Malting alternative could reduce beer production costs

A new cost-feasibility analysis published in npj Sustainable Agriculture has found that using rice malt instead of milled rice in beer brewing, as performed by large breweries, would decrease the cost of beer production by 2–12%. Malted rice also reduces crop-growing acreage needs by half or more because it produces more grain per acre than barley while having an equivalent or greater sugar extract potential.

Brewers who currently use rice for brewing typically use milled rice, like what is found in supermarkets. Using this form of rice requires extra processing steps compared to malted rice. The new study out of the University of Arkansas suggests that malting has the potential to decrease time and energy costs and make using rice more feasible for more small-scale craft brewers to make gluten-free beers.

Since rice is cultivated globally, the study noted, it also has the benefit of serving as a viable malting material for tropical and subtropical countries that currently rely on barley imports for brewing. Malting is a process that allows grains to sprout slightly under controlled conditions, resulting in biochemical changes important for beer production.

Closing an export gap

The study showed the potential for the alternative malting process to develop new domestic demand for rice and offset declining exports in Arkansas. Domestic long-grain rice exports in the state have dipped about 7% over the past 15 years.

“Alternative markets, like malted rice, can backfill that decrease in exports,” said Lanier Nalley, professor and head of the agricultural economics and agribusiness department for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas. “Developing a domestic market for our own rice ultimately could ensure the long-run sustainability of rice production in Arkansas.”

Nalley is a co-author of the malted rice feasibility study with researchers from the Center for Beverage Innovation, including Bumpers College food science graduate student Bernardo P Guimaraes and Scott Lafontaine, assistant professor in the food science department for Bumpers College and the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the Division of Agriculture.

Guimaraes and Lafontaine published research in 2024 with findings of several long-grain rice varieties that developed enough enzymatic activity to fully convert their starch source into fermentable sugar when malted. The rice malts also had many different and interesting aromas and flavours, Guimaraes said, which he believes can be used as a standalone raw material or in conjunction with barley malt.

Beers made with malted rice are seen with a vial of malted rice at the Center for Beverage Innovation, a University of Arkansas System facility, during a 2024 study that identified several long-grain rice varieties with unique brewing qualities. Image credit: U of A System Division of Agriculture.

“When we started this, I thought there’s no way this is going to work,” Nalley said. “How long have humans been drinking beer, and how long has rice been around? The economist in me thought, well if this would have worked, they would have done it 400 years ago! But I guess it took lightning in a bottle with Scott and Bernardo to put two and two together to figure this out, because this could work.”

Lafontaine said the disconnect between malted rice and beer may be because beer has been viewed through a “Germanic lens”, which has been influenced by the nation’s longstanding purity law that calls for just barley, hops, water and yeast as the only four ingredients allowed in beer.

“But ... you look back at some of the ancient beers that are in Asia — they had millet, they had rice — and archaeologists have found evidence of cereal beverages made with rice,” Lafontaine said. “Who knows? Maybe that rice was malted.”

Lafontaine referred to a 2024 study published in Anthropology titled ‘Identification of 10,000-year-old rice beer at Shangshan in the Lower Yangzi River valley of China’.

Making gluten-free beer competitive

The study also showed that beer made from 100% rice malt, which would make it gluten-free, costs about 30% more than barley-based beer.

Guimaraes said all-rice malt beers could come with a lower price tag compared to other traditional gluten-free alternatives and without flavour defects.

Gluten-free malts are generally considered ‘competitive’ by brewers if they are no more than two times the cost of traditional barley malt, Guimaraes noted.

Top image credit: iStock.com/Sergey Peterman