# Maize In American Style Beers



## Kai (29/4/05)

What is the maximum amount of flaked maize to use in an american beer?

I guess more specifically, how much can you put in before it starts to affect the balance?


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## barfridge (30/4/05)

I justs did an APA with flaked maize. I use about 7% (300g od a 4kg grain bill), and noticed no ill effects. It was my first time with this yeast, but to me the beer seemed to be smoother, and have a better creamier mouthfeel than usual.


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## Weizguy (30/4/05)

In BYO magazine (March-April 2005), they state that American Pilseners use 30-40 % of their grain bill as rice and/or corn.

In Oz, we just substitute cane sugar for a similar %.  

Pretty much the same result, minus the cereal flavour.

Seth


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## warrenlw63 (30/4/05)

For a CAP I've gone as high as 25% roughly 2kg in a 40 litre batch. Didn't use flaked corn I used polenta following standard cereal mash procedures.

Beer came out very nice. Corn notes were quite evident and not all that unpleasant. My only advice would be to use local malts and not German pils malts. Local malts are capable of converting higher levels of adjunct and keep your hopping rates lower as well.

Warren -


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## Hoops (30/4/05)

Kai

I used 1kg of flaked maize kindly donated by Dave at Goliaths in my Corona clone.
The grain bill was 3.5kg of JW Pils plus 1kg of flaked maize.
It turned out really nice :chug: and wasn't out of balance, it just didn't have that crisp finish it should have <_< 

Hoops


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## joshc16 (30/4/05)

As a aside I just read somewhere the Bud or Anhieser-Busch, cant remeber which one, is the largest buyers of rice in the US.

That is alot of rice. If only they would buy grain instead :beer:


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## sosman (30/4/05)

Kai said:


> What is the maximum amount of flaked maize to use in an american beer?
> 
> I guess more specifically, how much can you put in before it starts to affect the balance?
> [post="56800"][/post]​


Kai I seem to recall that a lot of the beers brewed with rice/corn in the US also use 6 row barley with a higher protein content. You might want to adjust the carbs down a little for local malts.


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## Doc (30/4/05)

joshc16 said:


> As a aside I just read somewhere the Bud or Anhieser-Busch, cant remeber which one, is the largest buyers of rice in the US.
> 
> That is alot of rice. If only they would buy grain instead :beer:



Yeah that is right. Quite scarey really. 
From this topic



> WASHINGTON (AP) -- Anheuser-Busch Cos., the nation's No. 1 buyer of rice as well as its largest brewer, says it won't buy rice from Missouri if genetically-modified medicinal crops are allowed to be grown in the state.



Beers,
Doc


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## Kai (1/5/05)

sosman, that sounds right to me.

Hoops, I was looking at doing 20% maize, slightly less than yours, so I'm thinking I might give it a crack.

warren, too late! I've already got the grain cracked and ready with 1.5 kg weyermann pils  . I do have 500g of wheat in there too, which will boost the diastatic power.

And if the grain bill and my motivation for using 20% are sounding odd here, I put this recipe together meaning it to be a partial, but on the way out I started thinking I'd rather just do a mini all-grain. The recipe is meant as a base to test out some home-grown chinook hops, yeast will be 1272 (American Ale II).


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## sluggerdog (2/5/05)

Yeah I have heard anything upto 40%.

I did an american pilsner a few weeks back but used rice instead of corn and did it at 20%, will return with my results soon.

I used rice over corn for 3 reasons: 

1 - I hear rice gives no additional flavour however maize/corn CAN
2 - I can get the rice a lot easier then the corn (LOCAL Health Food Store)
3 - I read somewhere the rice gives a much crisper beer then corn, which is what I was after.


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## Weizguy (2/5/05)

joshc16 said:


> As a aside I just read somewhere the Bud or Anhieser-Busch, cant remeber which one, is the largest buyers of rice in the US.
> 
> That is alot of rice. If only they would buy grain instead :beer:
> [post="56822"][/post]​


...and why would they buy grain when they can control the price in the rice market by being the biggest player?

That's probably akin to what the Oz market Megaswilltankers do to the local sugar cane market. Gee they use a lot of it. I hear that a micro, which is trying to build a national market may use a large amount of this adjunct.

People should provide this feedback to the brewery.

Maybe we should mount a a mass-mailing campaign to the Big Brewers explaining why their beer is unacceptable?
Maybe not

Seth (who returned to work today)


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