Brewing with Rice

[Pommy]

How do I work with rice? I have normal long grain rice and was wanting to use some (around 12%) in a light lager I'm brewing for my brother's 21st. Am I best to gelatinise it or can I just take it to my LHBS and have it put through the mill with the rest of the grains? I've not brewed a beer as yet that has called for rice so I'm a little cautious about making sure I know what I'm doing to make sure it converts and causes no problems further down the line.

Cheers,
Pommy

 

[Pappers_]

Hi Pommy. I sometimes use rice in my lighter cream ales. I use Minute Rice, which you can add directly, as is, to your mash. For regular rice, I believe you need to cook the rice before adding it to the mash, but I can't speak to that from first-hand experience.

 

[PT Ray]

Minute rice would be the path of least resistance. We are talking an all grain brew aren't we?

If you start with something like white rice you'll have to do a cereal mash. Basically you cook it but you need to add some base malt in the process. The enzymes in the malt help keep it from turning into one big clump of goo.

 

[mpruett]

Any reason I couldn't just cook the rice in my rice cooker, then just chuck it into the mash (with proper temp calcs of course)?

Seems like it's properly gelatinized and cooked, so the enzymes would be able to turn it into sugars without any issue.

 

[PT Ray]

Any reason I couldn't just cook the rice in my rice cooker....

It's certainly worth giving it a whirl. I've cooked it via a cereal mash and just like you normally would. The cereal mash does help it from gumming up, making it easier to mix with the main mash. This was several years ago and that's all I really remember about the difference.

 

[JimmehBrew]

I believe it is best to cook your rice ( not minute rice) in a larger pot and use more than twice the amount of water to make a oatmeal/cereal style for mashing and keep it soupy. 20 min for cooking, also adjust strike water temp to adjust for temp of the rice soup, mine when added jumped to 160 and had to cool it down fast to 150.

 

[nh_homebrew]

I have enriched long grain white rice. Ingredients say enriched with niacin, iron, thiamine and folic acid. please let me know if this matters. planning on using it tomorrow.

 

[patthebrewer]

Hi Pommy. I sometimes use rice in my lighter cream ales. I use Minute Rice, which you can add directly, as is, to your mash. For regular rice, I believe you need to cook the rice before adding it to the mash, but I can't speak to that from first-hand experience.

+1

I use minute rice in my LAmer Lager.....why add an extra step

 

[patthebrewer]

I have enriched long grain white rice. Ingredients say enriched with niacin, iron, thiamine and folic acid. please let me know if this matters. planning on using it tomorrow.

The only thing that might be effected is the enzyme conversion, and following yeast performance. Truthfully I have no experience with using enriched rice so I couldn't give you an answer,( but I would suspect it would not matter very much). To start you'd need to find out whether your yeast strain likes an environment rich with these vitamins.....contact your yeast manufacturer, and ask...they'd probably be able to tell you. As far as your conversion....there are a lot of potential variables (maybe too much to guess). It might be one of those "try it and find out" sort of things.

 

[Lefou]

Rice is starch. If it's straight from the bag, cook it down to a near gelatinous mass by heating it in 2-3x the rice's weight in water and mix it with a highly diastatic base malt. I always keep amylase powder on hand, too. One teaspoon per five gallons of mash water mixed with sufficient base malt should do the job for a cereal mash.
Trust me, if you have enough mash water and grain to mix with the added rice "goop", the starch will almost totally convert if it's been cooked down sufficiently.
If you can cook or mash rice, doing other starchy vegetable adjunct ingredients like plain potatoes, sweet potatoes, or even purple yams won't be a challenge.

 

[Steveruch]

I don't know how available they are where you live but there are other forms of rice that are easier to use like dry rice extract, brown rice syrup, and malted rice.

 

[Lefou]

I don't know how available they are where you live but there are other forms of rice that are easier to use like dry rice extract, brown rice syrup, and malted rice.

Agreed.
In brewing, any old white rice will do, but not all of them are created equal. Some are more expensive and more labor intensive to cook, but we're brewing, not eating rice. I love the Thai and Basmati rices, but the easier it is to brew with, the more it has to be cooked before mashing in with barley or wheat malt.