Gluten Free Home Brewing Blog

Close up examples of milled hulled and dehulled or "naked" rice malt. A side by side comparison of six different examples of milled rice malt used for brewing gluten free beer.

In our last video we compared the dimensional weight of gluten free malt. Today we are going to discuss and show examples of milled hulled and dehulled or “naked” rice malt. Malt is stored unmilled and is only milled prior to using it; milled malt that is not used can degrade quickly. While we make specific mill gap setting recommendations for each type of malt; we realize that different brewers may have their own preferences in how coarsely or finely they prefer to mill their own malt. We will discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of the different gap settings. A mill gap setting of 0.90 – 0.95 mm is recommended for rice malt (the second example in the video which is referred to in the video as the recommended mill gap setting; the other examples were used to visually compare a coarser and finer grind).

We will first show examples of hulled rice malt with a course grind. This is a good example of separating the rice seed from the hull; you can see a very intact hull and a broken seed. As compared to the example of rice hulls you can see here; both examples of hulls are intact. This next example is the recommended grind of hulled rice malt. You can see that both the hull and seed are ground finer; the hull is still intact and the seed is more broken apart. This last example is a much finer grind of both the hull and seed; however, as compared to the example of rice hulls you can see how much the hulls have been degraded. But you will also notice that the seed is milled pretty ideally. This is where the dehulled or “naked” rice malt comes into the picture.

Here are several examples of finer milled naked rice malt. Because you are not trying to balance the grind with maintaining an intact hull, you can get a much finer grind. We have found that often times the specialty malts such as biscuit, amber or crystal rice malt, just to name a few, provides most if not all the rice hulls needed for the mash. This means you can use the “naked” pale rice malt that can be milled finer and may improve efficiency and conversion. Eckert Malting & Brewing began to offer their naked malt for breweries that wanted to reduce the dimensional weight of their grain bills, which are many times larger than that of a home brewer. We later worked with Eckert Malting & Brewing to determine the grain to hull ratio; which is approximately 62.5% grain to 37.5% hull. So by using naked rice malt you can improve your grind, reduce the dimensional weight of your grain bill, and may improve efficiency and conversion.

Next we will take a close up look at milled millet and buckwheat malt.

 Cheers!