Rice improves taste profiles for non -alcoholic beer, reduces the fermentation time and can contribute to taste stability.
Credit: Paths Johnson/CC BY-NC-SA
He and his team-including Christian Schubert, a visiting postdoc of the Research Institute for Sustrims and Beverage Analysis in Berlin brought their own non-alcoholic beers, ranging from those made by 100 percent barley mout to 100 percent rice. They performed a volatile chemical analysis to identify specific connections in the beers and collected two sensory panels of tasters (one in the US, one in Europe) to assess aromas, tastes and mouthfeel.
The panel members stipulated that the rice-brewed beers had fewer carrots, and the chemical analysis revealed why: lower levels of aldehydo bindings. Instead, other sensory attributes emerged, especially vanilla or buttery tones. “If a brewer wanted a more neutral character, they could not use aromatic rice,” the authors wrote. Together with brewing beers with 50 percent barley/50 percent, this would yield non-alcoholic beers that will probably appeal to the consumer wider.
The panel members also noted that a higher rice content resulted in beers with a fat/creamy mouthfeel – probably because a higher rice content was correlated with increased levels of larger alcohol molecules, which is known to contribute to a pleasant mouthfeel. But it did not increase the alcohol content above the legal threshold for a non -alcoholic beer.
However, there were cultural preferences. The American panel members do not mind finding carrots flavors as the European tasters, which could explain why the first beers brew brewed with 70 percent barley/30 percent rise as the optimum mix. Their European counterparts preferred the opposite ratio (30 percent barley/70 percent rice). The statement “can be in the sensory expectations formed by the brewing traditions of each region,” the authors wrote. Fermentation also took place faster as the rice content increased due to higher levels of glucose and fructose.
The second study was aimed at testing 74 different rice cultivars to determine their extract yields, an important variable when it comes to an efficient brewing process, because higher yields mean that brewers can use less grain, so that the costs are cut. This revealed that cultivars with a lower amylose content were cracked more easily to release sugars during the puree process, which produced the highest yields. And certain varieties also had lower gelatinization temperatures for more processing ease of processing.
International Journal of Food Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1080/10942912.2025.2520907 (About Dois)
Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists, 2025. DOI: 10.1080/03610470.2025.2499768
