Beer without barley/wheat/malt, but with rice/corn/enzymes

[oplosan]

So here's an unusual question, totally out of left field, and may be better suited for a homebrewing forum, but here goes.

Finding malt anything ,or finding barley/wheat is tough in my corner of the world -- tropical developing and Islamic nation. Corn and rice are plentiful and cheap, as are various byproducts of their refinement. I have made many wines before and consider myself pretty good at the process. Now that I've made a connection who can hook me up with affordable hops, I'm wanting to explore beer making with alternate grains.

I'm seeing general wisdom that 2 pounds per gallon is a good grain recipe. or roughly 250 grams per liter. Could a decent beer be made from corn and rice? Flaked rice that quickly and easily becomes a porridge is easy to come by here, as is cornmeal. I was thinking of making a mix of cornmeal and instant rice, boiling for ~20 minutes until the grains begin melting, then otherwise following recipe for adding hops to a wort, adding enzymes once things cool down, and adding enzymes again with yeast once it's about room temp. I'd consider adding oatmeal as an adjunct if initial results are promising.

Balls of koji / "Aspergillus oryzae" mixed with yeast are also pretty cheap and easy to come by here. From experience I know it can produce a pretty good "sake" and suspect it should work on corn, I'll test with that before buying "proper" expensive enzymes.

If people have any useful advice or tips for making beer with limited resources, it would be very much appreciated. Tried googling for answers here but a lot of the discussions were long ago or depend on resources I don't have easy access to. Once I begin experimenting in this area I'll try to bring updates to this thread.

[Pure Old Possum Piss]

Budwieser has corn and rice in it but I think it's got barley also. It's a popular beer.

[greggn]

Finding malt anything ,or finding barley/wheat is tough in my corner of the world -- tropical developing and Islamic nation.

I'm not a beer drinker so I'm a bit out of my league but ...

Sorghum and/or millet may be close substitutes and I would think available in the area you describe.

[contrahead]

Yes rice and corn and should be a good combination. Oats too. Perhaps milo, millet, Quinoa and rapeseed might work also.

Many commercial beers use rice as an adjunct; mainly because it is cheap. “Bud Light” (once the most popular beer in the world / now 2nd place) is about 30% rice. {Currently the top three selling beers in the world are (1) Modelo Especial, (2) Bud Lite and (3) Michelob Ultra. All three owned by the same fat corporation - Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV. }

[subbrew]

Using rice and corn with enzymes will give a very dry beer. It will also be very thin with little mouth feel. I think you need something to give it some body. Millet has been suggested and is commonly used to make gluten free beer. Making gluten free beer would be a good thing to search and should give you some ideas.

[MooseMan]

So here's an unusual question, totally out of left field, and may be better suited for a homebrewing forum, but here goes.

Finding malt anything ,or finding barley/wheat is tough in my corner of the world -- tropical developing and Islamic nation. Corn and rice are plentiful and cheap, as are various byproducts of their refinement. I have made many wines before and consider myself pretty good at the process. Now that I've made a connection who can hook me up with affordable hops, I'm wanting to explore beer making with alternate grains.

I'm seeing general wisdom that 2 pounds per gallon is a good grain recipe. or roughly 250 grams per liter. Could a decent beer be made from corn and rice? Flaked rice that quickly and easily becomes a porridge is easy to come by here, as is cornmeal. I was thinking of making a mix of cornmeal and instant rice, boiling for ~20 minutes until the grains begin melting, then otherwise following recipe for adding hops to a wort, adding enzymes once things cool down, and adding enzymes again with yeast once it's about room temp. I'd consider adding oatmeal as an adjunct if initial results are promising.

Balls of koji / "Aspergillus oryzae" mixed with yeast are also pretty cheap and easy to come by here. From experience I know it can produce a pretty good "sake" and suspect it should work on corn, I'll test with that before buying "proper" expensive enzymes.

If people have any useful advice or tips for making beer with limited resources, it would be very much appreciated. Tried googling for answers here but a lot of the discussions were long ago or depend on resources I don't have easy access to. Once I begin experimenting in this area I'll try to bring updates to this thread.

You can definitely make a passable beer with corn, and if you add some oats/wheat for a little extra body, it will be closer to a whit or a steam beer.
Not the place to go into details, but you can add salts (Gypsum, Epsom etc.) to your water to change the perceived mouth feel too.
Plus a couple of other tricks to stop it going totally dry.

I'd highly recommend listening to the Brulosophy podcasts for lots and lots of great beer knowledge and tricks.

[zach]

I've made a few beers with as much as 50,% corn or rice that were nice on a hot day. Also made a non alcoholic hop water with lemon which was like a seltzer. With 100% corn or rice you may get a hop flavored seltzer,. Maybe consider a lemon addition.

A local brewery in my area makes a blonde stout where they add coffee at flame out in the brew kettle that I like. Also heard of others adding chocolate nibs at this time. Toasting some of grain might give a more complex flavor.

[Setsumi]

If set on enzymes to convert look into a Brut beer, a dry style. If enzyme convertion take a long time, think about making a hop tea that you add to the beer at the end of boil.

In African culture sorghum and maize makes opauqe beer but you can brew a western style beer with it.

[Homebrewer11777]

Do some research on gluten free beer brewing to get advice for brewing with the grains you are thinking about and the ones like sorghum, buckwheat, millet mentioned by other posters in this thread.

The issue that is concerning me regarding making an all corn/rice beer is lautering. As far as I know beer wash/mash is normally separated into liquid part (wort) and solids before the wort is boiled with hops.