My latest article for The Bulletin is out today, in which I profile the new Rip City Lager from Deschutes Brewery (which the brewery recently sent me). You can tell from the headline the angle I took: Rice adds crispness to Rip City Lager.

The brewery describes Rip City as a “bright, citrusy lager” and a particular ingredient caught my eye: rice. Twenty-plus years ago, you would almost never find rice used in craft brewing. Early notions about the grain among microbrewers included that it was a cheap adjunct used to water down beer, or that beers brewed with grains other than barley and wheat were somehow less authentic to “real beer.” The fact that Budweiser is brewed with rice didn’t help this misconception.

On the contrary, rice as a brewing grain adds fermentable sugars and offers a clean and neutral aroma and flavor to the finished beer. This makes it a good candidate to lighten and dry out the body for a crisp finish. Over the years the stigma around rice evaporated as breweries experimented with the grain, and today it’s not uncommon to find beers brewed with it, as well as variations such as black and wild rice.

Rice is also gluten-free, and finds use in gluten-free brewing; Evasion Brewing Company of McMinnville is an entirely gluten-free brewery and uses rice in all of its beers. Deschutes brews its own gluten-free beers on tap exclusively at its pubs, using brown rice or rice syrup.

I’m a fan of beers brewed with rice (no stigmas here!) and Rip City drinks like the light American lager it’s styled upon. Click through to the article for my review.