Meet Our Black Rice Ale: Packed With Flavor, Not Calories
A dark beer that’s shockingly light
We’ve always been about making beer that we want to drink and are proud to share. We don’t chase trends or fads but we do like to innovate so we set out to make a beer that was unlike anything we’ve tasted. We were chasing a flavor profile that hadn’t really been done before but wanted to keep it balanced like our Boont Amber; easy to drink yet nuanced, and flavorful. We came up with the Black Rice Ale, which turned out delicious by intention, but by happy accident also ended up under 100 calories. How’d we do it?
Black Magic
When we first started experimenting with black, aka forbidden, rice about two years ago it was extremely hard to procure. We found ourselves raiding one pound bags from the shelves of the local big-box stores before we were finally able to secure a source that could meet our commercial brewing needs. While lots of large scale commercial light beers on the market use rice, or rice syrup, as a sugar source to keep calories down, black rice is a whole different grain and we had a completely different mission.
A Grain of Truth
Just as when Fal wrote the book on Goses, he and the team found themselves starting from scratch once again on this project. There was plenty of trial and error due to the grain’s unique properties and obscurity in brewing circles. It turns out that black rice behaves differently than white rice because it’s more glutenous, which meant he had to keep the percentage down. Because the team was looking to extract flavor and color, not traditional sugars, they dialed in some specific lower temperatures and held the grains below a boil. This ultimately resulted in capturing the dark, umami flavors from the rice without overly extracting starches and other components.
Don’t Call it a Light Beer
We brewed this nut brown ale with American two-row pale malt, a good helping of black rice, and a touch of chocolate malt. The result is a lightly hopped, dark mahogany ale with undertones of roasted malt, dark rye bread with a delicious nutty flavor. However, at 3.8% AVB and 97 calories per 12oz can this is a beer that will quench your thirst but won’t leave you feeling guilty when you inevitably grab another can.
Is it Gluten Free?
It is gluten reduced, like most all the other low gluten beers on the market, but technically not gluten “free”. It’s actually close to impossible to make a truly gluten free beer unless you’re only using sorghum or some other non-grain starch source. Because we use grains we add an enzyme during the brewing process that strips close to all of the gluten out and leaves a finished product that’s as close to gluten free as chemistry allows us to get. It’s a process we implemented with our Boonville Gold and have just rolled out with the latest batch of Black Rice Ale. Bring a few cans on your next adventure but make sure to pack enough to share, it’s a (socially distanced) crowd pleaser.
