Summer approaches, the best time for drinking thirst-quenching lagers—cold, crisp, and slightly prickly on the palate. My mouth waters just thinking about how much I enjoy a refreshing lager on a warm day—and in the past few years for me, quite often, that has meant rice lager.
For me, these beers also have a strong association with food. We often see rice-based lagers on the menus of our favorite local sushi joints; you’re probably familiar with some of the big-name Japanese brands such as Asahi, Kirin, and Sapporo, all known for their clean, super-crisp profile and characteristically dry finish. Light in body with a relatively neutral character, these beers complement a variety of flavorful foods without weighing you down with heavy alcohol or resinous hops. They’re wonderful with spicy dishes and barbecue, for example, and they work as effortless palate-cleansers for just about any type of fatty or fried food—just the thing to serve at your summer cookouts.
Obviously, using rice as a beer ingredient isn’t limited to those big Japanese brands. Budweiser is famous for including it (though it lacks the dryness of an Asahi-type beer), and plenty of American craft brewers have released their own interpretations. Notably, it’s become a key ingredient in “cold IPAs,” which are fermented at relatively warm temperatures by lager yeast but get an extra-crisp structure from the use of rice as an adjunct.