Rice rebels: Research reveals grain's brewing benefits | Hacker News Reader

Rice rebels: Research reveals grain's brewing benefits

phys.org

30 pointsPaulHoule16 comments

Interesting that higher rice content in beer "revealed buttery, vanilla and creamy notes" and "was correlated with increased levels of larger alcohol molecules, like 3-methyl-1-butanol, which contribute positively to mouthfeel without raising the alcohol content above the legal nonalcoholic beer threshold." Do those larger alcohol compounds have known downsides similar to ethanol (e.g. carcinogenicity)? I'd sure like lower-alcohol beers that pose less health risk.

Most mainstream Japanese lager is made partially from rice (in these lagers, over 1/3rd of the grain used is rice), so the flavor difference is probably already familiar to many people.

> Do those larger alcohol compounds have known downsides similar to ethanol (e.g. carcinogenicity)?

From a cursory search, yes. It is more toxic than ethanol, even in gross terms like LD50.

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/isoamylol#section=...

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/source/hsdb/605

Longer alcohols also contribute a lot to hangovers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusel_alcohol?useskin=vector

Nice, so we can have a beer that doesn't get us drunk, but does give a hangover?

A puritian dream. Pay, sinner, pay for your hedonistic pleasures!

> A puritian dream. Pay, sinner, pay for your hedonistic pleasures!

I am not aware of such uses for alcohol, but for hallocinogenic drugs, there exist people who don't use them for hedonistic pleasures, but for getting creative, scientific or spiritual inspirations.

Huh?

Alcohol not used for creativity?

Ask all the writers who drank themself to death .. or rather, how many writers didn't become alcoholics at some point.

(But personally I don't like alcohol for creativity)

> Alcohol not used for creativity?

> Ask all the writers who drank themself to death

I know the names of some famous writers who drank too much, but I am very much willing to admit that people who are using alcohol for creativity are far outside the bubble of people who I am surrounded with, so I can legitimately claim that from my personal life I am not aware of any single example of this phenomenon.

Yes, but to be pedantic, your claim was "I am not aware of such uses for alcohol", not that you are not aware of such uses in your personal life ..

I indeed didn't know whether such writers drank out of bad habit, or for creativity.

Early in my career in the 90s, I knew more than one programmer who claimed to be most productive when buzz-coding.

I never really understood it. To me, focusing intently on a task always seemed like a good way to kill a nice buzz.

Cannabis works for me with coding in the right dose and time, but alcohol not at all.

Your claim contradicts the article you linked.

Rice and corn are common ingredients in beers that I don’t enjoy, and are rarely in beers that I do enjoy. Ultimately it is a matter of preference, but…they are cheap ingredients, and finding reasons they are great seems like a retcon.

From a brief stint in Seoul, I ran into a beverage called Makgeolli. A rice-wine, sake-adjacency that clocks in at beer ABV levels (maybe someone started a batch and couldn't wait for it to fully ferment).

Cloudy. Raw. Fragrant. Sweet. Funky.

Absolutely delicious.

It also has almost no shelf-life (no acidity to protect, and sterilization destroys all the charm), so no one imports/exports it, but if it caught on in America I would not be upset.

It's a lot of trouble and hard to get right, but you can make it at home! The ingredients are easy to buy online. It keeps in the fridge for a long time, though after a while it stops tasting like makgeolli; the clear sediment-free layer starts resembling white wine.

https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/makgeolli

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