Does brewery equipment need a cereal cooker?

As we know, the basic ingredients to brew beer is malt, water, hops and yeast. Considering local beer consumption level and to lower beer cost. Some brew masters prefer to add some auxiliary materials for example sorghum, rice etc into beer brewing recipes. Then it is necessary to have an independent cereal cooker.

But we have to control the ratio of rice or sorghum for brewing. We had heard some customers heavily use local ingredients to brew beer for example in Rwanda. They may up to 70% local ingredients which include malted sorghum, unmalted sorghum, bananas and or cassava. They heavily rely on rice husks to make their product work on a normal lauter tun with only 30% barley malt. They have difficulty on lautering.

For beer brewing, the rice or sorghum adding ratio normally at 30% - 40%. For example, a 1000L brewery, it is OK to work with a 500L cereal cooker maximum.

The best cooking temperature for rice at 80℃ - 85℃, the best temperature activation for α-amylase is 72℃ - 75℃, β-amylase is 60℃-65℃.

To get needed enzyme temperature, we can do cooking from cooker directly, and mashing the malt from mash/lauter tun, then transfer the cooked mash to mash/lauter tun for mixing with malt. The cooked mash temperature will drop down and near needed temperature after mixed. It is easy to do after several batches brewing. Many our customers are doing like this.