Rye Malt Syrup

Rye malt syrup: sweet.

My fellow beer nerds,

I speak to you today as a fellow citizen-homebrewer, as an unreformed and unrepentant extract brewer, and as an enthusiastic user of all kinds of cereal grains:

Rye malt syrup is pretty sweet.


No longer need non-all grain brewers be excluded from the use of Secale cereale in their formulations; no longer need extract brewers be forced to omit the letter "R" from the acronyms of their IPAs; no longer need your stouts be confined to oats nor your various hybrid styles to wheat.


The extract is an exclusive, custom blended for NB and comprised of 70% pale malt, 20% rye malt, and 10% caramel 40 - unhopped, natch -  gravity contribution of 1.035 ppg, color in the neighborhood 6 L. All by its lonesome you get those distinct earthy, oily, spicy notes we want from rye, but from numerous test batches I can happily report that it plays very nicely with everything from roast grain to lots of hops and with every yeast strain we've thrown at it so far.

Rye IPA? Homebrewer, please. Rye saison? Do it. Rye Baltic porter? Somebody's gonna brew one, might as well be you. Rye lager? Get down with your bad self. Rye wit, rye alt, Roggenbier, Roggenbock, Rolschbier, golden rye, brown rye, red rye, black rye? Get out your 5 gallon kettle, unchain your imagination, let no mash constrain you!

This joke had to be made.

By way of getting you started, here's a very simple, fast fermenter-to-glass recipe (available as a brand-new kit!) to help you both try out this extract and sieze the last fading gasps of summer with one more warm-weather beer:

American Rye Ale

(think of an American-style hefeweizen, but with rye in place of wheat ...)

5 gallons, target OG 1.042

• 6 lbs rye malt syrup
• 1 oz Liberty @ 60"
• 1 oz Sterling @ 15"
• Safale US05 or Wyeast 1056

... and away you go!