daspooper
relaxing, not worrying, and having a homebrew
Hello,
My last brew, a cream ale, called for minute rice, and I opted to cereal mash some rice from home rather than buying that or flaked rice as my LHBS didn't have any. I transferred the beer to my lagering fridge to cold crash, and after a day it looked as clear as if it had been in the fridge for several days and I had used gelatin. I have cold crashed similar beers before, this is my third cream ale, but this is the first time I've used rice. The first was 2 row and flaked maize, and the second was 2 row, flaked maize, and cara pils. In both of those brews, the beer was dropping pretty clear during the cold crash, but there was still some haze about the beer until two or so weeks in the keg.
It makes sense to me that the rice would impart a gummy texture to the wort as the starch gelatinization and gelation processes do exactly that; this would then act like gelatin during the cold crash to help yeast coagulate and fall. I didn't notice any difference during the fermenation; it looked as cloudy as ever while the yeast were riding the currents up and down the carboy. Has anyone else experienced a similar situation, or am I noticing something this time that I usually don't notice? The more I proofread this post, the more I'm wondering if this is just some placebo effect where I'm thinking the rice did something that it hasn't. Wish I would have taken a picture before racking to the keg as it was clear enough for me to see through the carboy after only a day in the fridge.
I BIAB, so I don't use rice hulls, but I don't think those would do what I'm seeing; the rice hulls are added to increase the flow of wort through the grist, not to add fermentables. While the cereal mash surely added fermentables, maybe it also left some of those sticky starches which weren't broken down during the mash and fermentation? My cereal mash consisted of about 2 pounds of 2 row and 1/2 pound of rice which I attempted to crush in my food processor. This was added to 1 gallon of cool water on the stove which I heated to 160 F while stirring; it then rested for 30 minutes before being heated to a boil where it simmered for 30 minutes while stirring. Then I allowed the cereal mash to cool to about 153 F which was my strike temp before adding it to the strike water. Brew day was 12/3 which was the same day the US-05 was pitched into the 6.5 gallon carboy, I moved the fermentor to the fridge on 12/12 at 36 F, on 12/13 the beer was pretty much clear so it was racked into a keg, and it is now in my kegerator at 45 F force carbonating at 35 PSI.
My last brew, a cream ale, called for minute rice, and I opted to cereal mash some rice from home rather than buying that or flaked rice as my LHBS didn't have any. I transferred the beer to my lagering fridge to cold crash, and after a day it looked as clear as if it had been in the fridge for several days and I had used gelatin. I have cold crashed similar beers before, this is my third cream ale, but this is the first time I've used rice. The first was 2 row and flaked maize, and the second was 2 row, flaked maize, and cara pils. In both of those brews, the beer was dropping pretty clear during the cold crash, but there was still some haze about the beer until two or so weeks in the keg.
It makes sense to me that the rice would impart a gummy texture to the wort as the starch gelatinization and gelation processes do exactly that; this would then act like gelatin during the cold crash to help yeast coagulate and fall. I didn't notice any difference during the fermenation; it looked as cloudy as ever while the yeast were riding the currents up and down the carboy. Has anyone else experienced a similar situation, or am I noticing something this time that I usually don't notice? The more I proofread this post, the more I'm wondering if this is just some placebo effect where I'm thinking the rice did something that it hasn't. Wish I would have taken a picture before racking to the keg as it was clear enough for me to see through the carboy after only a day in the fridge.
I BIAB, so I don't use rice hulls, but I don't think those would do what I'm seeing; the rice hulls are added to increase the flow of wort through the grist, not to add fermentables. While the cereal mash surely added fermentables, maybe it also left some of those sticky starches which weren't broken down during the mash and fermentation? My cereal mash consisted of about 2 pounds of 2 row and 1/2 pound of rice which I attempted to crush in my food processor. This was added to 1 gallon of cool water on the stove which I heated to 160 F while stirring; it then rested for 30 minutes before being heated to a boil where it simmered for 30 minutes while stirring. Then I allowed the cereal mash to cool to about 153 F which was my strike temp before adding it to the strike water. Brew day was 12/3 which was the same day the US-05 was pitched into the 6.5 gallon carboy, I moved the fermentor to the fridge on 12/12 at 36 F, on 12/13 the beer was pretty much clear so it was racked into a keg, and it is now in my kegerator at 45 F force carbonating at 35 PSI.
