While searching for a source of rice noodles, which I use instead of
spaghetti, I came across this stuff called amazake. Its rice which
has been partially fermented/degraded with fungus to produce sugars
from the starch. It is similar to yoghurt in appearance and
consistency. In Japan this is the first stage of making sake (rice
wine). However the Japanese also use this partially fermented rice as
a dessert since it is very sweet. The dessert version is available
on-line in the UK (goodnessdirect.co.uk). So I reckoned I could make
beer with it and ordered two jars of plain rice amazake and two jars
with added millet. I tasted both versions and found them sweet but
pretty tasteless. So I came up with the following recipe which
includes a few of my usual gluten free ingredients to add some taste
and colour.
Redbush tea bags 20 bags
liquorice tea bags 10 bags
Muscovado Sugar 200 g
Treacle (Lyles) 4 Dsp
Bovril 4 Tsp
Prune Juice 1 litre
Date Syrup (Meridian) 250 ml
Rice syrup (Biona) 660 ml
Amazake Brown rice 760 g
Amazake Millet 760 g
Tamari Soy Sauce 50 ml
Golden Sugar 400 g
Yeast Nutrient 0.5 Tsp
Irish Moss 0.5 Tsp
Hop Extract 5 Tsp
Goldings Hops 25 g
The ferment went smoothly, but there was an enormous amount of trub in the brewing bin. I only managed to salvage 17 litres from a 23 litre brew. I racked into a secondary FV and fined with gelatine. The beer cleared nicely with just the slightest haze remaining and I bottled into 1 litre PETs two days later. First tasting was after a week in the bottle - unremarkable - still a bit too yeasty to get the real character of the beer, but nothing unpleasant.
After a month in the bottle, much to my surprise, this tastes like
beer. Its a fairly characterless beer though. SWIMBO likes it, so its
probably a bit on the bland lagery side, but nothing you could object
to....no unpleasant or odd notes at all and it has quite a 'full' body.
I don't think I'll be bothering with amazake again as the only thing
it seems to contribute is mouthfeel (and a little sugar). I can get
the same effect with maltodextrin (body bru etc) for much less
money. It worked out at over 80p per pint which is double the cost of
my standard brew. However if there are gluten free brewers out there
who are not happy using maltodextrin - it doesn't seem possible to get
an assurance from suppliers that it is gluten free - then a couple of
jars (760ml) of amazake will improve the mouthfeel of 23 litres of
beer and leave you with only 21.
)