age, you may find that you need to up the bitterness in the recipe to compensate...

 

40%, 1.100-1.115 OG, ~1.025-35 FG (Higher FG rye barleywines were better beers)

 

its not that they taste different (though GP and pils are a world apart + munich is a base malt), its the fact that when you mix sooo many different malts none of them tend to shine and instead they start to compete with one another leaving a muddled flavor that doesnt show anything off very well

 

well we will have to disagree, I would challenge you to rebrew this beer with a simplified grainbill and do a blind taste test

each flavor will be there, but none enough to poke through, even at 40% rye the majority of the grain bill is coming from somewhere else, and so are the flavors

KISS is the best strategy for malt bills, too many people try to over think things and believe they will get "complexity" or subtle nuances in flavor from 15 different malts in a beer, but it just muddies everything up. Im not saying your beer will be bad, what i am saying is that i believe it could have been better if it was a simpler recipe

 

Meh - I wouldn't sweat it. When you factor in all the other variables that affect taste (yeast strain, hops, fermentation temps, yeast health, etc) I suspect changing around some of your non-base malts wouldn't change too much anyway.

Plus, it's not like getting your marginally complex malt bill required some huge outlay in time or effort.

If this was a beer I was brewing on a weekly basis and trying to nail down for commercial reasons, I'd advocate tinkering with the malt bill more. Otherwise, no worries.

 

If you are going to update the recipe, how about a couple more small batches? Do one with just GP and Rye and one with just Munich and Rye. I don't see the Pils working as well as the other two, but it would not hurt to try

 

It wasnt to make you look inexperience, lot of people with years of brewing still have issues with using too many malts in their recipes. IMO you never get better in the things you do if someone doesnt challenge your status quo

As for the malt choice in a simplified recipe, I think it depends on your goal. If you want a more american hop/malt profile with the rye, I'd go for rye + pils, if you want it more bready and rich, I'd use the GP or MO. My personal preference would be to use rye + MO and a little bit of sugar (honey is great), Ive done something very similar on a smaller scale (1055 og) and it came out beautifully