BMC rice source

i think they grow a lot themselves but. let's see/

 

According to the EPA:

"U.S. rice production accounts for just under 2% of the world's total, but this country is the second leading rice exporter with 10% of the world market.

About 50 - 60% of the rice consumed in the U.S. is for direct food use; another 18% goes into processed foods, 10-12 percent goes into pet food, and most of the rest (about 10 percent) goes into beer production."

Sounds to me as though it's homegrown.

 

For the breweries in the US most all of it is grown in the US. Bud uses Sushi grade rice which is often more expensive than barley.

 

Uncle Ben

 

I could be wrong, but I believed they stopped using sushi grade, and switched to a cheaper rice like a year or two ago.

 

Sacramento and the Louisiana Valley.

 

i thought it lost those sushi rice nuances....

 

So what do you think of small breweries that use imported malts ( Victory uses a lot of Bamberg malt from Germany, and Maris Otter from the UK is a staple in the craft world) or imported hops (some of the craft beers use AU, NZ, or Europe)

This says no to the rice coming from China or Indonesia. Of course in a bad crop year they will source it where they can.
http://www.sagevfoods.com/MainPages/Rice101/Production.htm

 

this is credible. these are major producing regions.... but there must be more.

 

There are a lot of rice fields in the Mississippi delta, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Missouri along with CA and LA.

 

Per their site they are the largest buyer of rice in the US. http://anheuser-busch.com/index.php...-quality/ingredients-and-brewmaster-tastings/

 

Now you mention it I do recall there was a thread on here about that. Seems that "cheaper" meant they no longer insisted on the grains of rice being whole. (Does that affect the grade of rice? Probably.).

The consensus of the home brewing crowd seemed to be that that was a difference in the appearance in the rice that made no difference in the brewing or the end result. So yeah they seem to have quit insisting on having something they were paying for that wasn't contributing to the beer and they do pay less for the rice they are using. Thanks for the reminder.

 

According to the book Travels with Barley by Ken Wells AB consumes 15% of all domestic rice.

 

It's rice syrup... if that helps.

 

True. My uncle is a farmer in Southeast Missouri and rice is the majority crop there

 

Others have claimed that here on the forums, but AB (pre-InBev) had always claimed they bought whole rice, and in that hatchet job on ABInBev in Businessweek awhile back, the claim was only that they had started buying broken rice. No mention of rice syrup, which would mean the retirement of cereal cookers in the AB plants and pretty easy to verify.

 

For whatever it's worth, on the tour I took in St Lou in the 1990s we were shown the cereal cookers and whole rice. That could have changed, but I doubt it- their whole mantra down there was "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and using syrup seems too much of a major change.

I wonder what the supposed bad deal with broken rice is- does that mean the more surface area is exposed to air and therefor susceptible to oxidation?

 

It's possible... hard to know what goes on behind the vault these days I'd say.