Need Help with Red Rye IPA

[Luckyr]

So I'm trying my hand at building my own recipe this time and I'd like some advice before I jump in with both feet. I'm brewing this for my baby brothers law school graduation party. He wants a pronounced rye flavor, not to sweet, very bitter/hoppy, and high ABV. My mash tun is only a 5gal cooler so I can't have more than 13lb grain which is why I was thinking about adding a bit of dextrose to bump the OG but I'm afraid of making it too sweet. For the hops I'm thinking about 1/2 oz of centennial at 60 min and then continuously hopping a total (mixed) of 2oz sterling and 2oz cascade and finally dry hop on an additional 2oz sterling and 2oz cascade.

So my 5 questions are:
Is it balanced at all?
Will it be too sweet?
Do the hop additions seem okay?
What temp should I mash at?
Did I pick the correct yeast?

Brew Method: All Grain
Style Name: American IPA
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 5.5 gallons (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 7.5 gallons
Boil Gravity: 1.052
Efficiency: 75% (brew house)

STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.071
Final Gravity: 1.017
ABV (standard): 7.18%
IBU (tinseth): 87.09
SRM (morey): 11.49

FERMENTABLES:
9 lb - American - Pale 2-Row (65.5%)
2.5 lb - American - Rye (18.2%)
0.75 lb - German - CaraRed (5.5%)
0.75 lb - United Kingdom - Crystal Rye (5.5%)
0.75 lb - Corn Sugar - Dextrose (5.5%)

HOPS:
0.5 oz - Centennial 60 min, IBU: 16.14
0.5 oz - Sterling 60 min, IBU: 13.37
0.5 oz - Cascade 60 min, IBU: 11.22
0.5 oz - Cascade 45 min, IBU: 10.3
0.5 oz - Sterling 45 min, IBU: 12.27
0.5 oz - Cascade 30 min, IBUs: 8.62
0.5 oz - Sterling 30 min, IBUs: 10.27
0.5 oz - Cascade 15 min, IBU: 5.57
0.5 oz - Sterling 15 min, IBU: 6.63
2 oz - Cascade Dry Hop for 7 days
2 oz - Sterling Dry Hop for 7 days

MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Temp: 150 F, Time: 60 min, Amount: 5 gal
Starting Mash Thickness: 1.5 qt/lb

OTHER INGREDIENTS:
0.75 oz - wirfloc, Time: 10 min, Type: Fining, Use: Boil
0.5 oz - yeast nutrient, Time: 10 min, Type: Other, Use: Boil

YEAST:
White Labs - California Ale Yeast WLP001
Starter: Yes
Form: Liquid
Attenuation (avg): 76.5%
Flocculation: Medium
Optimum Temp: 68 - 73 F

 

[motorneuron]

Generally, I think this looks good. It would work as is. I do have a few quick points though.

Dextrose will not make the final beer sweeter. It ferments out at nearly 100%. In fact, replacing base malt with dextrose is a basic method for making a beer DRIER. So don't worry about sugar sweetening things. 5% as you have is great to ensure a little residual dryness, especially if you want the flavor of crystal without all its sweetness. Even 10% would be fine. If you want to increase OG to compensate for your smaller mash tun, you can just use malt extract, which acts like grain.

2.5 lbs of rye is a lot for many recipes, but you could go higher if you want a "pronounced" rye flavor. Mashing rye is annoying, but if you keep sparge above 160F, you should be okay. You can go to a higher percentage of malted rye and/or use flaked rye.

There is almost never a reason to use a 45 minute hop addition when you already have a 60. The 60 is bittering; 45 is just not as efficient bittering. Better to either use it at 60 or 30. There is also little reason to bitter with three different hops. Just pick your highest AA hop for bittering and use that. For similar reasons, as I often post, there's very little point in continuous hopping. IMO, it's basically an annoyance (from a brewer's point of view) or a gimmick (from a consumer's point of view). Life is simpler and just as effective with the traditional bittering/flavor/aroma divisions.

If you don't want a sweet beer, I would tone down the crystal a bit. Of course, ambers are often a bit sweeter, and 1.5 lbs of crystal isn't out of bounds for an amber. But you can get the red color and some deeper malty flavors by using aromatic or victory malt instead. Not a disaster this way, though.

Last thing--I don't know sterling hops at all, but if you like them, use them.

Okay, real last thing--make sure you don't ferment too hot. That 68-73F quoted range for 001 is too high. It'll get you a very fruity beer, which (while not a disaster for an IPA) is not really what you want. Keep it cool.

 

[slickfish]

Crystal rye can lend a weird black licorice flavor that I find somewhat unpleasant. I would drop or reduce it.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Luckyr]

That fermentation temp must have been a default I missed, I plan on i being in the 60-65 range. I switched out the crystal rye and am going to use flaked rye in its place. Also went to a traditional hop schedule, but still keeping same amounts and varieties. Thank you all for you help, hope this turns out great!

 

[Brewmex41]

I brewed a rye Ipa that I brought to my homebrew club meeting and everyone loved it.
It's more grain than will fit in your tun but here's the bill I used:

11lb 2 row
2lb rye malt
1lb cararye
.5lb crystal 40*

Total of 5.5oz nelson Sauvin including steep and dry hop, 2oz galaxy, 1oz mosaic in the knockout steep and an oz of chinook to bitter.
Can't remember if I used Rogue PacMan or us 05 yeast.

 

[JordanKnudson]

motorneuron pretty much said it all. I'm going to just throw in a couple of my own personal ideas here.

1) Since you're planning to change your hopping schedule (I agree that the hour of continuous hopping tends to not be as cool in practice as it is on paper, despite how awesome some of DFH's beers are), might I suggest hop bursting as well? You can certainly use a "traditional" schedule and get a great IPA, but hop bursting gets you a bit of a different balance (as I type that, I don't know if balance is the right word or not...but something is different about it), and definitely a lot of hop character.

2) If you have time to make a test batch before brewing the final version for your brother's graduation, try out the crystal rye. It *is* different, and can be really good or kinda bad, depending. I have used it in my house stout recipe for some time now, and I love it in there. But you might not want to use it in an IPA if you won't have time to taste it and decide to rebrew if you hate it. I see that you've already posted that you are swapping it out for flaked rye. That's a safer choice, sight-unseen (taste-untasted?), but if you ever brew it again, give it a go and see what you think!

Overall, this looks delicious to me. I hope your brother and everyone else likes it!

 

[Luckyr]

I don't think I would have the time to brew two batches, but honestly my bro will be ecstatic with whatever I bring. I'm a bit of a noob I guess, never heard of hop bursting before. But as I read more about it the more I like, I will certainly give it a try on this batch. I've actually been trying to come up with a house ryepa and if this turns out as good as I hope it will, I'd love to make again with the crystal rye.

 

[motorneuron]

Yeah, when I said traditional hop schedule is the way to go, I just mean as between continuous hopping and traditional. There are good reasons to try hop bursting too. For what it's worth, many of the hop bursting recipes use some of the newer hops like citra, amarillo, etc which are both very strong aroma hops AND have very high AA levels. That makes them capable of providing a lot of bitterness even if they're only boiled for 15 minutes (or however long). Cascade and Centennial are a little lower on the AA scale than those new hops. So if you consider hop bursting, you might want to use a little of something potent--or, of course, just use more cascade/centennial.

 

[JKaranka]

I'm such a party pooper, but I personally rarely find Rye IPAs to have enough character as the spice of the rye tends to get overshadowed... so I'd even suggest to tune down the hops a bit and add just a tad of crystal rye (~4oz)... you could even consider a sort of British Rye IPA aiming around 5.5% ABV, relatively large bittering addition, small 15m addition, and large dry hop... keep the corn sugar or use invert sugar to help to produce a dry finish and use any British medium attenuation yeast (I find 5-10% sugar with a low attenuation yeast is spot on)

 

[JKaranka]

Just playing around:

OG 1.062 (I'd expect it to finish around 5.7% ABV)
IBU ~60

Maris Otter - 9lbs (72%)
Rye malt - 2.5lbs (20%)
Invert sugar - 0.5lbs (4%)
Crystal malt - 0.3lbs (2%)
Crystal rye - 0.2lbs (<2%)

60 min boil
60 - 3oz Challenger (8.5AA)
15 - 1.5oz EKG (5AA), 1.5oz Minstrel (7AA)
Dry hop - 2oz EKG, 2oz Minstrel

Ferment with WLP002. You can substitute the Minstrel with First Gold if you don't have it at hand.

Disclosure: I love rye. I'm considering making a pale rye mild with no late hop additions and just pale barley and pale rye malt.