Mention rye and the average person thinks of dense, flavorful breads, crisp crackers, distilled spirits, or possibly a city in New York. Indeed, rye's main contribution as an ingredient is its enhancement of the overall complexity of the beer's flavor. The subtlety of the rye flavor is due to a variety of factors, including the amount of rye used in the recipe, the form of rye used, the hopping level, the type of yeast used in the recipe, and the other ingredients involved in the brew. Part of the purpose of this article, then, is to review some of the potential complications as well as the advantages of working with this grain. Higher levels of rye can result in both brewing and marketing complications.
Rye is a strongly flavored grain, and too much rye in the batch can result in unsold beer.
In many ways, the flavor of rye beer is reminiscent of wheat beers. Light bodied and somewhat dry, rye beers tend to have a nice head and an interesting grainy, slightly spicy flavor. Brewers have also discovered similarities in the physical properties of rye and wheat, which lead to similar problems when brewing with these grains. Like wheat, rye comes in hulled form. The lack of a hull, combined with rye's high water retention capacity, can create a very sticky mash prone to setting.