Anybody ever brew w/ wild rice?

dsuarez · 04-04-2009, 04:35 PM

Will it dry a beer out like regular rice? Will the woody/nutty tones be carried over into the brew? How much per 5 Gallon batch is recommended? I want to make something like an English Special Bitter. How many gravity points will, say, a pound of wild rice contribute? I will prob. cook for about 45. mins. before putting into mash. Let me know your experience w/ wild rice please!

**Reverend JC** · 04-04-2009, 04:41 PM

Yeah others have. Or atleast that is hte impression i got while reading radical brews by randy mosher. It will impart some sugars but beyond that i do not think there will be alot of flavor from it.

tfries · 04-04-2009, 11:51 PM

I made a Wild Rice Lager last year using 1.5lb in a 5 gallon batch ( 11% of grist). I did a cereal mash with it on the stove, following instructions from a BYO article. I used 1.040 pppg for the rice.

Add rice and some malt and hold at 150 for 30 minutes.
Raise temp to 180 and hold for 10 minutes.
Boil 20-30 minutes.
Add to main mash.

Make sure you use a pot quite a bit bigger then you think you would need. The rice expanded to almost 3 times the original volume during the 20-30 minute boil.

I was quite surprised that the finished beer did not have the woody nuttiness, it was more of a floral flavor. The beer was quite popular with the brew club. I was all set to brew it again a couple weeks ago. My wife assured me we had plenty of Wild Rice, but on brew day, come to find out we only had half a pound. Ended up modifying the recipe a bit and brewed a strong amber lager using Mt. Rainier hops.