Substituting Rice For Malt

• Beer Manufacture

Lion Brewery, Sri Lanka’s largest beer maker, has successfully substituted the more expensive imported malt with locally produced paddy/rice grain in its beer brewing operation, it’s alleged.
“There is however no depreciation in the quality of the beer thus produced,” a company source told this reporter, adding that this process had its beginnings four years ago, originally as a CSR project. “It started with 200 farmers in Galenbidunuwewa, but it now encapsulates 1,000; he said.
Other than water, all the other ingredients that go to make beer, such as malt, hops and yeast have to be imported, the source said. “And with the depreciated exchange rate, if we didn’t find the local alternative rice, the price of beer would have had shot up. We are able to keep prices stable because of this substitute,” he said.
The source said that as a result of this alternative, they have been able to reduce their malt intake in the beer brewing process from 100% to 30%, with the balance 70% being substituted with rice.  The company as a result has been able to make a Rs. 800 million annual saving. The firm produces some one million dozens of 600 millilitre capacity bottles of beer monthly from its local operations, of which one dozen is priced at Rs. 1,500. The company recently exited from its loss making beer investment in India.
“The process requires a million kilos of paddy per month, bought at the guaranteed price of Rs. 28.50 a kg.”He further said that the Yala drought which badly affected cultivation was a blessing in disguise to the farmer.
“Otherwise paddy prices would have had gone down to Rs. 11 a kg.,” he claimed.
The source further said that due to better agriculture practices introduced by the company, yields have had increased from 75 bushels to 185 bushels per acre.
But it’s difficult to change the mindset of the farmer, he said. For instance if an acre of paddy land is reduced to just three plots, unlike the several that is currently practised here, that would release more land for paddy cultivation, he said.
The source further said that they buy their required paddy from about 1,000 acres of land cultivated with this crop in Galenbidunuwewa.
The company is also looking at obtaining 3,000 acres of abandoned and state owned paddy land from a total acreage of 11,000 acres in Kantalai for a farmer training programme.
Already 1,400 acres of this land belonging to the Mahaweli has been released to a poultry farm operator for maize cultivation which has not quite got off the ground, the source alleged.
Of the 3,000 acres which the company is seeking, they have to date been offered only a mere 50 acres.Lion Brewery is controlled by the Selvanathan brothers, Mano and Hari, of Carson Cumberbatch fame.