NARRATOR: You can fry it
up, eat it for breakfast, or insulate your house with it. From the rice paddies of
Indonesia to the fertile fields of California, it's the
workhorse of the grains. Thousands of varieties
and infinite dishes. BEAU TIMKIN: Rice is
a wonderful invention. NARRATOR: And guess who's
the largest consumer of rice in the US? Eat it, write on it,
wear it, live in it. Or turn it into something
that can save millions from starvation. It's the world's most versatile
grain, rice on Modern Marvels. [theme music] Rice is the world's food. People get more calories from
rice than from anything else. There are over 80,000 varieties. DAVID SELIG: This
is a brown rice. It's a pretty
bulbous little grain. This is a very popular
rice, medium grain, white. The reason it's white is
it doesn't have the hull. Black Thai rice. It's got an outer skin, and
then the inside is tender. And it kind of cracks. You snap in your teeth. NARRATOR: The Rice
restaurant in New York City showcases the diversity
of this amazing grain. Its international
menu pays homage to rice's worldwide reach. DAVID SELIG: Jamaican
spiced jerk wings. This is Korea through a bulgogi,
a maki with bulgogi sauce. UNNAMED MALE PATRON: It
really opened my eyes up to the variety of rice
that exists in the world. DAVID SELIG: Pad thai is
a rice noodle-based staple dish for Thailand. There's a sauce
that they put in it. And they mix it all
together with the meatballs. And it makes it really tasty. The flavor Is really good. It's the garlic. NARRATOR: It's the
grain of 100,000 dishes. It was first cultivated
10,000 years ago in China. And today, it's the most
important grain in the world. Half of humanity eats it for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner. J. NEIL RUTGER: Most
of the world's rice is in Asia, 90% of it. Here in the US, our
consumption is rather modest, about 25 pounds per
person per year. But there are a lot
of places in Asia where people are consuming
200 pounds per year. NARRATOR: It's cultivated
on every continent, except Antarctica, on farms
from small to mammoth, from subsistence farmers
feeding their families to industrial farmers shipping
product around the world. In Asia, the vast majority of
their 200 million rice farms still use the centuries
old techniques. J. NEIL RUTGER: The way
the US rice industry is competitive is by highly
mechanizing but the crop. It takes about 10
man hours per acre to grow a rice crop
here in the US. So most places in Asia is taking
200 and 300 man hours per acre. And labor is going to be
cheap for that to work. NARRATOR: The majority
of the world's rice is planted by hand. But in the United
States, the seed is usually spread by airplane. The most popular rice brand
in America is Uncle Ben's. At their production facility
in Greenville, Mississippi, they churn out a million
pounds of packaged rice every 24 hours. SHERRY DAY: That's enough to
feed a city the size of New York, everyone for a day. NARRATOR: All to be served
up in less than 10 minutes of convenient cooking time. How does rice get
from this to this? The rice comes in to Uncle
Ben's fresh off the field, husks and all. It's stored in rough rice
silos until they need it for production. From the silos, it goes
straight into the steamer to be parboiled. MIKE MCCAIN: The steamer
running here behind me is running about
30 times an hour. It's operating at a temperature
of about 230 to 240 degrees Fahrenheit. NARRATOR: Parboiling simply
means partially boiled. But the effect on the rice
grain is much more complicated than it sounds. The rice grains
enter the steamer with their inedible
husks still on. The steaming forces B
vitamins and minerals from the outer layers
into the starchy center. Later, the husk will be removed
and the bran layer milled off. The parboiling results in
a milled white rice grain, with close to the
same nutritional value as a whole grain brown rice. Back to the parboiling,
the rice will go through a multilayered
drying process. Six hours later, it's
ready for the mill where first the husk and then
the bran layer are removed. This is the final
step of milling. What you're going to see here
is the bran actually being removed from the rice. That's the bran falling off. So you're really fine tuning
your milling at this point. NARRATOR: After milling,
they have to make sure that all the rice grains are
uniform for the best quality product. So every one of them has to
pass through a scan master. This machine's job is to
find the discolored grains. Each grain flies
individually by a camera. And a beam of light bounced off
the grain delivers color data to a computer. Any deviation from the
standard triggers swift action. A puff of air knocks the
flawed grain from the plow. It all happens in
a split second. 32,000 pounds of rice an
hour, 11,734,000,000 million individual grains
evaluated every minute. But the quality control
needs quality control. Samples of rice from the scan
master go to Kenny Winters to be evaluated. KENNY WINTERS: When the
rice goes through my eyes, I'm saying that is
ready for consumption. So the last pair of
eyes, I'm the last one to see this rice before
it goes into your pudding. NARRATOR: If Kenny sees too many
grains that don't measure up, he'll adjust the scan master's
sensitivity to knock out more imperfect grains. The end result should look
like this, not like this. Sifters remove any last bits
of debris or broken grains. Then it's moved to
the finished rice bin to wait for the next step. MIKE MCCAIN: In this room,
we have six packaging lines. This particular line right here
is making a hole in the bag by product. Today, it's a brown rice. NARRATOR: The difference between
brown rice and white rice is simply whether or not
the bran layer is milled on. Usually, regular white rice
is much less nutritious than brown rice. But with the parboiling
process, the White rice is made nearly as
nutritious as the brown. [curious music] Before the finished product
goes out in the shipping pallets, and production run
has to satisfy the palates of the sensory panel. Make sure it's not too
salty, moisture level is right. Make sure the taste is proper. Very good. NARRATOR: That's how they
make it perfect every time. But it's also
perfect for something else other than eating. VIVIANNE ROBINSON:
Uncle Ben's is the best. I have tried many different
kinds throughout the years, the last 16 years. But nothing is as
good as Uncle Ben's. It doesn't crack
and lasts forever. NARRATOR: Vivian Robinson
writes on Uncle Ben's rice. For a donation, she will write
your name on a single grain. VIVIANNE ROBINSON: We're at
Venice Beach, the best place on Earth, paradise
in my opinion. The whole world comes down here. So you can't beat Venice. You get your name
on a grain of rice. It goes on a necklace, key
chain, cell phone charm, bracelet. Takes a lot of patience
and steady hand. I never drink coffee,
try not to shake it all. Even though Venice Beach
has a lot of distractions, I'm kind of used to it. It can be about
usually 12 letters. One guy asked me, can
you write Rumpelstiltskin on a grain of rice? So I said sure. Sure enough, 14 letters,
I got it on there. Sometimes, I amaze myself
what I can do with it. NARRATOR: She draws
pictures on request or will gladly write in Korean
or any language you want. VIVIANNE ROBINSON:
That's Chinese. Oh, really?
Really? It's so small. VIVIANNE ROBINSON:
16 years ago when I was on vacation in Portugal,
I met a guy from India who told me-- I couldn't believe
he was doing it. And he told me, oh, you
should do this in America, they'll love it. I go, well, seems like
an odd thing to do, but let me give it a try. So 16 years later,
I'm still doing it. NARRATOR: She puts the grains
in little glass tubes filled with oil to preserve the
grain and magnify it. VIVIANNE ROBINSON: Now, I'm
going to seal it and put it on a necklace for you. That's how I write on rice. Rice is a grass
like corn and wheat. But it's much more important. It feeds more people. It was first cultivated
10,000 years ago on the banks of the Yangtze River. And since then, humans have
bred it into 80,000 varieties and spread it all
over the world. When it's soaked in vinegar,
the Japanese call it sushi. Sushi has roots 1,700 years old. But at first, it didn't
look anything like this. The rice was just
a preservative. Rice was packed around raw fish. And the fermenting grain would
preserve the fish for months. Then the rice was thrown away. Today, sushi is popular
in America, too. Virtually all the sushi rice in
the US is grown in California. This 3,000 acre farm in
the Sacramento Valley grows premium
quality sushi rice. The part we eat is the white,
starchy center of the seed. If the nutrient rich
bran layer is still on, it's called brown rice. It's all encased in
the tough outer husk. This rice isn't ready to harvest
yet, but it will be soon. It's time to prep the fields. The rice is in several inches
of standing water, which would make it hard
for the harvesters. So first, they have
to drain the fields. For that, they need a
unique piece of equipment-- the Daizig. NICOLE VAN VLECK: We need to
get some increased drainage of those fields. Otherwise, it would
take far too long to try to get the
field to drain. NARRATOR: The Daizig
has a very special task for its heavy, sharp wheels. They'll cut through
the dirt levees that hold the water on the field. When the Daizig gets to one
of the levees that encircle a field, it slices
right through it. The wheels cut deep furrows
that lead the water off. Four to six inches of water
has been on this field since it was planted. It may seem like a lot, but 40%
of it goes back into the system through surface or groundwater. The burrows made by the
Daizig lead the water to the network of drains. [machinery rumbling] NICOLE VAN VLECK: So it'll drain
out, and so there's nothing. It'll just become mud and
then eventually dry up so that it's dry enough for
the harvester to get in. NARRATOR: With the
water off the field, the rice is more vulnerable. Now, it's a waiting game. NICOLE VAN VLECK: A
bit of bad weather can really make or break you. So you're anxious. We're all anxious to get this
rice cut and in the barn, so to speak, or in our rice
drying and storage facility before bad weather hits it. NARRATOR: In 30 days, the
rice will be dried out. Harvesting will
have to happen soon. The rice is five months old now
and at the peak of ripeness. The harvesters are ready to go. Five at once take on
this 150 acre field. GABRIEL DAVID: I
think in a good day, I can cut 25 to 40 acres a day. NARRATOR: 400 real teeth comb
the stalks across the cutters. This variety has to be cut close
to the ground, which is more challenging for the harvesters. NICOLE VAN VLECK:
It's hard to harvest. It can be lying down. It'll fall down flat or medium
grain will stay standing. And it is a lower
yielding product. And so we do have to achieve
a higher price to make it all work at the end of the day. [machinery rumbling] NARRATOR: The plants fall onto
a conveyor that carries them inside the body
of the harvester. Once inside, the crop is
carried to the chamber, which shakes the rice grains
loose of the stalks. The grains fall through multiple
sieves into a collecting tank. An auger spirals the grain
up into the holding tank. Meanwhile, high volume
air blows the chaff away from the grain toward
the back of the machine where it is ejected. A fan spreads it evenly. After harvesting, the field
will be flooded again. And this straw will
rot over the winter, making a rich fertilizer
for next year's crop. JOSH SHEPPARD: This
is where we just get to witness the results
of all the hard work. Machine has a tremendous
amount of instrumentation and a very highly technical
piece of equipment. You know, auto
steering is a feature that can be added to a combine
where this thing will drive itself. And it'll make perfectly
straight passes. If I had that feature
in here, I don't really know what I would do. I kind of get a little
bit of enjoyment out of having to
drive the machine. That feature is something
I've never really desired. [machine rumbling] NARRATOR: The holding tank
pulls up in about 30 minutes. Bank out wagons pulled up
alongside to collect the grain and take it back to the NICOLE VAN VLECK: People
all over the world eat rice. And the more and more efficient
we can be, the more important it is because as you know,
it's to grow more farmland throughout the world. Really, we're best if we can
be more efficient on each and every acre that we have
so we can produce more rice to help feed the world. It feeds millions, but
it's also a great snack. It's rice. Rice krispie treats, rice cakes,
and a cereal that talks to you. Snap, crackle
pop rice krispies. NARRATOR: Food
scientists have actually studied white rice krispies
make their characteristic sound. The answer is in the
structure of each krispie. Sugar and rice powder are heated
to such a high temperature that the sugar and starch bond
into a glass-like substance. As they expand,
air bubbles form. The dried krispies are
loaded with big air pockets with super thin walls. When milk is poured on,
it fills the cavities and squeezes the air. The walls shatter like glass. Snap, crackle, pop. Pop Rocks are the only other
food that behaves like this. Here's another American
favorite, Quaker. They make more than oats. The company has
used the Quaker Man as its logo since 1877, but not
due to any Quaker connection. The founder just read about
them in the encyclopedia. To make their puffed rice cake,
they start with whole grain brown rice. They go through 50 of
these super sacks a day, a total of 100,000
pounds of rice. The first hopper
starts the process of getting the rice puff-ready. RICK ALLIO: We're
adding steam and water to make sure we get the
right moisture on the grain. And then from here, we're going
to take the product once it's right, and we're going to
send it into our popping area where we're going to
actually pop the product. NARRATOR: That part of the
process is a trade secret. They wouldn't let us
film the equipment. But we know it works
something like this. The process is a
little different from how popcorn is popped. Popping corn has a
tougher bran layer that keeps the grain under
pressure until the pressure gets too great. But popping rice
is more difficult. A precise quantity
of raw, wet rice goes into cake-shaped molds. The mold keeps the grain under
pressure while it's heated. The water inside the grain
starts to turn into steam and expand. After about 10 seconds, the mold
releases the pressure suddenly and the grains puff out. The shape of the dish packs
the puffs tightly together. The whole process only
takes about 15 seconds. They come out of the
popper piping hot. Right now, they're
nothing but rice. Flavorings would
impede the pop So they have to be sprayed on later. We make about 2,000
rice cakes a minute, about 3 million
rice cakes a day. [upbeat music] NARRATOR: The rice
cakes are spread out. They have to be in a single
layer for the flavorings to be sprayed on the surface. Then they are baked to
reduce the moisture level and add texture. Next, it's on to
quality control. The cakes whizz by a
laser and a camera, which registers their position. If the shape is wrong,
then less than a second later when it reaches
this gap, a nozzle has moved into position
for interception. A blast of compressed air
knocks it out of the lineup. Rice cakes may be a
recent snack food, but they have long
historical roots. Every culture that
traditionally eats rice has something
called a rice cake. The Indian idli, the Filipino
puto, the Japanese mochi, the Indonesian ketupat,
the Chinese nian gao are just a few examples. For the 3 billion people that
eat rice three times a day, the rice cake is just
the natural thing to do. Quaker rice cakes are made with
whole grain brown rice, which means the bran layer
isn't milled off. But in the US, most of the
market for rice is white rice. Almost any variety can be
milled down to make white rice. In California's Rice
Valley, a shipment of grain fresh off the field is
arriving at the farmer's rice cooperative where the grain
will be milled and cleaned. Most of it comes in as
paddy rice, the whole seed with the inedible husk still on. The rice is deposited
into the pit from the truck. It then goes to our
storage facility. Prior to going
into the silos, it goes through a rough
cleaning process. It is cleaned of straw and
other large pieces of material. The final part of
our cleaning process is our destoning process. That's where the rice
runs across the destoner into a fluidized bed. NARRATOR: On the fluidized
bed, air blows the grains away from the heavier pebbles,
which get carried out the back. California farms produce
more than 4 billion pounds of rice a year. And about a quarter of
it comes through here. Basically, it's a lot of rice. If we combine both
of our two mills, we have the largest
processing facility in the US. NARRATOR: Spiral conveyors
move the rice through tubes to the next step, the huller. The inedible husk is
removed by passing it through spinning cylinders. GARY SCHMIDT: The rice falls
between the rubber rolls and the husk is sheared off. NARRATOR: The husks get used
for everything from insulation to a fuel source
to pillow stuffing. Most of their customers
want white rice. So next, it goes to milling. They process 1,200 tons of
paddy rice a day, 48 truckloads. GARY SCHMIDT: We've filled
about-- fill one of these silos in a day. NARRATOR: Next door,
packaging from two-pound bags to railroad cars. Today, they're packing
20-pound bags of white rice. White rice will store much
longer than brown rice. But most of the nutrients were
removed with the bran later. If the customer wants it
enriched with B vitamins and iron, the mill
can do that, too. It's sprayed on
the grain surface. That's why they say
not to wash white rice. The water will rinse
off the nutrients. GARY SCHMIDT: It goes
through a check layer to make sure the right
amount of rice is in the bag. It goes through a metal detector
to make sure there are no metal contaminants in the bag. Then it moves to our palletizer. NARRATOR: The palletizer
can pack a pallet in five minutes flat and
never needs a coffee break. About half the rice is sold
on the international market. Wrap it up, ship it out. Their domestic customers are
mostly food manufacturers who will turn plain rice in
everything from side dishes to meals to snacks for
the American consumer. Rice is unique among
the major grains. Most of it gets eaten
as a cooked grain. But we also ground
it into flour. It even gets fermented
into alcohol like sake. The word saki doesn't exist. Everything is said
S-A-K-I. It's not. It's actually sake. And I tell people to just
kind of slur your words, sake. So the more you
drink, the better you are pronouncing sake. NARRATOR: The word actually
means any alcoholic drink. What we call sake, the
Japanese call nihonshu. But whatever you call it,
it's an ancient beverage on a modern course. Beau Timkin opened the first US
store totally devoted to sake. He loves sake. But in the beginning,
he had much to learn. BEAU TIMKIN: In my progression
of understanding and trying to understand, I
had to knock down all these pegs of everything
that I thought sake was. I thought it was a
distilled beverage. It's not. I thought you had
to drink it hot. You don't. I thought you had to drink
it out of little shot cups. You don't. I thought you had to slug
it like, you know, booze. You don't. I thought you could
only eat sushi with it. There are all these
misconceptions. I thought, geez, I can't be the
only guy that just doesn't get it. NARRATOR: His store sells
more than 150 brands of sake, even one with real gold in it. From $150 a bottle down to six. It's a thousand-year old
beverage steeped in tradition. But sake brewers are trying to
attract the younger generation as well. BEAU TIMKIN: So these are
not your grandfather's sakes. NARRATOR: Sparkling sakes,
fruit flavored sakes, unfiltered sakes,
low alcohol sakes. Sake has come a long way. It's been brewed in Japan
for more than 1,800 years. At its core, it's simple. BEAU TIMKIN: You can
take steamed rice, put it in your mouth, chew
it up, spit it in a bucket. The enzymes in your mouth would
break that long chain starch molecule into a glucose. And then you do the lovely thing
of taking that spit and spit it in the bucket. In the open air,
yeast would propagate. And you would basically
have a fermented beverage. NARRATOR: Sake's earliest
brewers would probably rice farmers. But production was
soon taken over by the Shinto monks who usually
controlled the village water supply. It's been closely tied to
religion and ritual ever since. DEWEY WEDDINGTON: Some very,
very happy people making sake, we can understand why. Welcome to SakeOne. This is the only
American-operated sake brewery, or we call it kura,
here in the US. There are a couple
other breweries, but we're the only Americans
who have approached it at this level of brewing sake. Our entire focus here is making
premium sake here in Oregon. We established the brewery
here in Forrest Grove for one key reason. And that is the water that
flows off the mountains here. It's a lot easier to
get our water here than truck it around. Water is critical for the
low iron and manganese that we're seeking that
aid in the brewing process. NARRATOR: If you'd rather skip
the spitting in a bucket part, here's a quick tutorial
on sake making. Get some rice, mill the grain
down to the starch rib center, soak it, grow mold on it to
break the starch molecules down into simple sugars. Feed that to some yeast, which
will probably excrete alcohol. And there you have it, sake. But the art is in the details. BEAU TIMKIN: Sake is the
industry of 10,000 methods. That's the coined term. Everybody has their
style of making sake. These guys are fine tuning,
year in and year out. MIKE ALEXANDER: Our mill
is full, 4,000 pounds. It'll take about 17 to 18 hours
to fully mill down to 58%. NARRATOR: The amount of bran
that that's milled off the rice grain is one of the main factors
in the quality of the resulting sake. MIKE ALEXANDER: So this
is first, the first start of the mill right
here at 90% mill. And then after our
18 hours, we have these little golden nuggets. How small and how
perfect they are. That's our moneymaker. NARRATOR: Now, for
the money laundering. The rice goes through a bath to
remove the fine coating of rice flour left by the milling. A vacuum tube carries
it up to a soak tank. The water is drained off. Then down it goes and up
again to a vat to steam. The steam will soften the rice
and kill any wild bacteria or molds. GREG LORENZ: Right now,
that rice is 180 degrees. And it will kill the mold spore. So he's now tipping the rice
down into a hopper, which is going to go down into a
conveyor belt, which actually has a drawdown fan, which will
cool the rice as it goes up the belt. There's the mold
spores right here coming up. NARRATOR: A simple fan blows a
cloud of their proprietary mold spore onto the cooled rice. Now it's called koji. GREG LORENZ: This
is rice and mold. Up the conveyor belt. NARRATOR: A conveyor belt
takes it to the first koji room where the mold will
have a day to germinate. The room must be as
clean as possible so only the right mold grows. The cedar paneling has
natural antibiotic properties to reduce invasive molds,
an ancient technique. After 24 hours, the
mold spore has sprouted and the rice is moved
to the growing table. The koji mold will turn the
rice into food for yeast. The yeast begins its feast. These vats will
ferment for 18 days. It will be filtered,
bottled, and shipped out. Or you can have a taste
of it fresh right on site. And you don't need a
little ceramic cup. DEWEY WEDDINGTON: There
are specialty glassware now for sake. But we just grab a really
nice white wine glass, and that's a perfect
place to start off with. NARRATOR: Rice is
delicious to drink, but it has a serious
side as well. Although it likes
to grow and water, many countries
that depend on rice sometimes get too much water. Seasonal floods can
devastate a rice field. PAMELA RONALD: Typically, rice
variety will survive underwater maybe three days. And if the flood lasts
any longer, it will die. NARRATOR: If their leaves
are covered too long, the plant essentially drowns. In Bangladesh and India alone,
4 million tons of rice a year are lost to flooding, enough
to feed 30 million people. Pamela Ronald wanted to help
get those 30 million fed. 15 years ago, her team set out
to make a variety of rice that could stand up to
high flood water. They already knew of one
unpopular variety that could. PAMELA RONALD: Unlike virtually
all of the varieties of rice, which die after three
days of submergence, this particular
variety can withstand two weeks of submergence. NARRATOR: But it tasted
terrible and had a low yield. Farmers didn't want it. Pam's team needed to
find the gene that gave that unpopular
variety its unique ability to withstand flooding. PAMELA RONALD: The gene
isolation took about 10 years. We were able to pinpoint one
region of the chromosome that had a very interesting gene. NARRATOR: But was
it the right one? To find out, they took the
gene from the unpopular variety and stuck it into a bacterium
that normally infects rice. Then they put the
bacterium into the seeds of a different,
tastier rice variety. The bacterium acts
like a shuttle service. It spliced its DNA with a
copy of the important gene into the DNA of the
tasty rice seeds. Then they planted the seeds. PAMELA RONALD: So the new
varieties behaved just like the old varieties. Except when they were flooded,
they would survive instead of die. They NARRATOR: Had found
the waterproof gene. But that's only half the battle. Now to get it into a plant
the farmers would accept and people would eat. And often, genetically
modified varieties are viewed with suspicion
around the world. Pam passed her
information about the gene to a research
facility in Indonesia. They used Pam's information
to breed a new variety using traditional
cross-fertilization methods. In the end, they produced a new
rice plant with a waterproof ability without using genetic
engineering, a good tasting plant that everybody
could accept. PAMELA RONALD: The submergence
tolerance variety can survive underwater for up to 17 days. And that's usually sufficient
for most flood conditions. NARRATOR: News of the
new rice is spreading in India and Indonesia
where losses due to flooding can be devastating. PAMELA RONALD: So if all
those farms were growing submergence
tolerance rice, you'd be able to feed 30
million more people. The US is a big
exporter of rice. But most of it stays right here. The single largest rice buyer
in America is Anheuser-Busch. About 10% of US
rice goes into beer. It's a very American
style of brewing and it makes the
beer lighter tasting. The Brewery in
Placentia, California is one of the few so-called
craft brewers that uses rice in a beer recipe. Craft brewers, by definition,
brew less than two million barrels a year. Anheuser-Busch cranked
out about 160 million. TYLER KING: Rice is started
being used by the big breweries because it was
cheap, easy to get, and it added the alcohol content
while keeping the beer light. NARRATOR: Virtually every beer
has these core ingredients-- water, barley, hops, and yeast. The Brewery adds to more for
their distinctive Belgian ale, Thai basil and rice. Cheers. So many people are down
on it just because a macro is brewed with it. But it's really a
great ingredient. NARRATOR: It all starts with
barley milled to just slightly crush the grain. JAY GOODWIN: Mix
that with hot water. That's what going to be
converted starch into sugar. NARRATOR: That plus the rice,
which goes in next, gelatinized to make the starch
easily accessible. TYLER KING: So
what we're doing is we're adding a lot
more starch to the mash so the enzymes in the mash can
convert it into sugar, which equals a higher
alcohol beer for us. NARRATOR: The two
grains go together into a big vat of hot water. The heat breaks the starch
molecule into simple sugars. Then, a second rinse. JAY GOODWIN: What's
happening right now is what's called sparging. And it's basically a hot water
rinse of the grain to extract every last sugar we can. NARRATOR: The resulting liquid
looks sort of like beer. JAY GOODWIN: So you
can see kind of what we're working with right here. So at this point,
it's just sweet water, sugar from the grain and water. It's called wort. No alcohol, but the sugar
that's in this right now is going to end up being
alcohol when the yeast consumes it in the fermenter. Pretty much the
lighter, the better. It's also pretty clear,
if I do say so myself. NARRATOR: The barley and the
rice have done their job. DOUG CONSTANTINER: Right
now in the process, we are getting rid of what's
called the spent grain. It's the grain that we've
already used, extracted all the sugar we can from it. It still has some
sugar left in it, probably about anywhere from 10%
to 30%, depending on the grain. So we have a farmer who
come picks it up for free, and he gives it to his cattle. We don't have to
pay for disposal. He doesn't have to pay for food. It's a great relationship. NARRATOR: The sugar water, wort,
heads to another vat for more boiling. It still has some solids in it. And it's about to get more,
the Thai basil and the hops. JAY GOODWIN: Next up, we're
going to transfer it over to the whirlpool, which
are going to separate the solids and the
liquids before we knock it out to our fermenters. NARRATOR: The fermentation
will take about two weeks. The Brewery is going against
the grain, brewing with rice for a Belgian style beer
with an Asian twist. TYLER KING: Flavors
we've noticed from using rice are
coconut, tropical, maybe a slight pineapple. I try not to have any
prejudices about any sort of ingredient. I think all, you know,
almost anything-- well, not everything. But most things could
taste pretty good in beer as long as it has some
sort of fermentability. NARRATOR: We've seen rice as
the most versatile of grains. And that's just a small
portion of the plant. What happens to the rest of it? Rice straw. Well for one thing, you can
build a house with it even if you're not a little pig. BRUCE ROMINGER: We
get those jokes. I hope the big bad wolf doesn't
come around and blow it away. Other people are what? How did you do that? You know, they've never
heard of the whole concept. NARRATOR: Bruce
and Robin Rominger did most of the work themselves
to build their rice house. BRUCE ROMINGER: This is the
kind of bale we use right here, produced only seven
miles from here. After harvest, there's a
lot of straw residue left in the California rice field. NARRATOR: They start with
the wood frame construction. Then, they bring in the bales. BRUCE ROMINGER: And you
stack them like LEGOs. NARRATOR: The bales filled all
the spaces between the studs. They aren't used for support. It's basically insulation. Really, really good insulation. They used over 200
bales to build three out of the four exterior walls for
their 3,000 square foot home. BRUCE ROMINGER: Well, it's
really is a straw house. And then the stucco
goes right on it. So the stucco, there's
three layers of stucco here that are stuck right
through this straw. This is becoming
more mainstream. There's a police
headquarters built in Visalia out of straw bale. There are schools being built
in California out of it. It's a very practical
building material. I mean, that's
obviously a cliche that it's a bunch of
hippies doing this. But it's past that. We cut our hair
before you came, so. NARRATOR: From
houses to jewelry, and 3 billion
stomachs in between, rice fills an important
place in our lives. Waves of grain for
a hungry planet. [music playing]
