Why not rice?

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but here in CA we apparently grow a lot of rice, and specifically a lot of interesting rice varieties. Red rice, pink rice, purple rice, black rice, wild rice, short-grain, long-grain, aromatic, sticky rice...etc. I know rice has a reputation for adding little to no taste, but I reckon that's mostly because it's raw polished white rice we're talking about. It seems like most of the people here using gluten-free grains in their beers tend to avoid rice unless they're using rice syrup, but has anyone experimented with using different varieties of rice and/or toasting the rice in different ways? Since many gluten-free grains seem to contribute undesirable or unusual tastes (buckwheat and sorghum being the strongest), or are prohibitively expensive (quinoa, teff, and amaranth seem to be expensive and/or hard to find), I'm wondering if maybe the ideal solution might be rice? I'm definitely going to try mashing some of the more unusual rices available to me (using amylase enzymes) and see what I can accomplish.

I've never been concerned about getting conversion from the grains, but I am concerned about getting flavor and aroma from grains. That is why I haven't really used rice...but as you pointed out my natural inclination with rice is to chose white rice. I'm very interested in how your purple rice beer turns out.

Here's an interesting (albeit old) thread re: making an exclusively rice brew:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/rice-beer-scratch-25338/

It looks like the question is whether you could get around the fat content of the bran while still maintaining the more complex flavors of those exotic rices.

I'd be very interested to see your results with the different rices.

I made some delicious "Madagascar pink" rice last week. You're right that there's a huge range of rice flavors and colors if you're really out there looking for them.

I would think if you boiled the rice and poured the water off the top you'd eliminate a great deal of any oil present, right? Looking at my favorite Lundberg Costco brown rice in the kitchen, it's 3% fat(oil) by mass.

I think toasting rice is a great idea and I've been meaning to do so for a while, I just haven't managed to brew much at all recently. I would think that if you take the tastiest brown rice you've got, boil it, pour the water off the top, and then toast it you'd manage to largely avoid oil problems.

muench1 said:

I would think that if you take the tastiest brown rice you've got, boil it, pour the water off the top, and then toast it you'd manage to largely avoid oil problems.

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Precisely what I shall do. I find that most grains produce better toasted flavor when toasted after an extended hot water soak, rather than toasting when totally dry. I reckon I'll try this next week; I plan on doing two 1-gallon batches, one of a buckwheat mash and one of the rice. I'll probably use red rice, medium-toasted with a goal of hitting an amber ale.

Just as you can malt quinoa, millet, etc., couldn't you malt brown rice and use it as a grain in your beer? You could roast the malt to different lovibond to achieve specific flavors as is done with barley. I may have to give it a try.

mloster said:

Just as you can malt quinoa, millet, etc., couldn't you malt brown rice and use it as a grain in your beer? You could roast the malt to different lovibond to achieve specific flavors as is done with barley. I may have to give it a try.

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By that do you mean the brown rice you can buy in 2# bags at the supermarket? or does it have to be unprocessed? Interesting!

If I can find the paper again, I'll post it here. It tested different germinating times and temperatures in brown rice, just the medium hulled kind you'd buy at the store. By soaking it at 30ºC for 4 days, the highest levels of alpha and beta enzymes were achieved. In soaking longer, alpha increased but beta decreased. Therefor 4 days was the optimum. Extending this into real life application. I'd take my BIAB bag, fill it with x lbs of brown rice, fill a bucket with warm water, and let it sit. I'd change the water/ rinse the rice every 12 hours or so. I'd continue this until 4 days had passed. (Note: brown rice can sprout under water) From there, the rice would be sprouted but not malted. I'd then go through the normal procedure of kilning and roasting to various levels. Then I'd probably brew with a single infusion mash, maybe adding some amylase and mashing for several hours or overnight.

Worth noting about rice: its gelatinization temperature varies with variety, but is usually between 60 and 70°C (140 to 156°F). Japonica varieties tend to have lower GTs. Compelling!

Found this:
http://www.scientificsocieties.org/jib/papers/2011/G-2011-0216-1010.pdf

Looks very favorable for waxy black rice indeed!

Let us know how the different rice varieties work out for you. When I went GF 7 years ago I became a rice connoisseur and even invested in a $300+ Korean Pressure/Induction Heat rice cooker (worth EVERY penny too). I wasn't aware that California grew the other varieties aside from the standard white, brown, wild, and black in medium, short, and long varieties depending on the grain. I would guess that most of it gets exported since I don't see much of it here on the East Coast.

Rice has some interesting flavors. You need more then just the amylase though, you need the free amino nitrogen for the yeast and and you need a glucanase or you'll end up some funk that you can not dance to.

Glucanase, eh? Any idea where I can scare up some of that?

I'm not sure... I go through a supplier for my cocktail so it's not something easily found. You might try some digestive aid since our bodies are nothing more then big mash tuns. Look up omega-zyme and compare the "zyme" list to what barley has. You would still need sorghum for the fan though or fermentation would take forever.

and ever

I dunno, man...I've never had trouble with sorghum-free fermentations. I know other grains lack the FAN, but I've done plenty of non-sorghum GF brews that fermented out plenty quick. I'll look into that omega-zyme, though...I wonder if it'll be remotely cost-effective?

Valid point I guess I'm just regurgitating what I've heard. As for the digestion enzymes again I don't use that particular product but it or something like it might work and if it does work then yes it would be much more cost effective. Think along the lines of 50 cents a pound of grain times your grist weight. Which is easily offset by throwing your spent grains to some chickens. Bock Bock Bock.