Australian Standard Lager

[Ronin]

Thanks guys for all your inputs. We've decided to employ the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principal with this one as it our first AG lager. I really want to give the rice ago so maybe for the second one. And Ross I love your Aussie Pale so I do get your point.
So I have an Aussie Lager that is a single malt single hop and no where to hide if I stuff it up.

Nothing wrong with all pilsner malt. Not sure how it happens but every lager (Helles) I've made with the vast majority of the grist being pilsner (small amount of munich and melanoidin) has had the thickest, creamiest head on that I've ever seen on any beer.

Reminded me of the beer hunter episode when he put the coin on the head of the beer (urquell? budvar?), I'd believe it'd support it.

 

[Bribie G]

Im planning a rice lager next, and im thinking of also mashing high, so it doesnt end up way too thin. Let us know what you do, and how it turns out.

Cheers

Chappo, the current Aussie pale in the shop you've tasted contains 20% maize. Maize gives the beer a nice rounded flavour, rice on the other hand really accentuates the hops & gives the beer a sharper edge.

Edit: Sugar basically gives alcohol & little else


cheers Ross

I have two brews on the go at present. One from 4kg of Galaxy and a kilo of rice, the other from 4kg of Galaxy and a kilo of maize (polenta cooked mushy). Mashed out great, but did 2 hour mashes to ensure complete starch conversion. Local hopeless chemists don't sell white iodine so cant do a starch test yet.

Galaxy gives a lovely golden colour that surprised me as I was looking originally more for a pale corona-ish effect.

I'll report in due course but would go grain over sugaz for an Aussie style despite the fact that the breweries pump in heaps of sucrose.

Also plus one with the Cluster as used in XXXX.

 

[warrenlw63]

I have two brews on the go at present. One from 4kg of Galaxy and a kilo of rice, the other from 4kg of Galaxy and a kilo of maize (polenta cooked mushy).

Hey Bribie that's the sanest way to go about it. It's too easy to give advice as to which the poster in question prefers but the only way for the person asking the question to really know is to try both methods for themselves. It's part of the fun of recipe formulation.

Please report back your tasting notes. I reckon there would be a lot of people who would love to hear your findings.

Warren -

 

[Ross]

Sorry it had that result for you Ross. Once upon a time I would have agreed that corn was the superior "body lightener" but having used flaked rice for my last few lawnmower type beers I appreciate the nice smooth, almost vanilla-like dimension it can add.

To me it could only be seen as "sharper" if the hopping rates weren't lowered accordingly.

Warren -

Hi Warren - I think you misunderstood my tone... i was not knocking rice, just explaining the difference if you used rice/corn with the same recipe.
I love using rice (especially Jasmine) & sugar at times, they all have their place. I agree entirely with your comments - Lower the hopping rate if using rice, unless you want the more aggresive hopping.

cheers Ross

Edit: spelling

 

[Ross]

I have two brews on the go at present. One from 4kg of Galaxy and a kilo of rice, the other from 4kg of Galaxy and a kilo of maize (polenta cooked mushy). Mashed out great, but did 2 hour mashes to ensure complete starch conversion. Local hopeless chemists don't sell white iodine so cant do a starch test yet.

Galaxy gives a lovely golden colour that surprised me as I was looking originally more for a pale corona-ish effect.

I'll report in due course but would go grain over sugaz for an Aussie style despite the fact that the breweries pump in heaps of sucrose.

Also plus one with the Cluster as used in XXXX.

BribieG,

I did the same experiment as you using flaked maize/Flaked Rice with the below recipe a while back - The beers were brought to the club meeting for comparison.
The beers were distintly different & the opinion on which one was preffered equally split. The corn one had a more mellowed rounded charater against the drier, crisper more hop accentuated character of the rice one. Both beers were made side by side & had the identicle starting/finishing gravities.
My preference depended on the day & mood...Both bloody nice, which is why CAP's are probably my most repeated brews.

NZ CAP III (Rice)
Classic American Pilsner


Type: All Grain
Date: 8/02/2007
Batch Size: 27.00 L
Boil Size: 35.31 L
Boil Time: 90 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 85.00
Taste Notes:

Ingredients
Amount Item Type % or IBU
4.50 kg Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (3.9 EBC) Grain 84.11 %
0.85 kg Rice, Flaked (2.0 EBC) Grain 15.89 %
45.00 gm NZ Saaz B [6.70 %] (60 min) Hops 28.3 IBU
10.00 gm Cascade [6.00 %] (10 min) Hops 2.0 IBU
10.00 gm Nelson Sauvin [11.40 %] (10 min) Hops 3.9 IBU
10.00 gm Cascade [6.00 %] (0 min) Hops -
10.00 gm Nelson Sauvin [11.40 %] (0 min) Hops -
0.50 tsp Koppafloc (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs CraftBrewer Swiss Lager (DCL Yeast #S-189)

Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.051 SG
Measured Original Gravity: 1.052 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.014 SG Measured Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.91 % Actual Alcohol by Vol: 5.21 %
Bitterness: 34.2 IBU Calories: 487 cal/l
Est Color: 6.3 EBC



Cheers Ross

 

[Steve]

Do you just put the uncooked rice in with the mash?
Cheers
Steve

Edit...also do you rinse it beforehand until it runs clear the same as when you are going to cook it?

 

[warrenlw63]

Steve gotta cook it first. Either that or the flaked stuff is a ready made alternative.

Warren -

 

[Fourstar]

I love using rice (especially Jasmine) & sugar at times, they all have their place. I agree entirely with your comments - Lower the hopping rate if using rice, unless you want the more aggresive hopping.

Yeha i totally agree Ross, Rice just has a 'crispness' where as using just straight sucrose ass just alcohol and a lower FG. Adding insult to injury with sucrose, its to esay to ferment high if you have no temp control and your beer ends up going 'winey'.

Rice and kibbled Maize are used extensivly in my lighter beers. They add some character that you cant always get from jusing just barley.

I havn't used flaked rice as of yet, i usually go to the local asian grocer and pick up a bag of viet broken rice as it cooks allot quicker and more of the grain is exposed during cooking ready for conversion.

I also like splitting rice and corn for 20% of my grist in cream ales. very nice.

 

[Bribie G]

The rice brew is intended to be sort of American with a fairly low Chinook only hop rate. The corn one is a new style that nobody seems to have come up with yet, a NZ blonde with a tad of Carared as well and bittered with Green Bullet, then NZ Cascade and finally some BSaaz hop tea later on.

Rice is in cold crash bottling Tuesday
Corn is still in Primary

Both on US 05 so should come out fairly crisp.

 

[Fourstar]

Bribie, is that rice brew the one you made with rice malt extract from the asian grocer or striaght out plain white rice ? Just so the folks are on the same page.

 

[jaytee]

The corn one is a new style that nobody seems to have come up with yet, a NZ blonde with a tad of Carared as well and bittered with Green Bullet, then NZ Cascade and finally some BSaaz hop tea later on.

Well maybe not at AHB Bribie - but I've been brewing my Blande Ale 95% Pils, 2.5% each caramalt & wheat pretty regularly lately.
Bittering with Super Alpha and the NZ Hallertau later.

Agreed that the BSaaz addition would be great too :beer:

cheers, jaytee

 

[BjornJ]

Any feedback from Chappo and/or BribieG around the dextrose/sugar/rice thing?

Planning an Aussie Lager kind of thing but can't decide between using rice or dextrose...

Used corn a little while ago so want to try either rice boiled the day before or just plain dextrose to get a light enough body and low FG.
hoping to end with FG less than 1.010, should I mash from 65 degrees and leave it for 2 hours to let it cool down a bit, or start even lower?

any feedback appreciated,

thanks
Bjorn

 

[Nashmandu]

I agree with Darren......shudder........but yes, mashing for body at 70C would be fine if balanced out by say 10% sucrose. This would give a low FG but hold up the body a bit. And Chappo if your old man is a QLD'er then bitter with nugget and cluster.

Sugar is not only for Belgian Ales. Historically Aussie ales and lagers have been brewed using sucrose.

Made a similar thing for no.2 Son's workmates once. All pils mashed at 68C with 10% sugar, bittered at 60min with 20IBU of a 50/50 mix of Cluster and Nugget and fermented using S-189 @ 12C. XXXX drinkers tipped it into their heads and thought it was great.

Cheers,

Screwy

Sugar is used cause its a cheap way of getting your alcohol (im refering to lager brewing). So why use it when your aim is taste and quality. ?? seems uneccesary to me. Why not just use extra pale malt? am i missing something....

 

[Bribie G]

OOps this thread got buried...

The German Reinheitsgebot dictated that beer should be made only from malt, hops, water and many German beers are of course great. However go anywhere else in the world and most beers are made with adjuncts - pop across the German Border to Switzerland, Austria, France and the Netherlands and there are great beers made with adjuncts.

Grain Adjuncts: Heavily used in US beers, not necessarily as a cost saver. American Six row barley produced cloudy beers, being high in nitrogen, and the use of corn and rice adjuncts enabled the production of clear lagers towards the end of the 19th century - the corn and rice can 'soak up' the extra enzymes and proteins during mashing. Classic American Pilseners as brewed before Prohibition and now being rediscovered are a lovely beer, often with a fair whack of maize. Apparently since the rice crisis, it now costs the likes of Budweiser more to use rice than malt, but try changing the recipe and see how the public would react.

In the UK in the 19th century the use of artificial fertilizers created bumper crops of barley but, again, high protein - and brewers were getting persistent hazes, so breweries started using grain adjuncts as well. This is not an issue nowadays because low protein barleys have been developed, but some adjuncts are still used, and particularly sugar.

Sugar: In the Uk many beers are made with a proportion of sugar, and have been since grain rationing around the time of WW1. UK bitters and milds have a 'character' in which sugar plays a part. Similarly in Australia mainstream beers have been brewed with a large amount of sugar to thin the body and produce an easy quaffing lager suited to a hot climate.

So if you are brewing a favourite beer you have had overseas or looking to produce a more gutsy version of a favourite Australian beer then you need to have a look at how it's made and take that into account. So if I'm aiming for a clean drinking Australian Classic I'll probably add a few more hops, but certainly use some sugars, and also some rice to give a polished clarity and finish.

Some of the most appalling Aussie beers are all malt. An example of this is the new VB raw. Try it and see for yourself. The point I'm making is that chanting a mantra of "malt, hops, water, yeast" is putting your brewing in a strait jacket. Apart from the Reinheitsgebot there's nothing to say that you can't put whatever you like into a brew :icon_cheers: The Reinheitsgebot, anyway, was apparently " introduced in part to prevent price competition with bakers for wheat and rye. The restriction of grains to barley was meant to ensure the availability of sufficient amounts of affordable bread, as the more valuable wheat and rye were reserved for use by bakers. Today many Bavarian beers are again brewed using wheat and are thus no longer compliant with the Reinheitsgebot. "

 

[matthendry]

Bud is actually quite a hard beer to make even though it doesnt taste like it. Remeber its hard to make a beer with nearly no flavor and any faults will show up if you make any mistakes.

Making A Bud Clone on a homebrew scale is extreamly hard and requires a separate cereal mash for the rice and a decoction step to replicate what is done is a Anheuser Busch brewery and then you need to dilute it down. Bud does this post fermetaion with dearated water (So does James Squire and if you've ever been to the brewery look for the large tank with the portholes ) .

Look at this link from the Maltose Falcons in the US for thier Bud Clone ..

http://archive.maltosefalcons.com/recipes/20040801.php

 

[BjornJ]

Sugar is used cause its a cheap way of getting your alcohol (im refering to lager brewing). So why use it when your aim is taste and quality. ?? seems uneccesary to me. Why not just use extra pale malt? am i missing something....

Yes, I must admit I am unsure about adding the dextrose myself..
My thinking is that the last beers I've made all ended up at 1.014 using English Ale Yeast WLP002.
This lager will use San Francico Yeast WLP810, I understand this is another yeast but the attenuation % is exactly the same in beersmith. So guessing that if I were to keep my mash schedule, grain volume, etc I will end up with a similar FG.

As this is my first Lager I want lower FG than that, more like the commercial lager I tested a couple of weeks ago that was FG =1.004.

That's why I'm thinking to get a low FG
-low mash temp
-sugar?

And the sugar or rice to give a light-colored, light-bodied beer.

What I can't decide is whether to use only pilsner malt and rice and hope a low mash temp will give low enough FG, or if I should include sugar to help get the FG down..

Thinking
3.2 kg of Pilsner malt
1.00 kg of rice
0.2 kg of carapils
0.4 kg of dextrose
20 gr Pride of Ringwood (9.3%) @60 min
5 gr Pride of Ringwood (9,3%) @20 min

for an estimated
OG: 1.041
FG: 1.013 (hoping this is very wrong..)
IBU: 22.3
EBC: 5.2
(batch size 25 litres)

If I get the FG down to say 1.008 by using sugar/low mash temp, ABV is 5.1 before bottle carbing.
If FG 1.013, ABV is 3.7% before bottle carbing.


Matt Hendry:
I've seen that dougweiser mentioned before but not really read into it.
Thanks for the link, great stuff!
Maybe that's what I need to copy to get the low FG.
But wouldn't it be strange to boil base malt in the rice for 15 minutes? I thought that would extract tannins and what-not from the grain husks?


BribieG,
(I have the magnet, just need to look for a fan)
What is the FG you get on your various lagers, you seem to brew a lot with all kind of different adjuncts and yeasts?


thanks
Bjorn

thanks
Bjorn

 

[BjornJ]

And now the starter is spinning away on the magnetic stirrer in the fridge, so I need to make some decisions

 

[Bribie G]

Fourstar has posted a fantastic recipe for a rice beer in the thread "rice in brew" that you might like to have a look at.

 

[Nick JD]

Rice has another benefit - it clears the beer. No idea why, but whenever I use rice as an adjunct the beer is much clearer than those without. (I use no clarifying additions)

For me, it gives a very distinctive flavour of vanilla creamed rice. If it excentuates the hops I haven't noticed - but I err on the knowledge base here.

I'm leaning towards always having at least 10% rice in my beers.

EDIT: I've found it's best if you boil the crap outa a kg, drain it and leave it in the fridge. Next day you have the fried rice and the beer sorted.

 

[Nashmandu]

Yes, I must admit I am unsure about adding the dextrose myself..
My thinking is that the last beers I've made all ended up at 1.014 using English Ale Yeast WLP002.
This lager will use San Francico Yeast WLP810, I understand this is another yeast but the attenuation % is exactly the same in beersmith. So guessing that if I were to keep my mash schedule, grain volume, etc I will end up with a similar FG.

As this is my first Lager I want lower FG than that, more like the commercial lager I tested a couple of weeks ago that was FG =1.004.

That's why I'm thinking to get a low FG
-low mash temp
-sugar?

And the sugar or rice to give a light-colored, light-bodied beer.

What I can't decide is whether to use only pilsner malt and rice and hope a low mash temp will give low enough FG, or if I should include sugar to help get the FG down..

Thinking
3.2 kg of Pilsner malt
1.00 kg of rice
0.2 kg of carapils
0.4 kg of dextrose
20 gr Pride of Ringwood (9.3%) @60 min
5 gr Pride of Ringwood (9,3%) @20 min

for an estimated
OG: 1.041
FG: 1.013 (hoping this is very wrong..)
IBU: 22.3
EBC: 5.2
(batch size 25 litres)

If I get the FG down to say 1.008 by using sugar/low mash temp, ABV is 5.1 before bottle carbing.
If FG 1.013, ABV is 3.7% before bottle carbing.


Matt Hendry:
I've seen that dougweiser mentioned before but not really read into it.
Thanks for the link, great stuff!
Maybe that's what I need to copy to get the low FG.
But wouldn't it be strange to boil base malt in the rice for 15 minutes? I thought that would extract tannins and what-not from the grain husks?


BribieG,
(I have the magnet, just need to look for a fan)
What is the FG you get on your various lagers, you seem to brew a lot with all kind of different adjuncts and yeasts?


thanks
Bjorn

thanks
Bjorn

BribieG provided a very interesting history of sugar use in beer, but personally i would always avoid it unless it was completely essential. I honestly think that using pilsner malt with a low mash temp, high attenuating yeast and giving it good condition time will give a nice level of crispness without sacrificing malt structure and mouth feel.