Yamainu Swaps in Black Rice and Picks Up a Purple Tint

The idea came out of a kitchen, not a brewhouse. Adroit Theory had been cooking Emperor's Forbidden Rice at home, admired its deep purple color, and arrived at the question that produces a fair number of beers: what would this be like in one?

The answer is this week's variant of Yamainu, the brewery's rice lager. The base beer has been a steady performer for Adroit Theory, which describes the response to it as consistently positive and the beer itself as a reliable seller. With fall arriving, the brewery decided to mark the turn with a special version.

Forbidden rice is a black heirloom variety, and the name comes from the tradition that it was once reserved for Chinese emperors. Adroit Theory reports two effects from it: a distinct nutty flavor, and a subtle purplish tint in the finished beer.

Both of those trace to the same place. Forbidden rice keeps its bran layer, where white rice has had it polished off. The bran is what carries the nutty, whole-grain character, and it is also where the anthocyanins sit, the same class of pigment that makes blueberries and purple corn the colors they are. The flavor and the tint are not two separate additions but one ingredient doing two things at once.

That is a notable inversion of why rice usually appears in a lager at all. Rice is the classic neutral adjunct, chosen precisely because it ferments cleanly and adds almost nothing beyond a lighter body and a crisper finish. Selecting a rice with pronounced character is the opposite instinct.

Adroit Theory says the beer still lands where the style should: light, dry, crisp and effervescent. The brewery is reworking the label with a new color palette to match the change, and notes that the name means mountain dog, or Japanese wolf.

Yamainu [Emperor's Forbidden Rice Edition] arrives Friday afternoon in Purcellville, on draft and in cans, with 30 cases packaged.