Rice in beer

[gitchegumee]

I mash with 15% rice to lighten the body of our Light beer. I add the rice to boiling water in the kettle with the whirlpool running for 30 minutes before using the mush in the mash tun. Just wondering whether to order hull-on rice? It's cheaper and perhaps the hulls would help the lauter. Would a two roller mill be sufficient to crack the grain open and expose the starch? Or maybe just cook the hell out of it the way it is? Should I add some base malt to the cooking rice (it's been suggested to me)? Any help would be appreciated.

[pennbrew2]

You would definitely need to mill it. Whether your mill is up to the task, I don't know. Try a few pounds, you'd want to see how well the broken endosperm separates from the hull.

Personally, I'd probably believe the potential problems aren't worth the cost savings.

And yes, you should add some malt to the cooking rice. It's best to add the rice and malt to the water before reaching boil. If you dump the grain into boiling water the enzymes will be denatured before they have a chance to do anything.

[gitchegumee]

Thanks! The cost savings weren't such an issue, but that rice hulls might improve the runoff clarity without any added cost. I think that my mill may not be what's needed to strip the hull while maintaining its integrity for an effective lauter. I guess I should try a sample to see what the grist looks like. Regarding the added malt to the cereal cooker; I have a direct fire kettle and adding anything during fire is liable to scorch on the bottom. Therefore, I add the rice when the water has come to a boil after I turn off the fire. One more advantage of steam over direct fire! I guess that adding malt would not do much to begin the starch degredation at those temperatures.

[brewermuthu]

Using rice as adjunct upto 15% percent , the best way to do is use rice grits or rice flakes.
If you are using rice flakes the same can be added into mashing directly. If you are using rice grits this has to be cooked at 55 to 63 deg Celcius prior to boiling. The cooking time is minimum 30 minutes.
Milling the rice may result in producing fine grits which in turn will lead to lautering problems.
Offcourse my experience in using rice flakes and grits are on high volume brews from 220 Hectolitres and above. The most preferred one is flakes.

[gitchegumee]

Thanks brewermuthu! I don't really have the option of flakes. Why would I have to cook the rice prior to boiling it? I figured all I needed to do was to gelatinize the grain prior to adding it to the mash. Can't this be done at 80C for 30 minutes?

[Gurdeep Singh]

Thanks brewermuthu! I don't really have the option of flakes. Why would I have to cook the rice prior to boiling it? I figured all I needed to do was to gelatinize the grain prior to adding it to the mash. Can't this be done at 80C for 30 minutes?

I used to boil rice grits at 90-100 C for 20 min.This gives all the starch exposed and better yield.

[brewermuthu]

The basic reason for cooking the rice prior to boiling is to provide high fermentable sugar in your wort. You can expect 2 to 4% more yield by doing cooking prior to boiling. This figures is depends upon the quality of rice you are using.
It is highly recommended to do cooking in the presence of malt which is equivalent to 10% of total rice quantity taken for cooking.

There are three different types of rice available in selected places. I have no idea about the availability in north america.
But in north america we have very good malt avalilable with very high diastatic power.
I would like to tell you three different types of rice:
1.Raw rice (commonly available and widely used for brewing)
2.boiled rice( good for brewing but available only in selected places)
3.germinated sundried unboiled rice.(very good for brewing but you cant afford the cost)
By doing cooking prior to boiling with good malt, will give you a very good wort spectrum and highly fermentable wort with increased yield.