You are obviously an educated and intelligent person to be curious about brewing such a great beer. Yes it is difficult to brew but do not let that stop you from conducting your own trial brews.
You must know that the rice needs to be milled very small/fine and gelatinized in a cereal cooker prior to being added to the main mash. This is because rice does not contain amylytic enzymes and its strach needs to be made ready or exposed to the enzymes of the mash.
When it somes to beechwood aging this is for yeast-wort contact foe a more complete fermentation. You can accomplish this by circulating (agitating) your fermenting wort. The beechwood chips serve only for this fermentation purpose and contributes no flavor. It is an old practice amny brewers employed in days gone by and serve AB through marketing. It is labor and cost intensive to employ this method of yeast-aiding attenuation.
You also need to use good German hops as Ab does with their beer. They use nothing but the highest quality of ingredients available on the private and commercial markets. Clone style yeast(s) are available also online or from most any brew shop.
The Weatherman does pick and choose his words carefully, and knows very little of the reasons for using rice in beer.
If the Weatherman can state his sources for the use of rice being for cost only it would lend cretance to his diatribe? But of course he cannot because it is deeper than that.
I can easily speak on the behalf of DEA of anyone that is interested in being educated on beer for that matter. Today, I give a lesson to Weatherman. Rice is not a cheap ingredient for beer. Yes it like barley of any commodity has a fluctuating price and at any given time it may be cheaper or more costly than another given a certain set of circumstances. But rice/corm/wheat/ oats (just choose any) all have particular contribution to the product that they are utilized in. Rice indeed contributes flavors very light and subtle flavors indeed.
DEA is correct that the German brewers in the USA did incorporate rice in the beers they brewed in the US. Perhaps if one was to read more carefully and stop interjecting into others words they could learn something.
1. Rice in American Pilsner is/was indeed a German brewer inception-fact!
2. American-Pilsner is a world recognized beer style and has won many awards as well. It is anti-Ameirican (#@$?) that are in fear of this becoming, as it has, more popular in their countries.
3. What a laugh. To hear/read such things from someone which has never worked in the beer industry and it shows. The above guy (s) speak with (I can not say) but a very large deficit on both beer knowledge and especially in the skills department of brewers. Yes indeed the automation in the larger segment lends to processing large mass flows to aid the brewer of which will become beer. But in a smaller scale, craft brewers utilize the same. LMAO It goes beyond that. It goes into the knowledge of how to set parameters with the ingredients specifications and to adjust on the spot during the actual brewing. These are the knowledge-based skills the big brewers have over the little boys by far. Do the craft brewers do a good job? Yes they do. But they do not compare easily to those skills of the Anheuser Busch, Heinekens, SAB's of the world Just a fact no big deal really..
" I find it curious that anyone can come down on an ale for containing wheat while praising Bud for using rice. Chaque un a son gout."
Why? Others do the same with many other adjunct ingredients.
Well I FIND it curious anyone can come down on Bud when brewing Miller Lite. Or that same person can condemn one rice beer over another. Chaque un a son gout.
Wheat is an adjunct grain to the brewer. But should any grain be considered adjunct?
Wheat was the "rice" of its day in Germany. It took some political wrangling to get its written into the German and "German only" food-beers laws. So many people overlook the the foolish decisions brewers make today in brewing beer with strange and unusual ingredients. [coffee, cocoa, spices, fruits (banana, grapes, others), millet, Sorghum, and many many others.] Is it a throw-back to earlier breweing days where freedom abounded for the brewer? Yes. Is it now that brewers today understand health and safety issues of brewing a food product? Yes. But certain people just can not and will not educate themselves on beer and beer/brewing history. The same people are just to entrenched into outdated and limited mind sets about anything especailly beer.
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Grains#Other_Grains