Can Arkansas Rice Make Non

Researchers from the University of Arkansas have begun researching how Arkansas-grown rice might be used to improve the flavor profiles of non-alcoholic beer, which has been growing in popularity in recent years.

Scott Lafontaine, assistant professor of flavor chemistry for the U of A System Division of Agriculture, said that certain aromatic rice varieties such as ARoma 22, a type of jasmine rice developed by the division of agriculture, could offer unique qualities for non-alcoholic beer.

"We’re going to look at rice in a number of different novel ways," Lafontaine said. "We will still look at it as a fermentable starch source with a neutral taste, aroma and color, but we’ll also look at what aromatic rice varieties such as ARoma 22 does with aromatics and flavor."

Lafontaine's research will be assisted by Bernardo Guimaraes, a chemistry Ph.D. student. The two work in the Food Science Department for the U of A's Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences and the Division of Agriculture's Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station.

According to Lafontaine, the inventiveness of American craft breweries has meant that non-alcoholic beer is quite different from what it was even just a few years ago. It has also been growing rapidly; a September 2022 Bloomberg report said the global non-alcoholic beer market was worth $16 billion in 2021 and it expected it to grow to more than $23 billion by 2025.

Market research has shown that younger generations are drinking less alcohol than previous generations at the same age, leading to a shift among large commercial brewers. One such brewer, which owns Anheuser-Busch and other major beer brands, indicated that it plans to have 20% of its global beer volume be low or non-alcoholic by 2025.

Lafontaine has already experimented with 20 malted rice varieties, some of which have shown interesting results.

"We have some varieties performing as well as a moderate malted barley from a protein, starch quality and gelatinization temperature perspective. Interestingly, with some of the pigmented rice where the hull is still intact, we’re seeing some beautiful red hues in wort post-boil, which is cool from a color perspective," Lafontaine said.

Alcohol can be physically removed from beer using processes like distillation and membrane filtration, but these require specialized equipment that can represent a significant capital investment. Malt rice, by contrast, can be used with special yeasts to create biological processes which do not break simple sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide but nevertheless produces some desired fermentation flavor, resulting in an alcohol-free beer with less of a capital investment.

"One of the things that allows U.S. brewers to continually be at the forefront of the modern brewing industry is that our legal definition of beer is broad when compared to other countries like Germany that have a very specific definition of what beer is," Lafontaine said. "While I think we need to be careful to preserve the essence of beer, there is no doubt that this flexibility has allowed the U.S. craft brewing industry to change and reinvigorate the global brewing industry over the past decades."

U of A System Division of Agriculture photo by Fred Miller READ ALSO: CHAMPIONS OF THE YEAR 2023 TO RAISE FUNDS FOR ALZHEIMER’S ARKANSAS