Peppercorn RyePA – 4/24/2010
Well, I’ll be sure never to forget this particular day in my brewing career. First of all, this was my first attempt ever going beyond basic extract and steeping grains. Yep, today I tried a mini-mash. To make things more exciting I decided to get a bunch of black pepper in my eyes…but we’ll get to that later.
So in my attempt to do a partial mash I found myself following this guide on doing stovetop partial mashes: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/
The recipe used was: http://hopville.com/recipe/196426/american-ipa-recipes/peppercorn-rye-pa-2010-03-31-version
Since this is the first time doing this procedure I made some extra notes about the partial mashing steps. First I used http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml and my Radical Brewing book by Randy Mosher to calculate the initial water to grain ratios and temperatures. The end result was based on using 4lbs of grains at 1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain. This totaled 1.5 gallons of water. I was aiming for 150 degree strike temperature with grains sitting at about 70 degrees room temp. The calculator instructed me to heat the strike water to 163 degrees based on these numbers.
I then started heating the 1.5 gallons of water in a 5 gallon stock pot and 4.5 gallons of water in my brew kettle. Once I hit 163 in the 5 gallon pot I added all the grains and let them sit for 30 minutes. Upon adding the grains the temperature dropped to about 151, pretty close to the mark. By the end of the 30 minutes I was losing a little heat so I kicked the burner back on to low to help a little. It finished around 144 or so by the time the 30 minutes was up. The 4.5 gallons made it a little past 180 before the 30 minutes was up so I turned that off to let it cool a bit while I was holding the grains up to let them strain into the 5 gallon pot. Then I transferred to the grains to the main kettle to start tea bagging them when it was about 178. I then let it sit in there for 10 minutes after ensuring everything was submerged and soaking.
I took the advice from that Homebrewtalk thread’s OP and just added the malt extract (6lbs minus half cup that was used for starter) before bringing this all to a boil. After stirring it in thoroughly I kicked the heat back on and brought everything to a boil. While this was happening I took a quick reading and according to my refractometer I was now at 15.2 brix, 1.063 OG. Pretty close to where Hopville said I should be. From here it was business as usual…mostly.
Just to make things more interesting I was using black peppercorn in this recipe. Have you ever tried to grind out a teaspoon of pepper before? It sounds like nothing, but it took like 15 minutes! Then, in a stroke of pure genius, at the end of getting this task done I blew into my funnel without thinking and boom…pepper dust all up in my eyes. I would *not* recommend trying this during your next brew session! In addition to this stroke of misfortune I also managed to break my hydrometer while cleaning it. At least the brewing part seems to have gone well today. Will post back with more info when racking to the secondary for the dryhop.
Fermentation (4/25/2010)
One quick follow up note. This was also the first time I’ve made use of “washed yeast” from a prior batch. I made the starter on Thursday night, using the Wyeast Yeast Nutrient stuff in the starter rather than the wort boil. Fermentation seems to be going strong as of this morning.
Transfer to secondary (5/9/2010)
Well re-reading my last note I can say fermentation got even more vigorous. I ended up having to install a blowoff hose as after day 2 I got home from work and the air lock was bubbling over. Today I transferred to secondary and the gravity reading was 1.014. In tasting the sample I definitely picked up a spicy taste in this one. I’m guessing that’s coming from the rye mostly rather than the peppercorn, but maybe it’s a combination of the two. I really need to try another rye based IPA before I consume this batch for comparison. The Columbus hops smell glorious. Can’t wait for this one to be done!
Not enough rye to be noticable IMO. Most ryes that I’ve had that have had a noticable rye pepperiness use somewhere between 15 and 20% of the total grain bill as rye, so for a 6% ish beer I would have used around 1.5 to 2 lbs with a pound of two or six row to convert the sugars. The peppercorns might make up for it flavor wise though, Ive never used black pepper before, so lemme know!
I think you misread the recipe. I know it’s weird but I used both Flaked Rye and Rye Malt. If you add them up it hits 15%. Why would I do something so goofy? Well I bought the Flaked Rye first, then found out that rye malt is actually better if you use Rye Malt with the Six Row Malt as you mentioned. But it seemed stupid to waste the Flaked Rye after buying it so I just added both. I didn’t really even know I should be aiming for 15-20% but it seems to have worked out that way at least