archthered
Well-Known Member
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- Aug 7, 2013
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I'll start with the TL;DR- If making a Light American Lager is there a reason not to just use a bunch of rice and corn and just enough 6-row to convert it all?
I know this leaves a bunch of other questions, like why they hell do you want to make an American Light Lager? So I'll elaborate, basically I have a bunch of guys that come over and hangout that are most Bud Light etc drinkers. They try and genuinely seem to enjoy my beer but they would still rather drink a light lager. So I would like to make a light lager for them some time. In addition to throwing a bone to some of my not so craft beer inclined friends I thought it would be a good way to really test by brew skills and see where I need to improve.
I looked at a bunch of stuff to develop my own recipe and noticed everyone talking about using a 1:4 ratio of rice to barley or suggesting 30-40% corn/rice. This got me wondering if you could do more rice/corn.
Looking at the diastatic power it should be possible to get 3 pounds of rice/corn to convert using only 1 pound of 6-row. You might want to do a protein rest to help limit haze but I'm not even sure that would be needed since I believe corn and rice are lower in protein than something like 2-row so it would all come out in the wash (by all means correct me on that).
All that said my understanding is that Bud and their ilk don't use more than the 30-40% which makes me wonder if there is some other reason NOT to do this. So is there a reason not to use mostly rice/corn with enough 6-row to convert it all? I know it would give a really light flavor, potentially almost flavorless, but isn't that half the point of a light lager?
Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, since I don't really have a recipe but rather a thought I thought it made more sense here rather than in the recipe forum, move it if I'm wrong about that.
I know this leaves a bunch of other questions, like why they hell do you want to make an American Light Lager? So I'll elaborate, basically I have a bunch of guys that come over and hangout that are most Bud Light etc drinkers. They try and genuinely seem to enjoy my beer but they would still rather drink a light lager. So I would like to make a light lager for them some time. In addition to throwing a bone to some of my not so craft beer inclined friends I thought it would be a good way to really test by brew skills and see where I need to improve.
I looked at a bunch of stuff to develop my own recipe and noticed everyone talking about using a 1:4 ratio of rice to barley or suggesting 30-40% corn/rice. This got me wondering if you could do more rice/corn.
Looking at the diastatic power it should be possible to get 3 pounds of rice/corn to convert using only 1 pound of 6-row. You might want to do a protein rest to help limit haze but I'm not even sure that would be needed since I believe corn and rice are lower in protein than something like 2-row so it would all come out in the wash (by all means correct me on that).
All that said my understanding is that Bud and their ilk don't use more than the 30-40% which makes me wonder if there is some other reason NOT to do this. So is there a reason not to use mostly rice/corn with enough 6-row to convert it all? I know it would give a really light flavor, potentially almost flavorless, but isn't that half the point of a light lager?
Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, since I don't really have a recipe but rather a thought I thought it made more sense here rather than in the recipe forum, move it if I'm wrong about that.