Whisper of the Tengu Rice Lager (Batch 388)

For whatever reason, "Japanese" Rice Lagers seem to have become fairly popular lately in craft beer circles. At least I see a bunch more of them recently than in the past.

It is sort of funny that when I first started getting into craft beer, one of the criticisms of "Big Beer" was that "they" used cheap ingredients like rice and corn. "Real" craft beer used all quality ingredients, which generally meant all-malt beers.

While the sentiment is still sort of there, it was relaxed quite a bit, which I think is a good thing.

Anyway, I've been seeing more Rice Lagers at breweries and have wanted to brew one for quite some time.

And ... I've had a recipe out on the SheppyBrew website for months.

"Whisper of the Tengu" Japanese Rice Lager

The malt-bill of the recipe pretty much writes itself. Pilsner malt. Rice.

Generally, most Rice Lagers seem to include either Sorachi Ace or nobel hops like Saaz / Hallertau. They also don't tend to feature much hop flavor. But, I thought it would be fun to mix it up just a little, going with Mistral and Motueka, which should give it a little lemon / lime / herbal finish.

For reasons I won't go into, I brewed on Saturday (as opposed to my usual Sunday), and I got started much later than my usual brew day.

I think I also over-engineered how I did the rice, which added a little more time to the brew day than usual.

Basically, I decided to cook the rice in full mash volume in the Foundry. 

This worked fine, but the gelatinization temperature is higher than mash temperature, so I had to "cook" the rice for half an hour, and also allow for time for the water to cool to mash temperature.

I do think if I ever use whole grain rice again, I will cook it in a separate pot and start the mash in parallel with the rice cook. 

I think this will save me almost an hour in the brew day over what I did Saturday.

Oh well, live and learn.

Another first for me was that I used rice hulls in this brew. I'm not sure they were needed, but they didn't hurt anything.

Anyway, after cooking the rice and cooling the water and adding the rice hulls, the mash went basically the same as all my brews.

I think I might have kept the mash temperature a little higher than I had planned, but I'm ok if it ends up with a higher FG / lower ABV.

The mash drained well. Again, I'm not sure if that was thanks to the rice hulls or if that would have been the case regardless.

And, my pre-boil gravity / volume was right on the planned numbers.

The boil also went as planned. I remembered to add everything I wanted when I wanted to. 

And at the end of the boil, my gravity was just one point over the planned 1.049 SG.

Because of the late start, and process delays, I had to start cooking, I had to start cooking dinner as I was chilling the wort, but even with the extra distraction, that went smoothly too.

This being a lager, I chilled lower than usual ale pitch temperature, so I used ice recirculated with the pond pump, and was able to get it down to the low 50's.

I believe I had the cooling system set up and the yeast pitched around 5:15 pm, which certainly made it seem like a long brew day.

From the time I started measuring my rice to yeast-pitch was just over 6.5 hours. I guess that isn't too bad, but next time I'll want to cut a couple of hours off brew day.

As I type this, fermentation has been going strong for a couple days. As my usual SOP on lagers, I'm fermenting in the 50's for the first few days, followed by letting it rise to ambient basement temperatures for a total of a couple of weeks.

I think I'll be kegging this towards the end of February and drinking it soon after.

Stay tuned on this blog and/or the recipe page, and I'll probably let you know how I like it.

As always keep watching the regular SheppyBrew Channels to see what is happening with my BBQ, Beer, Biking: SheppyBrew's Facebook Page; Sheppy's Twitter Feed; SheppyBrew's Instagram Page; and SheppyBrew's Website.Of course, don't forget to visit this blog often as well!