Short Batch - Smutt-a-Roni

Smutt-a-Roni (first sampled summer'07)
Smutt-a-Roni is a wild rice beer, the recipe of which we stole from the Portsmouth Brewery, which in turn stole from Mike Luparello. Mike is the finest brewer I know currently living in a yurt. He's also a veteran of the Baja 1000. I don't know how that's relevant, but I think it's cool. Anyway, he used to brew at the Portsmouth Brewery and remains both an inspiration and a good sounding board for my own efforts.

The wild rice needs to go through a separate gelatinization than the barley malt, so we took advantage of our decoction capabilities and were able to boil the rice before mixing into the main mash. I used 125 lbs of 100% wild rice, I'm assuming it was Northern wild rice (Zizania palustris.) The typical wild rice package at the supermarket is a blend of wild and white rice. This ended up being about 7% of the grain bill. If I brew this beer again I'll end up bumping up this percentage. The base of this beer is meant to be a real pleasant and somewhat hoppy pale ale. We used Sterling for all the hop additions. Such a nice hop. It adds a really noticeable cherry character to the beer. The wild rice contributes a nutty flavor as well as an earthiness to the flavor.

Malt:
Weyermann Pilsner Malt
Caramel Wheat
Munich
Carafoam
Wild Rice

OG - 14° p
TG - 3.0° p

Hops:
IBU 35

ABV 5.5%