Manoomin Knocker - Wild Rice Imperial Mild Ale

 I brewed a batch of beer on the first of October that I thought would be an amazing seasonal beer and I hope to add a Wild Rice beer to my lineup every Fall during the harvest season.   I love using local ingredients in my recipe’s whenever possible and after sampling a version of this beer and hearing that it had Wild Rice in it, I thought I had to give it a try!!!  This recipe is inspired by Tim Stuemke who is a founding member of the Nordeast Brewers Alliance.  Although typically Mild Ales are much lighter in body, lower in alcohol, and slightly roasty Brown Ales typically in the mid 1.030 range.  This beer is called an Imperial Mild mainly to be funny as historically Mild Ales have found their way up into the 1.050+ Gravity range.    The key is that a Mild Ale be very sessionable!!!  Mild ales are typically a bit thin, yet bold in flavor, and I wanted an even bolder version to go with Minnesota’s bolder version of Winter!   This beer could easily be called a Brown Ale.

Wild Rice - Experience/History - Wild Rice is an interesting plant. My first experience with it was when I was a kid on a canoe trip in the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area).   A group of us kids and a couple of dads took a week long trip up north paddling, portaging, cliff jumping, camping, foraging for blueberries, catching fish, and living with and off the land.   On one of the last days we paddled along a lazy small river in between a couple large lakes and we were surrounded by wild rice much like this picture below.

If you want to learn more about Wild Rice, go to the Wiki page HERE.   Kinda interesting...as it's not rice at all, it's actually closer related to grass.  Foragging for Wild Rice is a laborious task that intails canoeing and knocking the grain into your canoe.  Processing Wild Rice is even more interesting and time consuming then knocking the grain.  Check out this Video on how Wild Rice is traditionally processed.

All in all the Wild Rice is going to give this beer a "nutty" character that otherwise couldn't be acheived.

Cereal Mash –

The usage of Wild Rice brings up some questions.   How do I handle the Wild Rice? It’s extremely hard to break down, and how to extract the sugars from it?  Well what you need to do is a Cereal Mash.   For this beer I ground up the wild rice with my coffee grinder extremely fine in order to make the starches more accessible.  Then I put it in equal parts water…1 lb/1 gallon and slowly brought that to a boil.   Once that was boiling I kept it rolling for a good hour!   I could have also added in a bit of grain (for their enzymes) and done a quick Sacc rest at 150 degrees, but since I was going to add it to the mash I know I’d get full conversion.  By the end of the hour it essentially looks like thick cooked rice and you really couldn’t boil it any longer without adding more water.   Keep in mind that you need to be stirring throughout this time as to not scorch the rice.  Especially during the last 15 minutes. 

For mashing the other grains I decide to mash in real thick and do a quick Protein rest at 120 degrees.   It sat there for only about 5 minutes at most and then I dumped in my boiling hot cereal mash of wild rice.  This brought the temperature up to 148.  I was shooting for 150-152 so I added about ½ gallon of boiling water and then let it rest for the 1 hour.    Batch Sparged as normal at 168 degrees and I was ready to boil.  Once the boil had finished I chilled it and pitch my yeast after pouring it back and forth to oxygenate.   I fermented it at 67-68 degrees in my basement and this should create a slightly fruity fermentation and add additional character to the Toasty (Maris Otter), and Nutty (Wild Rice), sweetness and caramel toffee (Cystal 60 /120),  Earthyness of the hops,  as well as complement the small amount of darker roastier grains. (Pale Chocolate/ Black Patent).  The Melanoidin malt should give the beer a substantial body that is a little bit off for the style, but I personally enjoy.

Wild Rice Imperial Mild Ale

Mash Efficiency: 72 %

Specific Gravity: 1.052 OG

Final Gravity:     1.016 FG

Alcohol: 4.8% ABV

Calories: 173  per 12 oz.

Color: 17° SRM  Light Brown to Medium Brown

Bitterness: 19.7 IBU  Tinseth

Malt & Fermentables

%	LB	OZ
62%	6	~	Pale Malt (Maris Otter)	Mash
21%	2	~	Wild Rice	Cereal Mash/		Mash
5%	~	8	American Crystal 120L	Mash
5%	~	8	American Crystal 60L	Mash
4%	~	6	Melanoidin Malt	Mash
3%	~	4	Pale Chocolate Malt	Mash
1%	~	1	American Black Patent	Mash
	9	11

Hops

Usage	Time	OZ			AA » IBU
boil	60 min	1	East Kent Goldings ~ pellet		5.0 » 19.7

Yeast

London ESB Ale (1968) yeast in liquid form with very high flocculation and 69% attenuation