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Paden Johnson/CC BY-NC-SA
He and his group—together with Christian Schubert, a visiting postdoc from the Analysis Institute for Uncooked Supplies and Beverage Evaluation in Berlin—brewed their very own non-alcoholic beers, starting from these made with 100% barley malt to ones made with 100% rice. They carried out a unstable chemical evaluation to establish particular compounds current within the beers and assembled two sensory panels of tasters (one within the US, one in Europe) to evaluate aromas, flavors, and mouthfeel.
The panelists decided the rice-brewed beers had much less worty flavors, and the chemical evaluation revealed why: decrease ranges of aldehyde compounds. As an alternative, different sensory attributes emerged, most notably vanilla or buttery notes. “If a brewer needed a extra impartial character, they might use nonaromatic rice,” the authors wrote. Together with brewing beers with 50 p.c barley/50 p.c rice, this may produce non-alcoholic beers prone to attraction extra broadly to customers.
The panelists additionally famous that increased rice content material resulted in beers with a fatty/creamy mouthfeel—seemingly as a result of increased rice content material was correlated with elevated ranges of bigger alcohol molecules, that are recognized to contribute to a nice mouthfeel. However it did not increase the alcohol content material above the authorized threshold for a nonalcoholic beer.
There have been cultural preferences, nonetheless. The US panelists did not thoughts worty flavors as a lot because the European tasters did, which could clarify why the previous selected beers brewed with 70 p.c barley/30 p.c rice because the optimum combine. Their European counterparts most popular the other ratio (30 p.c barley/70 p.c rice). The reason “could lie within the sensory expectations formed by every area’s brewing traditions,” the authors wrote. Fermentation additionally occurred extra rapidly because the rice content material elevated due to increased ranges of glucose and fructose.
The second research centered on testing 74 totally different rice cultivars to find out their extract yields, an essential variable on the subject of an environment friendly brewing course of, since increased yields imply brewers can use much less grain, thereby reducing prices. This revealed that cultivars with decrease amylose content material cracked extra simply to launch sugars through the mashing course of, producing the best yields. And sure varieties additionally had decrease gelatinization temperatures for better ease of processing.
Worldwide Journal of Meals 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
