Mashing 100% Rye Whiskey

[SlickFloss]

On 8/20/2020 at 3:44 PM, Cosmic.Distiller said:

I make a 100% Rye mash with no malt with decent yields. The trick is to add enough water so it doesn't get so thick. We bring the temp up to 90c and add high temp enzymes, which I understand is hotter than most people take it, but it works for us *shrug*

This is what I mean by High and Hot. High percentage of rye cook it real hot. You can gelatinize rye at lower temps, but everything will gelatinize faster at higher temps. Our mashes are cooked to the upper threshold limit of high temp tolerant alpha amylase (189/190). 

Cosmic is right on with a Rye ferment, you can't get greedy on your grist ratio. If you need to dilute to the point of lower brix do it it is worth it. We've been cooking rye here for a long time and are just now getting to a 2.5 lb:1 gallon grist ratio.

 

On 8/20/2020 at 5:45 PM, Georgeous said:

very cool, are you using malted or un malted rye or combination of both. We ran six 600 gallon 90% un malted rye mashes and for most part all went well. The last two we added another bioglucanase addition in the dough in ground water temp to reduce viscosity and that helped make cooling a breeze. Rye was most challenging mash but we hit our numbers on all runs. Either we studied right or someone above gave a litlle help 
We will next try 100% unmalted rye, i cant see how 10% would change much. Thank you for your feedback, look forward to coming to check you guys out some time. 

 

10% can change a lot if that addition is malt and you are doing all grains in to start mashing. If you are withholding your malt because you think you are (or you actually are) converting with 10% addition you won't notice much of a difference, but if you are adding that malt in with the rye at the beginning of the cook the malt will help smooth out clumping a bit and can assist with liquefaction (much more noticeable in our high rye bourbon bills than our high rye b/c liquefaction with corn is a much bigger issue, but still noticeable).

[Georgeous]

we add it at the end and hold for 60 minutes at 150°F. we made several batches of rye now and from here on out all will be 100% unmalted Texas Rye. Thank you again.