RiceBran Technologies (RBT) has completed the development of a series of new craft brewing ingredients containing stabilized rice bran to be marketed as ProRyza Brew.
It says the craft beer industry has exploded in recent years with total sales increasing 20% in 2013 to reach more than US$14 billion.
A fast growing subset of that market is home brewing.
According to the American Homebrewers Association, there are more than 1.2 million home brewers producing more than two million barrels of beer annually in the US.
Of those 1.2 million home brewers, approximately 60% have started brewing within the last nine years.
RBT’s formulators have recently partnered with Master Brewers at PicoBrew to replace certain existing grains used in the brewing process with RBT’s new line of ProRyza Brew ingredients.
PicoBrew was established in 2010 and their flagship product, the PicoBrew Zymatic, vastly improves the precision, repeatability, and overall quality of the beer-brewing experience.
It simplifies and automates the process of home brewing allowing anyone to brew craft beer in the comfort of their own kitchen.
The two companies have created a number of great tasting traditional and reduced gluten brewing recipes.
“We are equally excited about the larger market potential for RBT in the craft beer Industry,” says Richard Ray, ProRyza Brew project coordinator at RBT.
“While the larger brewing companies traditionally use rice as a grain source, craft brewers have increasingly been seeking other carbohydrate alternatives for their formulations.”
“Our ProRyza Brew line of ingredients are not only a great carbohydrate source, non-genetically modified organism and gluten free, but the oil in our bran also brings out more hops flavor,” he says.
“This should enable brewmasters to use less hops in their formulations and help reduce overall brewing costs.”
“In addition to targeting the home brewer market with PicoBrew, we plan to aggressively market the benefits of our ProRyza Brew line of ingredients to small, medium and large craft brewers across the US in 2015 as we seek to establish a significant presence in the Craft Beer industry in the years to come,” adds Mark McKnight, SVP of sales and marketing at RBT.
