trying somthing new

[Legume]

So my partial mash GF beers are getting better, and I want to focus on reducing the cost and effort of a batch of GF beer. My best batches have involved rice syrup, and 5 ish pounds of home malted grain...good results but lots of work, and the recipies are not all that easy to share as few others want to malt grain.

I just ordered some malted rice (crystal, and some other specialty roasts) from NorCal Brewing. And I plan to experiment with doing "all grain" BIAB batches with a very high %adjunct. Esentially I want to use about 50 percent rice or tapioca starch (very inexpensive GF starch) in the mash...adding charicter with the specialty rice malts and some unmalted buckwheat for body.

Has anyone gone down a similar route?
These adjunct starches are very inexpensinve, easy to work with, and I imaging probably will add no more or less flavor to my beer than the rice extracts I have been using sucessfully up untill this point.

your thoughts, experiences, and advice are aprecieated.

Thanks

 

[ricemaltster]

Hi Legume

How do you plan on converting all that adjunct starch to sugar? Are you using enzymes? If not, I think you may run into a sticky mash mess. The pale rice malt has enzyme activity although a bit limited. Don't plan on any enzyme activity from any of the roasted rice malts, just good colors and flavors. Roasting temperatures are generally too high for retention of the enzyme activity.

 

[Osedax]

Yup, high order starches are not consumable by normal brewer's yeast. You would have to use some kind of sugar or only half of your gravity points will be fermentable.

I have never tried converting pure starch to sugar in a mash. Might be worthwhile. But, like ricemaltster said, rice doesn't have the needed diastic potential.

By the way, I tried all but, James Brown rice. Solid product. I may put biscuit in all but, my lightest recipes. Gas Hog really put my stout into another level. The husk adds the slightly ashy taste you want in a stout. Also, the rice provides hulls to help prevent stuck sparges.

Legume, report back on what you can figure out. Might be an interesting experiment. :cheers:

 

[ricemaltster]

Glad to hear someone has tried and had some success with my rice malt. The James' Brown malt has an interesting spicy flavor.

I knew when the first batch of Gas Hog came out of the roaster that I had something unique.

Any other insights about my products would be greatly appreciated (good or bad)...hopefully only good.

Cheers

 

[Legume]

Thank you for the feedback.
I intend to use both termamyl (thermostable amylase for liquification) and AMG-300 amylase as part of my mash. I am not concerned about the diastatic power of the rice malt (bacterial amylase is cheap and effective), I really want body, flavor and aroma from these products. The adjunct starches will convert just fine with the added amylase. I do not have the equipment to mash 20 lbs of rice malt(the recipies I have seen for this malt have hefty grain bills), and am not intrested in spending $80+ on rice malt for a batch of beer. This proposed aproach of using specialty rice malt with lots of adjunct starch is my atempt to get arround the need for new equipment (I prefer to stick with my 8 gal pot and BIAB), and to control costs.

Rice maltster...have you ever experimented with malting waxy(aka. Sweet or glutinous) rice?
It acumulates only amylpectin and no amylose, giving it a lower gelitinization temperature and making the starch more readily convertable by amylase. I just malted 4 lbs of it, but have yet to brew with it. I suspect that it may have nice properties as rice malt.

 

[Osedax]

Rice maltster...have you ever experimented with malting waxy(aka. Sweet or glutinous) rice?

This is the same as short grain sticky/sushi rice, correct? If so, I was wondering this myself. I imagine it would be rather expensive. Sushi rice is usually crazy expensive for the good stuff in stores.

 

[ricemaltster]

I did try sweet rice in my earlier production for the very reasons you guys mention. It worked just fine, maybe a bit better than what I am using now. When I found I could use a more readily available rice that was not too expensive I moved away from the sweet rice. One of my main fears was not having sufficient availability throughout the year. Cost was also a consideration. This was a calculated decision. You should not have any trouble with the sweet rice!

 

[Legume]

Osedax,
I think that waxy/glutinous/sweet rice is not the same as the sticky short grain sushi rice. But they both have relativly simple starches as far as rice goes.

Ricemaltster,
thanks for the reply, with all of the rice grown in this area it definately make sense for you to use somthing afordable and local. I did not have an easy time tracking down brown glutionus rice...and it was a bit expensive.
Have you ever experimented with adding amylase to the mash when using your rice malt? Do you think it would help drive up efficiency, or are other factors (besides diastatic power of the malt) the limiting factors in these mashes?

 

[ricemaltster]

Legume is spot on for the different rice types. Both are more expensive and produced in more limited supply.

I have used Brewcraft Amg-300L (beta amylase) and Termamyl (alpha amylase) in the mash in the past. I think it helped at that time. My malting has improved and I also decided to not use the enzymes unless absolutely necessary. I have become much more patient with the mash.

I recently tried a single temperature infusion mash that had some residual starch. In this case, I used the above enzymes in the primary fermentation and did get conversion of the remaining starch. Not a preferred method. Like I have mentioned in the past, without using syrups for the base fermentables or enzymes in an all grain mash I would suggest either a step temperature mash or a decoction mash. I think I get best results with the decoction mash. Hopefully rice will be bred for malting qualities in the future and greater enzyme activity.

 

[Legume]

I brewed this yesterday and thought I would provide an update.

no recipe, but my "grain bill" is below.

3.5 gal batch

3.5 lbs tapioca starch
26 oz unmalted buckwheat
2.75 lb Rice malt (all specialty grains, no pale malt)

I used Termamyl and AMG-300 in the mash.

this seemed to go very well.
My estemated target OG was 1.060...I hit 1.059.
The wort tasted great, I got all kinds of malty flavor from the rice malt.

Pitched US-05 yesterday about noon, its bubbiling away now.
I will update again with tasting notes.

 

[ricemaltster]

I know it is still early to hear results from your experiment, but looking forward to finding out how this ends up. Of course, I have a vested interest in it working to your satisfaction.

Cheers,
Ricemaltster

 

[Legume]

So I have some diacetyl problems in this batch, almost certanly due to my very heavy use (50 percent) of adjunct starch, resulting in a wort with very low FAN.

Aside from the diacetyl, the beer is good.
I plan to continue to work with rice malt, it looks very promising.

I am brewing again today, (mashing as we speak) and I am adding some protease digested powdered egg white to the mash. Egg whites are very high in valiene, the amino acid whos absence from my wort likely caused the diacetyl problems in my last batch.

We will see how this goes.

 

[Osedax]

That is interesting about the diacetyl. US-05 doesn't normally produce almost any.

Your assessment is probably correct unless your temperature was whack.

Some extra aging should help clean it up. Good to hear this worked!

 

[Legume]

So one of these batches turned out quite nice.
It was a brown ale, I was shooting for somthing in the neighborhood of Fat Tire.
Its not a clone, but it is quite good. I will post the rather unusual recipe below.

2 tbsp Termamyl (heat stable a amylase)
2 tbsp CaCl
4 lbs waxy rice flour (asian grocery store)
28 oz toasted buckwheat
4 oz roled GF oats
1 lb biscut rice malt (eckert)
1 lb crystal rice malt (eckert)
6 oz James brown rice malt (Eckert)
4 oz Dark rice (Eckert)
1 lb munich rice malt (home made)
2 tbsp AMG-300 liquid amylase
1 pill "glutenAid" (I use this as a source of protease)
.5 oz powderd egg white (protein source, as this is a very low protein grain bill)

0.6 oz Magnum hop 60min
Whirlfloc 15 min
3 tsp DAP 5 min
0.5 oz Willamette hop 5 min
0.5 oz Willamette hop whirlpool
1 oz Willamette hop (dryhop)

1 lb D90 candi syrup, added directly to the primary.

Us05 yeast

Bring 4 gal H2O to a boil
add Calcium cloride
suspend rice flour in .75 gal cold water, poor into boiling water.
you now have a semisolid gluey mess.
Turn off the heat.
Stir for 5 min to gel the starch.
Add Termamyl, stir for 5 minutes untill starch is liquified.
your gluey mess is now a clear slightly viscous liquid at around 180 degrees F.
Add buckwheat and rice malt to the pot, stir well.
perform a 90 min rest to Gel & liquify the starches, stir ocasionaly.
Drop the temperature to 140F (with some ice).
Add AMG-300 amylase and GlutenAid protease, egg white powder, and do a 90 min Sac rest at 140 F.

Sparge, and boil as usual.

I only post the recipe because the mash is so unusual, I thought others might be intrested.
The beer turned out well, but with a low but noticable level of diacetyl probably due to the very low levels of certan amino acids in the wort.
I would add some higher protein grains to the mash if I were to do this one again.



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