What do you do when you win a major award of 10 pounds of Chocolate Rye Malt at a local homebrewing competition? You let it sit around for a while. Then, you think about it and come up with an awesome Dark Mild recipe. Check out this video as we experience the results of brewing a Dark Mild with Chocolate Rye Malt.

Mike’s English Dark Mild Recipe

Batch Size: 2 gallons

1 pound of Maris Otter Malt
1 pound Bries Brewer’s Malt (2-row)
0.5 pound White Wheat Malt
4 ounces of Crisp’s Medium Crystal Malt (55° Lovibond)
4 ounces of Chocolate Rye Malt. a product of Valley Malting – Hadley, MA (180° Lovibond)

Yeast: Safale S-04 Ale Dry Yeast
22 °SRM

Starting Gravity; 1.038
Final Gravity: 1.007

Mike brewed in a bag for this recipe. He only wanted to brew a small batch in case it was bad.

Tasting Notes

We talked about the addition of Chocolate Rye in the recipe. There didn’t seem to be a lot of flavor from it in this beer but it was only 8% of the grain bill.

Mike wanted to see what color he could get from the malt and he got a lot of dark color for sure.

The one thing Mike said that rye brings to a beer (no, not spiciness) is body. He said he has read posts from homebrewers who make beers with rye malt making up 100% of the grain bill and the wort has the consistency of cough syrup.

This beer was a nice flavorful session beer but if he were to brew it again, Mike would change the base malt to be all Maris Otter to up the biscuit character. I suggested a change of the caramel malt to one with a higher Lovibond like 120°. I like those dark fruit flavors in Milds.

Since Mike has 10 pounds of the stuff, he is think of other beers to brew like a Brown Ale with Chocolate malt to go with the Chocolate Rye.

Do you have any ideas? Let us know in the comments below.

BREW ON!