BeerBorg

would I get something tasty or crap if I made a brew:
50% munich liquid extract
30% wheat liquid extract
20% rye liquid extract

hopped at 45 mins with Willamette and 20 mins with Willamette hops

and used bella saison yeast at around 76F?

I like wheat beers. I was also very pleased with the saison I made. the funky fruity peppery quality of the yeast would probably go well with the wheat extract and the hops but I don't know for sure. I'd like to add the rye to give a twist to the wheat.

don't know which steeping grain if any would go with this. I wont be brewing again for some time because of an impending move but was kicking around an idea for something new and different.

Though I tend to be more rye-heavy in my roggen, this is a solid recipe. My best advice is to keep the hops light... 10-20 IBU, light on the flavor hops as well. I would tend to go with noble hops, though have used Perle. I think Williamette would work fine here. I use a weizen yeast, but saison may work OK as well. You'll be good with this, IMHO...

thank you swenocha. i'll be tucking this one away for when I can get back into things. light in the ibu's...check. what ABV should I shoot for? roughly... I'm new to brewing and tend to make things kinda strong. is a roggensbier typically 4-5% or higher?

4.5 - 6% is normal for the style...

Honestly if you use Bella Saison I'd call that a rye saison and not a roggenbier. Where if you used a wheat yeast or even say T-58 I'd call it a roggenbier. Bella is going to hyper attenuate it. T-58 will not and it will still give you the peppery and spicy flavors that Bella or French saison does.

All that said, it will be good either way. I love the rye saison I made with 20% rye, 50% munich, and 30% pilsner, and I liked the roggenbiers I've made with wheat yeast and T-58 and 30-40% rye (malted and flaked) quite much too. I do think the spicy/peppery yeast like T-58 or Bella bring out the rye spicy/tart/earthy flavors nicely.

EDIT: Also FWIW, nothing is wrong with 4%-5% beers, even as a saison. Most of my saisons are actually only in the 4-6% range. I know it's all cool and popular these days to bring out the 7-8%+ saisons, but honestly it's not necessary to make good beer and back in the day 3% saisons were quite common, and 7% ones were almost unheard of. Even the ones that were brewed for storage tended to only be 6% or so "down on the farm" as such. Farm workers are not very useful when they get wasted.

thanks mashani / swenocha ... since I am at work and don't have access to a recipe calculator that includes rye extract, what's this sound like: it might be a little high on the abv.. had to guess at weights.

(rough measures)

1.0 lb munich malt extract
1.0 lb wheat malt extract
2.0 lb rye malt extract

batch volume 2.5 gallons
boil volume 2.5 gallons
45 min boil

.25 oz mt hood for bittering - pellets - at 45 mins ('for clean bittering')
.25 oz saaz for flavor - pellet - at 20 mins
.25 oz Willamette for aroma - pellet - at 10 mins.

yeast t-58 1 sachet, ferment at around 62f for 3 weeks.. bottle condition / carb 4 weeks total

as for the high abv.. just a newb habit I haven't completely got past :P I'm still in the newb stage but am slowly moving toward trying to refine what I make to make it better. got tons of knowledge from my last mead experiment. cant wait to get brewing again but sadly it will be a couple months...gotta start packing things up.


-z-

What is the munich and rye extracts composition? (IE munich = 50% pils/50% munich, or 100% munich or...). Or what is the
manufacturer(s), so I can look it up myself. I think northern brewer rye is like 70% 2 row, 20% rye, 10% crystal 40 or something like that. Is that what your using?

yep...northern brewer.

nb munich malt extract - Northern Brewer Munich malt syrup is a 50/50 blend of pale and Munich malts

nb rye extract - This proprietary blend of 70% 2-row, 20% malted rye, and 10% caramel 40 malt

hmmm... I thought the rye extract was going to be all rye.

I agree with what Mashani is saying here. Good thoughts on the yeast selection. I'll admit I wasn't thinking malt extract blends (I was in an AG mindset), so that's also a good catch. So you're really looking at 10% rye in the recipe you described a few posts ago. That's probably fine. IMHO, you can go up to 50% rye and get a good beer (probably can go higher, but I haven't pushed that limit). But considering the mix in the extract, the only way you get to 20% rye is to only use the rye LME (which is certainly an option), and any higher is to do a mini-mash or total AG. So this won't match the specs that the original beer style calls for. You know what? Who cares. I would think that this will be quite good. The wheat and Munich malts should make this a nice beer.

Personally, I would skip the aroma hop, but that's your call. Otherwise I like the hops.

BTW, I'm guessing you've read a few of these already, but here are a few articles that I initially read that got me on the Roggenbier path. Most everything I've done in this style, and anything I've said above, is based in part on these articles:

German Beer Institute
BJCP
BYO
Beersmith

FWIW, I think a beer brewed with straight up NB Rye extract would be tasty, if not exactly a true Roggenbier. I have made bot a saison and a Rye IPA out of it and they were good.

You could kick it up a notch by doing a PM with some malted wheat and some flaked rye. Really the C40 should not be there, but not much that can be done about it.

zorak1066 wrote:would I get something tasty or crap if I made a brew:
50% munich liquid extract
30% wheat liquid extract
20% rye liquid extract

hopped at 45 mins with Willamette and 20 mins with Willamette hops

and used bella saison yeast at around 76F?

I like wheat beers. I was also very pleased with the saison I made. the funky fruity peppery quality of the yeast would probably go well with the wheat extract and the hops but I don't know for sure. I'd like to add the rye to give a twist to the wheat.

don't know which steeping grain if any would go with this. I wont be brewing again for some time because of an impending move but was kicking around an idea for something new and different.

This like the true definition of a Saison. I'm not sure what your going for as a flavor profile though. Be interested to hear how this one comes out.