Rye Pale Ale

To use up a load of old hops, and to keep my WLP002 ticking along, I thought I'd brew a beer with a bit of rye.

I couldn't find how much sulphate was in my water on my water providers fancy new website, so I just added 1.5ml of HCl (66%) and guessed based on vague memory of previous water reports that this would get me a very  low sulphate to chloride ratio.

The recipe went over a few quick revisions, when I realised I didn't have enough rye, and when my invert sugar syrup crystalised, causing it to be impossible to get out of the jar.

Grains 

This means the recipe was 79% pale (Crisp, flagon), 7% medium brown sugar/invert #3 syrup (roughly half and half), and 19% rye (flaked). Mashed hot and aimed for 1.044 OG.

Hops

For a 10L batch: 10g of simcoe at 11.7AA for 15IBU at 20 mins, 10g of perle of 8.4AA for 5IBU at 10 mins, 40g of Casacde at 0mins for 0IBU. Because I "no-chill" these were actually at 5mins -5mins and -15 mins respectively.

Yeast

Cooled in the fermenter and pitched with WLP002.

Tasting

The beer was dreadful. Picked up a medicinal infection, caused gushing bottles, was way to bitter, the hop character wasn't fresh. I don't know why I even bothered writing this. The picture wasn't even this beer. It's just appropriately miserable.