Replicate Franziskaner

[Chris N]

Hi,
I am new to brewing and I am interested in replicating Franziskaner to the best I can. I will be growing hops, barley, and wheat. I noticed that rice is also used in brewing and have found some sources on how to grow rice. My question is will any rice work or is there a specific rice to use? I called my local seed shop and he said he gets in a dry rice that is used for duck hunters. Will this work?
Was wondering is there a recipe-step by step process to making Franziskaner or something similar to it on the forum? Thank you very much! Take care.

 

[Erik the Anglophile]

You might want to try some ales of some kind before you do a lager. Rice is used in SOME beers, you absolutely don't need to have it in all beer, I highly doubt Franziskaner, both the Lager and Wheat variety has any rice in their grain bills.
You seem to have started out very ambitiously, but not done any basic homework, I suggest reading some beginner homebrewer books to get a basic theoretic understanding as to how beer is actually made before you dive in.
I am still pretty new, and am after almost a year, finally starting to feel I'm somewhat getting the hang of this now. This takes time to learn, and you should let it take time.

 

[Dr_Jeff]

after you harvest the barley and wheat, it has to be malted, BTW

and hops often times don't produce much in the first year from what I understand, additionally if you get a yield of say a pound of hops, once dried, it will just be a few ounces

 

[Birrofilo]

Hi,
I am new to brewing and I am interested in replicating Franziskaner to the best I can. I will be growing hops, barley, and wheat. I noticed that rice is also used in brewing and have found some sources on how to grow rice. My question is will any rice work or is there a specific rice to use? I called my local seed shop and he said he gets in a dry rice that is used for duck hunters. Will this work?
Was wondering is there a recipe-step by step process to making Franziskaner or something similar to it on the forum? Thank you very much! Take care.

Franziskaner is certainly brewed without rice as this is forbidden by the Reinheitsgebot rules to which Franzisker complies.

Rice is traditionally used by US producer who also use 6-row barley. Some sources say that rice was used because US producers were trying to replicate German beer (they were often actually German immigrant serving a German-culture customer) and 6-raw barley would not give results that would remind Germans German beer (too many proteins maybe, chill haze problems, and other reasons). Adding rice in the grain bill would allow the producer to replicate more closely the German beer that customer wanted. The reason was not cost reduction: when this happened, one century ago, rice was not cheaper in the US than barley.

I don't want to sound rude, but why would you care about growing a specific kind of rice, if you don't grow also a specific kind of barley, a specific kind of hop (there are dozens, and they differ greatly from each other) and a specific kind of wheat?

Malting is very important in the final product. It's a complicated affair as well. Some people do it at home but, again, a maltster would probably do a better job.

You are certainly welcome to grow your own barley (which you will have to malt yourself), wheat, and hop, and you will certainly obtain beer, but I don't think it will be easy to replicate a certain beer (such as Franziskaner) unless you mean you want to obtain that style of beer, a Weissbier. That you can certainly do, just don't use rice.

Growing your own ingredients will certainly give you a certain "set" of interest and satisfaction, but you will soon discover that you don't want to brew only one beer recipe . You can decide the hop to grow based on a certain recipe but then, you will buy some different hop for executing different recipes. (Also, from what I read, hop is very sensitive to climate and ground, the same hop variety planted in two different orchard can give two quite different set of aromas, I read).

Welcome and let us know