Mr Rice Guy - Japanese Rice Lager - Tasting Results/Review

We were pretty pleased with how this one turned out, and we actually decided to enter it into the 2024 NSW Homebrewing Competition where it claimed 3rd place in the pale lager category, which we're incredibly proud of, with a combined score of 73/100.

Starting with appearance, we've got a brilliantly clear, straw coloured beer that absolutely looks the part. There's a nice, tight white foam head that appears but admittedly lacks a little bit of staying power and dissipates fairly quickly - perhaps a byproduct of the rice?

There's a slightly grainy aroma, with a little bit of yeast character present as well, but very little hop aroma which isn't necessarily a requirement for this style of beer.

Flavour-wise and the bitterness has subsided a little bit over time - if we were to make it again we'd probably bump up the IBU's a little bit, possibly a bit more on the late hop side to get a little more aroma happening as well, though with the noble hops being used it may introduce some more grassy characteristics? Who knows. There's a slightly sweet characteristic from the rice, which is maybe a bit more prevalent than it should be, though the judges of the beer in the competition didn't state this, although interestingly one said it could use the additional of rice or corn as an adjunct (the recipe already had 30% rice in it). We'd probably drop the rice back by one packet/500g next time - the mash was incredibly thick with no recirculation because of the rice so reducing it may also help with this.

There's definitely no off-flavours and the W34-70 yeast did a brilliant job (as it always has done for us) at creating a great, clean, neutral flavour profile. We haven't used that many lager yeasts, but it's probably our favourite.

We've attached our score sheets from the NSW state competition below so you can get an unfiltered, more qualified opinion than ours on how this one turned out.

Although we don't necessarily agree with all of the feedback (eg. suggesting incorporating rice/corn into the grist when it's already there), we're very grateful to the judges for their time and effort - they're certainly more capable at critically analysing beer than we are, and we'll certainly heed their feedback where possible to try and improve our processes and beers.

Since this beer placed in the NSW state competition, it automatically qualified for the Australian Amateur Brewing Championship, so we entered it into this competition as well.

Unfortunately it didn't place, but it did score fairly well, with a consensus score of 38, pretty consistent with the scoring from the state competition. It also progressed to the Mini-BOS (Mini Best of Show) round.

The general consensus here was a little too much residual sweetness - almost certainly from the rice. I think by dropping the rice by 10-20%, it will score even better, so we'll perhaps look at doing this next time, but a score of 40/50 from one judge is very pleasing.

Check out the links below to see the original recipe and brew day posts. The recipe post also contains a link directly to the Brewfather recipe.

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