Fantasy Homebrewing: Mexican-American Rye Lager :)

In my last post I outlined how to play fantasy homebrewing. This past weekend I brewed the beer that I drafted. It made for an interesting recipe and brew day.

My strategy on brew day was to try and draft for ingredients I thought were least likely to be picked. In my head this was ingredients for a mexican lager. Vienna base malt (who really wants Vienna for their base?) Flaked corn, Mexican Lager yeast, Saaz hops (may be difficult to get) and maybe some roasted malt for coloring. This is what I ended up with in 5 rounds of drafting:

Here are the ingredients allowed to everyone:
Water
Acids (Lactic and Phosphoric)
Salts (all)
Rice Hulls
Potassium Sorbate

My Draft List:

Rye Malt
Flaked Corn
Flaked Barley

Magnum Hops

Mexican Lager Yeast

Base malts were going first and I was worried about not being left with anything worth using. Vienna had already been selected and the only things left were rye, mild and then some extracts. I quickly chose Rye. After that I had to plan my other ingredients as best I could. I now regret selecting Flaked barley instead of some sort of chocolate or roasted malt to adjust coloring. By selecting a lager yeast I'll hopefully be able to temper the large portion of rye in the grist, only time will tell.

Okay, gotta make something out of this, there's $100 on the line.

5lbs Rye Malt (I considered using less but I needed the diastatic power)
3lbs Flaked Corn (This may be a little much considering how the wort tasted)
1lb Flaked Barley (Just for the GU, I only purchased 5lbs Rye)
1lb Rice Hulls

.25oz Magnum @ 60
1oz Magnum @ 5

Mexican Lager Yeast WLP940

So I brewed this beer and not one stuck sparge, no issues at all really. It's very light in color with a lot of what I assume is beta-glucans in the wort. A viscous and cloudy looking element.  The wort smells of rye malt so hopefully lagering will temper that a bit.

Beersmith held up it's end of the bargain and I nailed my mash temp of 150.

OG was 1.041 of an estimated 1.043 so not too bad.

I'll be sure to report back how this beer placed in the Fantasy Homebrewing. Until then I highly recommend implementing this game in your own homebrew club, it's tons of fun.