One of the silliest things I have ever come across in all these years of yapping about good beer was last year's infomercial made by US craft brewers titled "I am a Craft Brewer." It included many mutual back pats and self-pinned blue ribbon statements including the pledges that they do not put corn in their beer, they do not put rice in their beer. One year later, such "honouring and holding true to their craft" - as the infomercial claimed - is seemingly not so important to New Jersey's Flying Fish Brewing as they have decided to put rice in their beer... or at least one, their not yet released Exit 16 Wild Rice Double IPA:
Although no longer home to forests of giant cedars and salt hay marshes teeming with aquatic life, the Meadowlands is still an amazingly diverse ecosystem providing vital animal and plant habitat. In a nod to a once common food plant here, we’ve brewed this beer with wild rice. We also used brown and white rice, as well as two malts. Rice helps the beer ferment dry to better showcase the five different hops we’ve added. Lots and lots of them. We then dry-hopped this Double IPA with even more-generous additions of Chinook and Citra hops to create a nose that hints at tangerine, mango, papaya and pine.
Wow! Sounds really interesting. Who knew that rice would help showcase the hops in a craft beer? Who knew that trying three different rices would be interesting? Maybe someone who actually tried?
Look, there is no reason to get all freaked out finger pointy, screaming hypocrisy or go over the top some other way. We just need to thank our stars that human invention knows no such bounds. And, like Wisconsin's New Glarus and its corn beer Spotted Cow, good rice beer has already been done before as Michigan's Kuhnhenn Brewing Company has made a Double Rice IPA (DRIPA) according to the BAers.
Promising never to make beer with corn or rice? It's like promising to never make beer in casks or to only make beer in casks. Make beer from turnips for all I care. As long as you make it tasty and sell it to me at a fair price, what does it matter to me?
Comments
Joe McPhee - February 22, 2010 8:51 PM
Cigar City out of Tampa have just released their Double Cream Ale that features 12% corn in the grist. There's no reason not to use rice or corn, provided it's appropriate and the beer works. I don't see how adding rice is any different from adding sugar, which many brewers add to Double IPAs to lighten the body.
Tim - February 23, 2010 12:30 AM
Not turnips, but apparently in colonial Massachusetts brewers attempted beer using parsnips and wood shavings. I think they were a bit desperate something drinkable.*
*According to Merriam-Webster: "suitable or safe for drinking."
Greg - February 23, 2010 1:04 AM
While I've not yet tried it myself yet, there have been a lot of good things said about the #5 Asian Lager made with rice that Mike Duggan has on tap at his brewpub. Apparently it's even going to be his second bottled beer, following the already available #9 IPA.
I understand what the point was of those statements in the video, but they were still pretty short-sighted.
Ron Pattinson - February 23, 2010 4:52 AM
Nothing wrong with promising to only sell beer in casks.That's the way nature intended.
Trainman - February 23, 2010 8:51 AM
I would go by taste at first. Maybe it doesn't taste something like those yellow, fizzy lagers which are advertised on the Olympics. If not, go for it.
Pok - February 23, 2010 11:12 AM
yes - boundaries are not progressive to the advancement of craft brewing. If there is rice or corn however, I am inclined to take a more skeptical, albeit still open minded, approach.
Alan - February 23, 2010 3:06 PM
Wild Rice!?!?
Show me one of these 'fraidy cats who've brewed with wild wheat or wild barley and then I will maybe agree where the skepticism should lay.
The Professor - February 24, 2010 12:04 AM
Good for Flying Fish.
They make some fine beers, and I'm happy that since they're in my home state, tap availability of their beers in plentiful.
And there is of course nothing at all wrong with using corn, rice, or even sugars if it is done well and sensitively.
The assertion in "I AM A CRAFT BREWER" that rice or corn adjunct represents some kind of inherent evil really was a bit of a joke.
Actually, the expressed aversion to corn was kind of humorously ironic, since the whole presentation was unabashedly corny.
Jim - February 24, 2010 1:30 PM
I rarely comment on blogs with a simple, "I agree!" But seriously, hear hear!
Brad - February 28, 2010 1:35 PM
The Bruery's Trade Winds Tripel also uses rice in the mash. Very good beer too.
BSD4.2 - March 1, 2011 12:40 PM
So if are good with rice and corn in the beer, how about a nice lanted ale? If your argument is the ends justify the means, don't bitch about piss in the beer.
I'll stick with Reinheitsgebot!
Alan - March 1, 2011 2:52 PM
Brave talk, hand puppet.