[COHO] Rice Beer...what a mess

[Huntkng@aol.com]

09-04-06
Hello group,
 
What to do?  My corn beer experiment went so well that the obvious  next step 
was a rice beer.  Right?  Wrong, geez what a mess.  I  had a few hours free 
yesterday and decided to brew some rice based beer to  appease some of my Coors 
and Bud swilling buddies.  I used short brown rice  because from my 
experience it gets less coagulated then white when cooked.   I cooked 3 pounds in 3 
gallons of water for 30 minutes thinking that should  water it down enough to 
help when I separated the fluid from the enlarged, soft  wet grain.  Wrong.  It 
turned into one big gelatinized mass of goo.  there was no way to sparge or 
even water it down enough to strain off the grain  and capture the starches and 
enzymes.  I used a strainer with 1/8" holes  and it still just sat there 
quivering like jello.  It just stuck, literally  to everything it touched. I ended 
up putting it in a cloth bag and squeezing out  as much of the fluid as I 
could.  This could best be described  as...Yuck.  I mixed this with the wort from 
the 7 pounds of grain and  boiled it up using a batch of wet hops (4 pints by 
volume) I just harvested at a  friends house.  
 
Here is the problem.  I have 5 gallons of pretty thin brew.  I  expected a 
S/G of 1.050 (+ -).  I got 1.032.  I pitched in the yeast  and it is happily 
doing it's thing with a steady stream of bubbles drifting out  of the air lock.  
 
Should I:
 
    1.  Dump this down the drain and never look at another grain of rice 
    2.  Pull out a gallon or two, add 3 pounds of extract, boil it up, cool 
it and  add it back into the primary fermentor to raise the S/G? 
    3.  Let it just do its thing "as" is and if it turns out very badly give 
it to  my enemies and people I hate?
Whatta da ya thunk?
 
Bill  

William (Bill) Herrick
PO Box 7499
Bend, OR  97708
Wk: (541) 318-8862
Fax: (541) 318-0083
e-mail:  huntkng at aol.com

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