Expert: Ed Westemeier - 10/26/2005

Question
Hi Ed,
At my local market I saw they carried Rice starch, rice flour and powdered rice.  Are any of these the same as the rice that I purchase from my beer supply store? They also had malt that I am pretty sure was like my dry malt that I purchase.  Just wondering.

Answer
Yes and no.
Rice is rice, obviously, but to brew with it you need to gelatinize it first. That involves cooking it in a special kind of rice cooker (that's what Anheuser-Busch does). The rice syrup some homebrew suppliers carry is essentially the final product, and you can simply add that to the kettle. There is also a flaked rice you can use directly in the mash. My guess would be that using the rice starch or others you mentioned would give far too much haze to the beer. Might be an interesting experiment, though!