Brewing Session – Roggenbier – All Grain

This Sunday was so beautiful, finally no rain in Jersey; I was able to brew out side and my best Friend from Virginia Beach was visiting and helped out.  This brewing Session was my first time brewing a Roggenbier, which is basically rye version of a dunkelweizen.  This should be a nice light summer beer.

It’s been a long time since I brewed outside, felt a bit clumsy, but it was so nice I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.  First up we got our mash water going looking for a temp of 170° so we would have a mash temp of 155°.  While we were waiting for the water to heat up, we started the labor intensive process of grinding 9lbs of grain with a tiny grain crusher.  The itsy bitsy hopper only holds about a pound of grain, it took a while to crush the grain.

Here’s the grain bill:

• 4 lbs. Domestic 2-Row barley malt
• 2 lbs. Rye malt
• 3 lbs. Malted Wheat
• 6 oz. Caramel 40°L
• 4 oz. Flaked rye

With our Hot water at 172° we added 2.8 gal of hot water to the mush tun and stirred in the 9lbs of grain.  We ended up about 2° over our strike temp, but 2 handfuls of ice brought the temp right down to 155°.  We let this mash for 60 minutes.

With about 20 minutes left we started to heat up our sparge water to 170°.  After we got to temperature,  we filled up the hot tank and set up the sparge arm.  (I’m leaving out the sanitizing details, that is assumed).  After 60 minutes of mashing, we poured off the bits of grain that got though the false bottom and  sparged the grain for about 50 minutes, filling up the brew kettle to 6 gallons.

Opps, boil over after adding the tettnang

I brought the wort up to a boil.  I’m using a new 50k BTU burner and it is touchy, it requires constant attention to avoid boil overs, or I need a larger boil kettle.  At the start of the boil I added .5oz of Hallertau Hops then at 30 minutes added 1oz of Tettnang Hops.

Boil Schedule:

• 60 minutes .5 oz Hallertau Hops
• 30 minutes 1 oz Tettnang Hops

After the 60 minute boil, with a wort Chiller, I brought the temperature down to 80 degrees.  Poured the wort through a fine metal mesh into the empty Hot liquor tank.  From there drained it into a 6.5 gal glass carboy.  Took Original Gravity measurement.  The expected range was 1.044-1.048, ours was 1.048.  We hit our mark!  I then added my yeast starter (Wyeast Bavarian Wheat # 3056) to the primary.

All done!