Expert: Keith Patton - 2/14/2011

Question
Hi Keith,
       I'm living and working as an expat in Brunei. (a Muslim and alcohol free Sultanate in Borneo island in Sth East asia).
I've had many years experience previously home brewing in my native country (New Zealand) but with the supermarket  all- in -a -can kit style of brewing.
It is impossible to get the ingredients to do brewing here in Brunei except for sugar!!
However, I have splashed out and bought a nice stainless steel conical fermenter - that was winking at me - on Ebay which is on it's way here now.
Because hops, malt or malted wheat grains are not available, I was wondering if I could use rice instead. Also is there an equivalent for hops that you know of? I'm sure if I imported hops to Brunei, the customs (who personally inspect all incoming mail) here would think they were some sort of marijuana or the like so I won't go there!
I've tried ginger in the past and the flavor is not unpleasant.
So, what I require is some guidance as to the mashing of rice, say sufficient for a 5 to 6 gallon brew.
There are plenty of rice types available but I understand the brown type is best.
Thanks for any assistance and I eagerly await your advice.
John

Answer
John:

You can use rice, but you need to find koji, which is the bacteria/mold the japanese and chinese use to make the rice starch conversion to fermentable sugars.

What you'll be making is sake.

You might try finding hop oil.  A lot of hops is converted to hop oil extract, it was the cause of the hops market crash of the last few years.  Bumper crop excess was converted to oils and were cheaper than whole fresh hops and drove the prices down resulting in farmers pulling out their hop plants.  Anyway, you can probably find hop extract oil.

You can also use juniper, cedar, or other evergreen needles.  I had a friend who used pinon pine.  Do a bit of on line search for herbs and spice that were used prior to Britain adopting hops like the rest of Europe.  The made a spiced beer called a gruit.

Back to the sake.  The thing about sake is the conversion and the fermentation all take place at the same time.  You keep adding more steamed rice to the batch and stirring it at intervals.  Eventually you press the liquid from the rice and let it clarify or not.  The chinese, japanese and koreans all make a farmhouse sake that is a bit cloudy.  Once you have your final liquid, you can always concentrate it above the ~20% abv by partially freezing it and skimming some of the ice.  This is easier than setting up a still.  Put it in a metal or plastic container of known volume and let the outside and top freeze, then pour off the core concentrated liquid.
Let the ice melt and measure it and then do the math to figure out how much you concentrated it by.  If you have anise seed, you can steep them in the resulting liquid and make a beverage that is kind of like Pernod, Anisette and Uzo in flavor if not in strength.

It might be hard to make anything that will approximate beer in flavor.  The Finns make a beverage that is wholly fermented sugar.  It is call Sahti

http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/styles/6_4style.html

You can ferment the sugar that you can get if you get some turbo yeast used for fermenting sugar and molasses for distillation.  It cranks out about 25% abv.  With the addition of some flavorings you could probably make something passable.  Palm sugar, jaggery and turbonado sugars added to the mix could imbue it with some carmelly flavors similar to amber beers, a little dark candy sugar made on your stove top and little corriander added might make it taste alittle like a belgian dubble.  Carbonation can be accomplished in used liter coke bottles with a bit of yeast and sugar added after the initial ferment is complete.

Let me know it you need more particulars.

Cheers.