Rye India pale ale is a style of

rye beer Rye beer is a beer in which rye is substituted for some portion of the malted barley. ''Roggenbier'' is a beer produced with up to 60% rye malt. The style originated in Bavaria, southern Germany, and is brewed with the same type of yeast as ...

with a strong hoppy character, comparable to India pale ale. In this

beer style Beer styles differentiate and categorise beers by colour, flavour, strength, ingredients, production method, recipe, history, or origin. The modern concept of beer styles is largely based on the work of writer Michael Jackson in his 1977 book ...

, malted rye grains in the

mash ingredients Mash ingredients, mash bill, mashbill, or grain bill are the materials that brewing, brewers use to produce the wort that they then Brewing#Fermenting, ferment into alcohol. Mashing is the act of creating and extracting fermentation (food), ferm ...

add a tangy or spicy character to the beer.

History

Rye Rye (''Secale cereale'') is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop and a forage crop. It is grown principally in an area from Eastern and Northern Europe into Russia. It is much more tolerant of cold weather and poor soil than o ...

was a traditional brewing grain for many eastern European breweries, and grew in popularity among American craft brewers near the end of the 20th century. Although it is popular, the history of the Rye IPA is indeed unclear, and no single brewery can be definitively credited with its creation.

Popularity

Within the American craft beer market, IPAs are one of the most popular categories. Within that category, rye IPAs are growing in popularity because of the different taste profiles they bring. They allow breweries that are known for their IPAs to increase the variety of styles they brew. The increase in popularity of rye beers was paralleled by an increase in the popularity of rye whiskey.

Brewing with rye

Rye is a

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached husk, hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and ...

used in addition to the other malted grain, typically

barley Barley (), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains; it was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around 9000 BC, giving it nonshattering spikele ...

, in the ingredients during the

mashing In brewing and distilling, mashing is the process of combining ground grain – malted barley and sometimes supplementary grains such as corn, sorghum, rye, or wheat (known as the " grain bill") – with water and then heating the mixture. Ma ...

process. Rye can be difficult to brew with because of its high

beta-glucan Beta-glucans, β-glucans comprise a group of β-D-glucose polysaccharides ( glucans) naturally occurring in the cell walls of cereals, bacteria, and fungi, with significantly differing physicochemical properties dependent on source. Typically, ...

content. This makes the filtration of the

wort Wort () is the liquid extracted from the mashing process during the brewing of beer or whisky. Wort contains the sugars, the most important being maltose and maltotriose, that will be Ethanol fermentation, fermented by the brewing yeast to prod ...

more difficult than usual. Rye is commonly added to beer for its complex, crisp, distinctive, spicy flavor and sometimes adds a reddish color to the beer.

References

{{reflist Beer styles Rye-based drinks