Black Rice
Bellwoods Brewery

473 mL can from the brewery; dated Mar 17 2026 and served slightly chilled.

Pours a dark chestnut brown colour - it looks opaque at a glance, but holding it up to a bright light reveals its total clarity, as well as some lovely crimson red highlights. One finger of beige-coloured head sits atop, fizzling away within two or three minutes, tops; a thin collar and a few wisps on the surface are the only remains. Subtlety is the name of the game on the nose - it has a bready, toasty quality with suggestions of tobacco, very weak coffee and rice. For the style, it's pretty interesting.

It's pretty tasty, and fairly dry for a dark lager (though maybe not for a rice lager). Low-key flavours of toasted bread, cocoa, bread crusts and wheat/rice sweetness carry on throughout the sip, which concludes with a mildly grainy note that fades into a dry aftertaste. Light in body, with aggressive carbonation that prickles the palate continuously. Crisp and easy drinking - tossing back a few of these in a sitting would be easy-peasy.

Final Grade: 3.89, a B+. Black Rice is literally the first "black rice" lager I've ever come across, so I don't really have much of a yardstick to use for comparison here. I will say that this is one of the better rice lagers I've had so far - certainly top 3 (which might sound impressive, except I've only reviewed 8 of them in 20 years). I also think it's much better than many of the Euro dark lagers you can find around here, which are the only ostensibly similar alternatives that I can come up with. Less flashy than many Bellwoods brews, but the quality is still there - it's worth trying for yourself at least once.