Hitachino Nest Red rice ale and Koji?

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Bsquared

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If you have not tried this beer, plunk down the five plus dollars a bottle and try it. I won't say its as amazing as the white ale from Hitachino nest but it is a vary interesting beer, with a host of unique flavors you might not expect out of such a simple recipe.


If you go to the Hitachino web site, the ingredients are listed, and the malts are Pilsner and Flaked Barley, but no rice let alone red rice?

So this got me thinking of an unfiltered sake I drank a couple months ago that had a pink hue to it, much like the red rice beer does. so I'm thinking that this beer might utilize the Koji fungus used to create the rice malt for sake fermentation, but to "mash" or convert the starches in the flaked barley to fermentables.

So i think i might try this idea out, of using Koji spore's (in a separate brew area) on 1/2-1lb of steamed flaked barley and let it grow for a few days at 90ºF , then add it to a pilsner only mash at my mash out and sparging step before the boil.

I don't think I'll get the pink color, because id bet that is a specific characteristic of the Koji strain used, but i might get some interesting flavor profiles out of this, or it'll taste like moldy bread...
 
After consulting a few papers about Koji Clasification, and talking to my lab mate from china, she told me about Red yeast rice, Monascus purpureus, a strain of yeast used in fermentation that adds a pink color to the fermentation product. Now if i can get some to try it.
 
I'd like to hear more about this... sounds like something very cool and I'll need to find a bottle as well to try.
 
Hunt it down, ether the white ale or the red rice, they are some thing else.

As for the hunt for Monascus purprueus, I emailed White Labs to see if they had or had access to that strain and they did not but directed me to ATCC.ORG. (American type culture collection) where I found it for $250, but would need an MTA (Material transfer agreement) certifying I would be using it for research purposes only, so I think I'll try another rout for now.

I think I have three shots to try to get this Yeast,M.Purpureus is used as a herbal medicine it china called Red yeast rice, where it is fermented on rice and dried, so I went to our local specialty market and got a Supplement of red yeast rice (not the extract)

On the bottle the active ingredient was M.Purpureus 60mg, so thats a good sign so I'm going to give it a shot.

I made 500ml of DME in my flask sterilized, and I'll try to inoculate it with 120mg, and see if the dried yeast will come back. I doubt it will work, but I'll give it a try.

If this does not work, I'll get a bottle of Red rice ale and see if I can culture any of the yeast off the bottom of the bottle. They are not filtered and there is a lot of sediment in these bottles, so there might be some yeast still alive in to bottle if it's not pasteurized.

Worst case serious I'll go hunting around to some local labs, and see what I can get.
 
I just got home from work, and checked the flask, and it looks good. There is a light krausen forming and I can see lots of little bubbles suggesting the yeast are still active, and there is hint of CO2 smell in the flask, so I'm betting they are ALIVE!!!

Now the plan, is to devise a twelve gallon batch, and split in to two 6 gallon carboys, and ferment one with a blend, and the other straight with the red yeast. good thing I got a 6000ml flask today, I'm going to need to build a big starter!
 
Recipe: Red Rice ale
Style: 23-Speciality Beer

Recipe Overview

Wort Volume Before Boil: 14.00 US gals
Wort Volume After Boil: 12.50 US gals
Volume Transferred: 12.00 US gals
Water Added: 0.00 US gals
Volume At Pitching: 12.00 US gals
Final Batch Volume: 11.00 US gals
Expected Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.063 SG
Expected OG: 1.071 SG
Expected FG: 1.017 SG
Expected ABV: 7.3 %
Expected ABW: 5.7 %
Expected IBU (using Tinseth): 12.0
Expected Color: 7.7 EBC
Apparent Attenuation: 75.5 %
Mash Efficiency: 77.0 %
Boil Duration: 90.0 mins
Fermentation Temperature: 70 degF

Fermentables
German Pilsner Malt 28lb 0oz (90.3 %) In Mash/Steeped
UK Flaked Barley 3lb 0oz (9.7 %) In Mash/Steeped

Hops
German Hallertauer Hersbrucker (3.5 % alpha) 1.00 oz Loose Pellet Hops used 60 Min From End
German Hallertauer Hersbrucker (3.5 % alpha) 2.00 oz Loose Pellet Hops used 30 Min From End

Other Ingredients

Yeast: White Labs WLP570-Belgian Golden Ale 50% / red yeast rice 50%

Mash Schedule
Mash Type: Full Mash
Schedule Name: HERMS156.
Recipe Notes

So this is the recipe I worked up from Beer alchemy according to the Hitachino web site. Any Comments? Ideas?
 
A quick up date, I stepped up my starter last night to try to get near an optimal pitching rate with the yeast I have. It looks good they went through 5L of 1.045SG starter over night. I spiked the starter with 2.5g of yeast extract too, so they can get healthy before I pitch them.

Good things, there I a similar pink hue that you see in the red rice ale, as well as a similar smell and taste, though tasting the starter tends to be a little nasty, with all the live yeast.

I'm assuming that It is going to take a few batches pf re-pitching the yeast before I select for the best preforming yeast for fermenting wort, but I'm hoping that the blended batch will be a good approximation to what I'm looking for.
 
Today I brewed a 9 gallon batch, after I realized my old mash/tun was not going to handle 30lb of grains for a 12gallon batch, brew sculpture 3.0 is sill in the works, so i had to scale back .

Last night I bought a Hitachino nest red rice ale, so i could do a little comparison. The aroma had a faint resemblance to the yeast starter, and the pink color of the beer was a lot lighter than I remember. All and all, I think I might be Way off my rocker on this one, but any way On ward and up ward!

I decided to do a little experiment, so I split the wort, into two 5gallon carboys and pitched one with all WL_Cal ale and the other 50/50 cal ale and red rice yeast. I guess I'll see how this one goes, I'm hoping the flavor is not way off, because the pink hue of the starter was really unique, and might be cool in a beer.
 
So this morning i checked on the carboys, and the Red rice yeast batch was in full action! though the Cal ale was just getting started.

When I got home from work they were both going gang buster's! but the color of the two where vary different. The smell of both was much better than the starter, so I'm a little more confident the Red Yeast will not over power the brew.
P7130014.JPG

If you look carefully at the bottom of the Hydrometer cylinder you can see the pink color the yeast make.
P7110002.JPG

Here is what the Hitachino red rice looks like
P7120011.JPG
But if this did not work, I was able to capture some of the yeast from the bottle, and I'm going to build a starter from this for another batch
P7130015.JPG
 
Subscribed...love the Red Rice beer, they have it at a local noodle restaurant (that kinda sucks) but the beer sorta makes up for it...
 
thats cool I'm gonna go to the store tonight and buy some of this beer, and hopefully try your idea out.
 
Hmm you have me interested enough, I'm going to go buy a few bottles. If I like the first one, I'll culture the yeast out of the second.

Keep us posted, I want to know how this turns out.

Also, the darker beer on the right... that's from the yeast right?

Also, it does seem that they use rice. From the greatbrewers website and Kiuchi's.
"Complex sake like flavors with malt sweet notes. Hints of strawberries in the nose and palate. An intriguing mix of sake, malt , and bitter notes in the finish"

While the malts don't list rice(which is not a malt anyways), I'm sure it's in there. I think if I tried this, I'd just go with flaked rice.

Also, wtf is up with the $250 for the yeast? Any reasoning for that when you can just go culture it anyways?
 
I've had the beers going side by side in the primary for 11 days now, so I got out the long pipette and pulled some of of each to check the gravity, and they are both down the to where they should be 1.010.

It interesting though, how different the two beers looked in the beginning, but as the fermentation went on they began to look similar again in the carboy. But when I put the tow beer's side by side in a glass you can see the difference. The red yeast fermented beer has a vary slight haze, but I do not really see a pink hue.

The flavor of the two beers is drastically different, and I feel the Red Yeast beer definitely has a berry like note and aroma and a greater ester profile, though it is vary subtle and definitely not like a wit,but its there.

The cal-ale only beer , is super clean, no ester or other flavors that are in the 50/50 red yeast blend. and I'm vary glad I did a longer boil because there is just the slightest hint of DMS that you would expect in an all Pils based beer, and any shorter of a boil might have resulted in too much DMS. As well the bitterness of both beers is the same.


I will leave the beers in the Primary for about two more weeks before kegging and carbonating to about 2.5%CO2.

I'm not such a good photographer, but the beer's look a lot lighter in person.
P7230001.JPG

P7230002.JPG

P7230003.JPG

I think the next step, will be to use Rice, and to use the Yeast I captured from the beer. I do think is I can figure out how to do it I would like to use the Koji mold on the rice before fermentation...May be this fall i can get some time to try it!
 
Also, the darker beer on the right... that's from the yeast right?

Also, it does seem that they use rice. From the greatbrewers website and Kiuchi's.
"Complex sake like flavors with malt sweet notes. Hints of strawberries in the nose and palate. An intriguing mix of sake, malt , and bitter notes in the finish"

While the malts don't list rice(which is not a malt anyways), I'm sure it's in there. I think if I tried this, I'd just go with flaked rice.

Also, wtf is up with the $250 for the yeast? Any reasoning for that when you can just go culture it anyways?

Yes I think the darker brew was due to yeast flocculation, where the lighter beer has more yeast in suspension where the darker had more clumps of yeast.

I agree they rice is in there some where, but I don't know if its mashed in, or if it's exposed to Koji mold like a sake is.

250 for a dried yeast sample!!! but this is the place where Laboratories go to get bugs, so they need to know they are 100% pure, so your paying for UBER quality control. It's funny the the folks from white labs directed me to them, but I was using my Lab's email account so they might have thought I could get a sample from them.
 
Yes I think the darker brew was due to yeast flocculation, where the lighter beer has more yeast in suspension where the darker had more clumps of yeast.

I agree they rice is in there some where, but I don't know if its mashed in, or if it's exposed to Koji mold like a sake is.

250 for a dried yeast sample!!! but this is the place where Laboratories go to get bugs, so they need to know they are 100% pure, so your paying for UBER quality control. It's funny the the folks from white labs directed me to them, but I was using my Lab's email account so they might have thought I could get a sample from them.

I don't think they do use koji... isn't that what this specific strain of yeast is for. From the great brews site I would take it as, there is a cereal mash of some sort for the rice which breaks the type B sugars(don't know what those really are) into type A's which that sake yeast can handle.

Either way you don't need to use koji to add sugar to beer with rice. BMC does it.
 
Honestly, the Red rice yeast is a BIG swag (Scientific wild ass guess), but it seemed like a good candidate for the color profile of the beer.

As for the flavor, Koji is used mainly for enzymatic starch conversion in sake manufacturing, and is not necessary for a barley mash, because the barley has all the necessary enzymes for the conversion of starch to simple fermentables. Although this is the predominate use of koji in the sake making process, the koji like molds in cheeses imparts flavor in to the sake.

At least for what I have gathered and I am no expert (at any thing by far) some sakes ,that the rice is left on the koji for up to a couple months, will be A). vary dry because of all the fermentable sugar.
B). have a pungent flavor.

so that has me to believe there might be a Koji step in the brewing of this beer.
 
So this weekend I kegged up the two beers and started them carbonating, today I got them just shy of where I like them~2% so Ill let them go another day.

In both beers there is a bit of haze, so I plan on cold conditioning them for about two to four weeks before evaluating them. In that time I think I will try and split another batch, with an all red yeast ferment, and adding rice.

as of today though, the WL001 fermented beer is a vary clean tasting pilsner-esque beer. where the WL001/red yeast beer is some thing else, with lots of fruity flavors,but not the kind you would expect from an Belgian or an English Ale yeast. The good thing it is not over powering and they are not unpleasant flavors.

I think the trik will be to do a blind three way tasting...(Insert joke here)...With the Hitachino red, if I can find a fresh one!

On a side note, our local beer heaven (Hamiltons) had two ohter Hitachino bottles in their cooled this weekend, So I can't wait to get back there an try them.
 
So I am subscribed to this thread but no updates for a while...

I am thinking about doing something similar after drinking another bottle of the Red Rice Ale last night (my liquor store is finally carrying it now...yay!).

I saved the dregs from the bottle and will do a stepped up started before brewing the beer. The bottle I got was way more red in color (really a ruby color, almost like a lot of raspberry/cherry beers, much more red than I remember and redder than in the pictures of the beer in the picture above (and a lot more clear, no chunks, I poured carefully to save the dregs).

I am planning on trying to get some natural red from 'red rice' as stated on the back of the bottle...I was thinking about reading into how to incorporate rice into a mash...I assume it means steaming it first to glutenize the starches, then mashing with barley, and I think I might try this rice
http://www.lotusfoods.com/Bhutanese-Red-Rice/p/LOT-00160&c=LotusFoods@WholeGrain
lot-00160.jpg

to see if I can get some red color out of it, as well as adding cara-red malt to the mix.

I likely won't be doing this for a couple months, got some other beers on the schedule, but I will update with my results.

Anyone else with updates?
 
Hi All,

I've captured yeast from the bottom of a Red Rice Ale bottle and its been going strong for a week or so now and I plan on brewing after Labor Day.

I am still a NB and have not graduated to the AG brewing so I am going to do a partial mash with a 1lb of Red Rice and a couple lbs of Weyermann CaraRed.

Planned recipe:

6lbs NB Organic Light Malt Syrup
2lbs Weyermann CaraRed
1lb Steamed Red Rice (Weight before steaming)
(1lb cane sugar if the OG is too low.)
1 oz Hallertau @ 60min
1.5 oz Hallertau @ 30
.5oz Hallertau @ 5 min

Yeast: captured from Hitachino Red Rice Ale bottle
1/2 gallon starter which has a red tint.

Any suggestions would be appreciated as this will be my first "partial mash" and I've heard its a bit different with rice then regular grain. True/false?

Thanks,
Mat
 
So we brewed this last week and its fermenting really well.

Only changed one thing from the recipe above. We steamed 2lbs of red rice then mashed with an additional pound of rice hulls with the 2lbs of CaraRed @ 150 for 45 min and then sparged. We did not add the sugar and our OG was 1065.

Updates to follow shortly.
 
I took a bottle of this to my brew club at the end on Jan and everyone seemed to like it. I am going to brew another batch soon with the yeast and plenty more red rice. I think it needs 5-6lbs instead of just 2 as I used before. Going to make it AG next time. The cultured yeast from the bottle is def a keeper and very unique. As it's aged for over 5 months it's really mellowed out and has a very crisp dry finish.

I'd love to hear if anyone else has been trying to use this yeast or red rice.
 
Hey guys, love this thread.

Could you take the process used to make sake and instead of using rice, use grain? I don't really know a lot about Koji other than it breaks down starches.

I'm also curious to know how the Black Fobidden rice would affect the flavor of an ale.
 
Just have to give Hitachino props. They are located in Ibaraki and received some pretty bad damage from the earthquake (not nearly as bad as those further up north though). Hitachino took their beer/sake off the bottling line for a while and were bottling water for the earthquake victims.

Additionally, I would like to add, if you have a chance try their Nipponia beer for an awesome sampling of Sorachi Ace.

They have an English website if anyone's interested:

Hitachino Website
 
Interesting thread, guys.

I have been wondering for a while about using sprouted rice in a white beer recipe. From what I understand of the process the whole rice berries are soaked, sprouted, and kilned in the same way that a basic barley malt would be. Has anyone tried using this ingredient, or have any knowledge about its use in brewing?
 
According to their website they use Lager malt, flaked barley, and red rice. The yeast is 清酒用大吟醸酵母 - Seishu Daiginjou Koubou (yeast) which is a kind of sake yeast.

Kizakura in Kyoto also has a beer fermented with sake yeast called Kura no Kaori.
黄桜 京都麦酒 蔵のかほり 京都麦酒 蔵のかほり – 生ビールブログ -とりあえず生!-

I had this a few years ago and remember a distinct sake aftertaste. It was good. Maybe someone can try experimenting with same sake yeasts?
 
While this thread hasn't had any real activity in about a year, I am curious if there has been any updates in this area. Has anyone had any success? What was their process? Recipes?
 
I am making a similar beer in a couple of weeks. Recipe (50L batch)

5 kg Pilsner malt
3 kg Wheat malt
3 kg Red rice
0.5 kg Cara red

1.5 kg dry light extract
0.5 kg table sugar

Yeast: WLP705 Sake
Hops: 12 g Warrior (17%) 90 min
50 g East Kent Goldings (4.4%) 5 min

Preboil rice for 30 min. This will make it accessible for usual mashing.

Mashing: 20 min 62 celsius, 40 min 65 celsius, 20 min 71 deg celsius, 10 min 78 deg celsius


While this thread hasn't had any real activity in about a year, I am curious if there has been any updates in this area. Has anyone had any success? What was their process? Recipes?
 
I brewed this recipe last wednesday. Brewday conclusions: I believe one needs a much larger proportion of red rice in order to get that very red colour. Perhaps as much as 50%. I also think that such a large proportion may result in problems such as stuck mash.

The wort, however, got a lot of flavour components from the red rice, and I believe that the beer will turn out very interesting.

I made a relatively large starter with the sake yeast, and it appears that it does not make for a very reddish colour in the beer.
 
From what I've read I'm not sure that red rice = red color. It seems the pinkish hue of the beer is from the Sake yeast, but not all Sake yeasts impart this color specifically. I would recommend trying Wyeast's Sake strain if you can find it and trying that out (it is a different strain from the WLP705).

And if all else fails you can always add a very small portion of roasted barley/roasted grains to the grist.
 
To be honest, the colour is not that important to me - I just found it nifty. I am more interested in seeing how this beer will compare to the Hitachino - my variant is less alcoholic and without flaked barley.

I am more than happy if the direction of the flavour is in that of the Hitachino one. I will try to post here once I've sampled it.
 
I really need to revisit this idea, from what I gathered some alcoholic beverages in China have been made with red yeast rice, these bugs make a red-purple color on rice they are eating.

image-989937457.jpg

This is the stuff I fermented with, it kicked off a TON of diacytal, but I was using it as a primary fermentation. I think the trick is to steam some rice an use the red yeast as a Koji over night, then add it to the mash, or mix it with an active fermentation of the beer.
 
I brewed this recipe last wednesday. Brewday conclusions: I believe one needs a much larger proportion of red rice in order to get that very red colour. Perhaps as much as 50%. I also think that such a large proportion may result in problems such as stuck mash.

The wort, however, got a lot of flavour components from the red rice, and I believe that the beer will turn out very interesting.

I made a relatively large starter with the sake yeast, and it appears that it does not make for a very reddish colour in the beer.

I was in Japan about two weeks ago and went to the Hitachino Brewery. I was lucky enough to bump into the owner, Toshiyuki Kiuchi, at the brewpub at the train station. I was pretty hammered from trying to drink every one of their ~15 beers before I started chatting with him and his friends. Anyway, I did manage to get out of him that the red rice to malt ratio is 40/60 (40% red rice). Sorry I didn't get any more details for you.
 
Hey, I'm doing a red yeast rice ferment right now. Red Yeast Rice actually doesn't contain any yeast, but is a type of Koji in and of itself. Red Koji, or Beni-Koji. The dried rice has monascus purpureas mold. (Most Japanes Koji uses Aspergillus Oryzae mold, which does the same thing.) When you add this in your ferment don't steam it or you'll kill it. This mold converts starches in your rice or grain to sugars by producing an amylase enzyme. The yeast you add then converts the sugars to ethanol. As the mold propogates in your ferment it will turn it red. Like, really really red. The yeast and the mold work together to make sweet sweet booze. And Chinese Red Yeast Rice costs about 3-4 dollars a pound in the shops in Boston's Chinatown. You can probably talk them down a bit. I have a thread in ingredients about it, mine is going to be Akaisake or Chinese red rice wine, but it's the same idea.
Cheers!
 
Glad to see some activity on this one again! Found this one a couple years ago when I first tried the Nest's Red Rice Ale.
I just stumbled onto the "Making Traditional Rice Wine..." thread and it got me interested in this again. I'm only on page 16...out of over 160!... and wondering about the possibility of combining the normal beer brewing process with a little of the wine process, but using red rice yeast with (or instead of) the yeast balls they use for the wine.
Anyway, I've got quite a few more pages to go on the wine thread, but getting excited about trying this!
 
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