Rice rebels: Research reveals grain's brewing benefits

https://phys.org/news/2025-06-rice-rebels-reveals-grain-brewing.html

by PaulHoule • 1 year ago

30 16 1 year ago

Interesting that higher rice content in beer "revealed buttery, vanilla and creamy notes" and "was correlated with increased levels of larger alcohol molecules, like 3-methyl-1-butanol, which contribute positively to mouthfeel without raising the alcohol content above the legal nonalcoholic beer threshold." Do those larger alcohol compounds have known downsides similar to ethanol (e.g. carcinogenicity)? I'd sure like lower-alcohol beers that pose less health risk.

Most mainstream Japanese lager is made partially from rice (in these lagers, over 1/3rd of the grain used is rice), so the flavor difference is probably already familiar to many people.

someothherguyy• 1 year ago

Do those larger alcohol compounds have known downsides similar to ethanol (e.g. carcinogenicity)?

From a cursory search, yes. It is more toxic than ethanol, even in gross terms like LD50.

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/isoamylol#section=...

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/source/hsdb/605

ginko• 1 year ago

Longer alcohols also contribute a lot to hangovers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusel_alcohol?useskin=vector

shermantanktop• 1 year ago

Rice and corn are common ingredients in beers that I don’t enjoy, and are rarely in beers that I do enjoy. Ultimately it is a matter of preference, but…they are cheap ingredients, and finding reasons they are great seems like a retcon.

bathMarm0t• 1 year ago

From a brief stint in Seoul, I ran into a beverage called Makgeolli. A rice-wine, sake-adjacency that clocks in at beer ABV levels (maybe someone started a batch and couldn't wait for it to fully ferment).

Cloudy. Raw. Fragrant. Sweet. Funky.

Absolutely delicious.

It also has almost no shelf-life (no acidity to protect, and sterilization destroys all the charm), so no one imports/exports it, but if it caught on in America I would not be upset.

pkkim• 1 year ago

It's a lot of trouble and hard to get right, but you can make it at home! The ingredients are easy to buy online. It keeps in the fridge for a long time, though after a while it stops tasting like makgeolli; the clear sediment-free layer starts resembling white wine.

https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/makgeolli

Rice rebels: Research reveals grain's brewing benefits

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