Miami Rice - Japanese Rice Lager - All Grain Recipe

 

Our second iteration of an all-grain Japanese style rice lager, Miami Rice is the follow up to our award-winning Mr Rice Guy lager.

Introduction

We always like to have a lager on tap at home, and since our last lager keg recently ran out, we wanted to have another attempt at brewing a rice lager - it's the perfect crusher for the warmer weather we're currently in the middle of.

Our previous rice lager, Mr Rice Guy turned out incredibly well, and even went on to win an award at the NSW State Homebrewing Competition (read more about it here). Looking back at our analysis of this beer, we suggested if we made it again that we'd cut back on the rice a little bit, but not change too much else so that's exactly what we're going to do with this recipe.

Recipe Rationale

Lets break down the recipe to understand what we've used and why.

Grain Bill

Predictably, the majority of the grain bill will be comprised of pilsner malt. We're cutting back the flaked rice from 1.5kg to 1kg, and making up the difference with some additional pilsner malt. We're also adding a touch of Carapils/Carafoam for a tiny bit more body.

Hops

Classic, noble hops like Hallertau Mittelfruh are the way to go for a simple lager like this, and is what we used last time so no need to change this up too much. We're going to bump up the IBU's a touch as well.

Given the relatively low Alpha Acid (AA) percentage of the hops we're using, we need to add quite a bit to the boil to reach the desired IBU levels. We've read reports that this can lead to green/vegetal flavours being imparted into the beer, but we had a very similar hopping rate with our Munich Helles using these hops and it turned out great!

Yeast

W34/70 is our favourite lager yeast and we always get great results with it, so we'll be sticking with it again for this recipe. However, we are going for the CellarScience equivalent which is supposedly made from the W34/70 parent strain. 

A quick look at some reviews for this yeast online indicate people have been pretty happy with how it performs, and it's literally half the price of the original W34/70 from Fermentis, so we figure it's worth a shot, especially since we're going to ferment cool so will be using two packets.

Mash Schedule

We've only ever used this mash profile once before, and it certainly seemed to work well so we're going to go ahead and use it again for this recipe. The "maximum fermentability" profile features an initial rest of 30 minutes at 63°C, followed by another 30 minute rest at 70°C. 

As the name suggests, this helps transform as many starches as possible into fermentable sugars, resulting in a very low finishing gravity and nice, dry finish - exactly what we're going for with a beer like this one.

Water Profile

We'll be sticking with the same water profile as Mr Rice Guy, which is a light, balanced profile featuring around 70ppm of sulphate and chloride, and around 35ppm calcium. Ideally we'd like the calcium level a little higher but it's difficult to add without also increasing the sulphate and/or chloride levels.

All Grain Homebrew Recipe

Vitals

• Boil Time: 60 minutes
• Brewhouse Efficiency: 75%
• Original Gravity: 1.045
• Final Gravity: 1.007
• IBU (Tinseth): 19
• BU/GU: 0.43
• Colour: 5.9 EBC
• Expected ABV: 5.0%

Mash

• Mash Step 1: 63°C - 30 minutes
  
• Mash Step 2: 70°C - 30 minutes
• Mash Out: 75°C - 10 minutes

Fermentables

• 3.35kg - Pilsner Malt (74.4%)
• 1.0kg - Flaked Rice (22.2%)
• 0.15kg - Carapils/Carafoam (3.3%)

Hops

Boil Hops

• 60 mins - Hallertau Mittelfruh - 15 IBU
• 10 mins - Hallertau Mittelfruh - 7 IBU

Yeast

• CellarScience GERMAN Lager Yeast (equivalent to Fermentis W-34/70) - 2 packets

Fermentation

• 10°C - 5 days
• 13°C - 2 days
• 17°C - 1 day
• 19°C - 1 day

Carbonation

• 2.4 CO2-vol

Water Profile 

• Ca2+ (Calcium): 46
• Mg2+ (Magnesium): 10
• Na+ (Sodium): 23
• Cl- (Chloride): 70
• SO42- (Sulfate): 71
• HCO3- (Bicarbonate): 36

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