My only real concern is that you have so much going on (expressive malt, yeast, and hops) it is just hard to judge how all of those flavors will go together.
Thanks, this is something that was bothering me. Seems like I have too much going on, but with 3 (or 4) base malts and 1-2 malts for additional color/depth, just seems to add up quickly. As for the
On the contrary, flaked rye adds more of the spicy notes, while malted has a more complex (but not as assertive) flavor.
This is my understanding as well, at least in smaller quantities, but I have never done a side-by-side myself and only brew with rye once or twice a year.
To answer the original question, I might go with more rye...but I'm a rye-head, so take that into consideration.
20% should give me the subtle crowd-pleaser rye notes. I want something a bit more widely appealing, if you know what I mean? If the grainy spiciness of the rye is too assertive a portion of my target audience is probably going to be turned off by it.
Wow, very different opinions on this interesting idea. I lover rye and have spent the past five years trying to come up with a roggen recipe that I am happy with, just can't keep from tweeking it. That said, I use 60% malted rye in my roggen. I am looking for as distnct a rye flavor as I can get. I gave up on flaked because I was not able to pull as much of the rye spicy flavor out of it and it seemed to give more of an ester flavor. First I would say that using both the wheat and rye will make pulling the rye flavor tough. I would expect the wheat to cover much of the rye flavor. The second thing is selection of yeast. You can brew with a wheat yeast as you are doing and can expect a sweeter and more fruity flavored beer. I ended up going to an Alt style yeast (WLP 029) to pull a crisper cleaner and less ester taste. I also believe that it enhances the rye flavor. Third, on its best day rye flavor is not strong, it seems like using the finishing hops you have will pretty much cover the rye flavor. I like amarillo and very much like summit in my hoppy beers but would stay away from them both if I wanted the rye flavor. Finaly I understand you are making a RyePA and not a roggen, obviously not the same thing. I think that your concept is very interesting and I might very well give it a try as well. The other idea that comes up as I look at what you are doing is a rye wheat. I'm just throwing in my 2 cents worth in hopes that it gives you more to consider. Good luck! I would like to hear what you end up doing and especially how it turns out.
Thanks for the feedback. What I was hoping was that the wheat would be that sort of frontal spiciness and the rye would give you that assertive grainy character in the back of the mouth. We shall see, I suppose!
Columbus works really well in Denny's RyePA and that is rye up to near 20% IIRC, so that is part of where I am getting that from. One of the options I considered is Magnum which has a nice smooth bitterness that might allow the Rye to show through a bit more and not compete with it. I also thought a bit about Centennial or Chinook for the finishing hops. The piney notes of Chinook seemed like they might fit well.
Any specific hops suggestions and if so, what is the reasoning?
Oh, and one last note on the yeast, I plan not to underpitch or ferment warm as typically done for hefe or bavarian wheats to keep the bananas and cloves in check, so to speak. I have done this before and it works well, so I want to try it out on this recipe and see if it holds up given everything else going on here.
