Rice vs. Corn Homebrewed American Lager Adjunct Experiment

Jesse has been on a bit of a light beer kick for a bit now, he generally likes sessionable beers during the summer, and darker / heavier beers during the cold months.

In any case, he had the brilliant idea to brew two small batches of an American Lager, and use only rice in one as the adjunct, and only corn in the other. Combined with that excellent comparison, he avoided doing a pesky cereal mash by using minute rice instead of regular rice, and instant grits instead of regular corn.

You see, in the process of preparing both Minute Rice and Instant grits to be as quick cooking as they are, they go through all the cooking needed for a cereal mash, saves you the time.

It was very interesting to taste them side by side. From what information we can gather, Budweiser beers use rice as their adjunct, and Coors uses corn.

The taste difference is obvious once you taste them side by side. Recipes are down below.

For those who were interested, Jesse brewed these BiaB, no chill, and fermented in kegs, without pressure. Mike was chatting with Cody Deuel in the Facebook Homebrewing Group about our lager experiment video. I think these beers again show you can make some pretty great lagers, at room temperature without pressure fermenting. Jesse used Nova Lager with these.

There was one SNAFU with the corn version is that Jesse put on a little heat onto the mash, and forgot about it. By the time he got back to the mash, it was in the mid 160’s. So it did spend a little bit of time in a higher mashing range than the rice lager. That could explain some of the difference, but close enough. Hey, this isn’t a science lab 😊

Which one is our favorite, well, that’s hard to tell. Jesse has been switching back and forth between them, and Mike would probably do so too.
We also talk a bit about fining with gelatin near the end of the video, and the possibility of Jesse interviewing Mike about his beer experiences in the UK.

Shoutout to @robbie2awesome – a viewer from Glasgow Scotland. Mike work his Tenant’s Brewing shirt in his honor 😊 (12:59)
One note from Mike, Jesse has been doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to coming up with content for the channel. Mike is going to have to start lifting his weight over here.

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Lager recipe using Corn as the Adjunct