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So... just an FYI. I have a beautiful batch going right now. At one week, It still looked dry (patience people). Week two it is just about perfect. Nice cap with white mold spores. Very very good looking liquid buildup about 3/4 up the way up the rice. It is looking quite delicious.

Brew it... leave it alone... then enjoy it. All this opening and smelling and stirring and worrying business is very much uncalled for. ;) I can't wait to drink this batch.

I agree, I just leave it alone for 3 weeks aside from a peek or two
 
I use a high shelf in the pantry. I don't touch, just look. My cheesecloth is only 10 grade so I'm not about to screw with it.

Think I'm gonna have to go to a cloth store for muslin this time. Last strain was a nightmare.
 
Has anyone put fruit in the mix while fermenting? I have some frozen blueberries that I could put in and see how that goes.
 
I use a high shelf in the pantry. I don't touch, just look. My cheesecloth is only 10 grade so I'm not about to screw with it.

Think I'm gonna have to go to a cloth store for muslin this time. Last strain was a nightmare.

I have gone to using one of those nylon grain/hop bags and a juice pitcher for straining.
 
Has anyone put fruit in the mix while fermenting? I have some frozen blueberries that I could put in and see how that goes.

I would be worried about fungi in the fruit skin messing up the ferment in the early stages. I am more comfortable flavoring with fruit after.

That being said, there is nothing wrong with giving it a try...
 
So I havn't seen too much about harvesting this stuff. I finally made a batch that is without acetone and is ready to harvest.

Is there any concern about the mold on top? I have a good layer of the white mold/ funghi on top of my rice. And a good amount of liquid on the bottom.

I am thinking to just grab a large piece of voile, put it into a pitcher, dump the contents of my jar inside (rice, liquid, everything), lift, squeeze and harvest most if not all the liquid inside. Does this seem right?

Then just add to a sanitized bottle and refrigerate. Sound alright?
 
So I havn't seen too much about harvesting this stuff. I finally made a batch that is without acetone and is ready to harvest.

Is there any concern about the mold on top? I have a good layer of the white mold/ funghi on top of my rice. And a good amount of liquid on the bottom.

I am thinking to just grab a large piece of voile, put it into a pitcher, dump the contents of my jar inside (rice, liquid, everything), lift, squeeze and harvest most if not all the liquid inside. Does this seem right?

Then just add to a sanitized bottle and refrigerate. Sound alright?
Sounds about right. I have a white tea towel I use. I put a colander in a bowl, then the tea towel. Pour everything into it. Then lift the starch mass in the towel out of the colander. Massage the starch mass to extract the rest of the liquid. Squeeze firmly. Then discard the starch mass, and wring the towel into the bowl.

I use that tea towel for making cheese too, it's got the right weave to let the liquid pass through without being to weak. I also find it helpful to wet the towel down and wring it out before pouring the rice wine into it. Otherwise it's so dry it retains a fair amount of wine.
 
So I havn't seen too much about harvesting this stuff. I finally made a batch that is without acetone and is ready to harvest.

Is there any concern about the mold on top? I have a good layer of the white mold/ funghi on top of my rice. And a good amount of liquid on the bottom.

I am thinking to just grab a large piece of voile, put it into a pitcher, dump the contents of my jar inside (rice, liquid, everything), lift, squeeze and harvest most if not all the liquid inside. Does this seem right?

Then just add to a sanitized bottle and refrigerate. Sound alright?

I don't worry about the mold when squeezing.
 
Instead of squeezing it by hand I put the mush inside a cloth then squeeze it between two plates. Much faster that way.
 
Is there any concern about the mold on top? I have a good layer of the white mold/ funghi on top of my rice. And a good amount of liquid on the bottom.

I'm only on my third batch, so I'm no expert. On the previous two, I was able to pull the mold layer off in one piece before I harvested. I doubt that it was necessary, but it was easy enough to do.
 
Okay, so I finally got around to harvesting today. It has officially been 24 days since it was made. It was the soonest that I could get to it and have time to harvest it.

I started with 3 large mason jars, and I am pretty sure I used 6 cups of rice, hoping for about 2 cups in each jar. These are the I think 1/2 gallon jars.

So a quick review of process:

Soaked rice overnight after rinsing off.
Cooked rice at a 1:1 ratio. Cooked most of the water out of it, then covered it and let it sit and cool.
Mixed the crushed yeast into the pot of rice.
Put rice into mason jars, lid on tight with a paper towel in between
Placed in a dark cabinet above my stove for the 24 days.

I was able to harvest and get 3 smaller mason jars, alost full. Each mason jar has about 20- 24 ounces of wine in each. Making the total of almost 60 oz. of wine! Not bad!

As far as tasting notes go, I put it into the fridge to cool a bit before trying. It started to seperate, but I mixed it before trying. It has a pretty "hot" nose, with a strong alcohol smell, with a slightly sweet, yeasty smell after. The taste is rather tangy, not super smooth, with a bit of a punch to it. Not sweet at all.

Does that seem right? I dont really know what it should taste like. The wife tasted it and i should have had a camera for her face Priceless. Its not very easy to drink. Should I back sweeten it? Not sure what I really made haha.

Here is a picture for fun. The large mason jar that is empty is what I made it in. The 3 jars of wine of course, and a bottle of Zombie Dust for scale. :ban:

DSC_0347_zpsbc06e1ab.jpg
 
Okay, so I finally got around to harvesting today. It has officially been 24 days since it was made. It was the soonest that I could get to it and have time to harvest it.

I started with 3 large mason jars, and I am pretty sure I used 6 cups of rice, hoping for about 2 cups in each jar. These are the I think 1/2 gallon jars.

So a quick review of process:

Soaked rice overnight after rinsing off.
Cooked rice at a 1:1 ratio. Cooked most of the water out of it, then covered it and let it sit and cool.
Mixed the crushed yeast into the pot of rice.
Put rice into mason jars, lid on tight with a paper towel in between
Placed in a dark cabinet above my stove for the 24 days.

I was able to harvest and get 3 smaller mason jars, alost full. Each mason jar has about 20- 24 ounces of wine in each. Making the total of almost 60 oz. of wine! Not bad!

As far as tasting notes go, I put it into the fridge to cool a bit before trying. It started to seperate, but I mixed it before trying. It has a pretty "hot" nose, with a strong alcohol smell, with a slightly sweet, yeasty smell after. The taste is rather tangy, not super smooth, with a bit of a punch to it. Not sweet at all.

Does that seem right? I dont really know what it should taste like. The wife tasted it and i should have had a camera for her face Priceless. Its not very easy to drink. Should I back sweeten it? Not sure what I really made haha.

Here is a picture for fun. The large mason jar that is empty is what I made it in. The 3 jars of wine of course, and a bottle of Zombie Dust for scale. :ban:

It shouldn't be hard to drink at all. What kind of rice did you use? I would say back sweeten with some juice until its drinkable and then try again!
 
It shouldn't be hard to drink at all. What kind of rice did you use? I would say back sweeten with some juice until its drinkable and then try again!

Thats kind of what I was thinking. I used all Jasmine rice. After 2 tries at this, I am kind of disappointed at it still not working out. Not sure what it is. Im thinking its the yeast balls I am using. Ill see if I can find a different one.

I did try adding a little sugar to it, just to see if it would make a difference, and it makes it a bit more drinkable. Also, the cleared portion of it is more drinkable, than if you mix it all up.
 
GiantsFan, I noticed you got the yellow, can I ask what yeast cake you used? I have a theory the southeast asian ones might be more predisposed to yellow but not sure. I tink the sweetness has to do with the ferment time, the sweetness is sugar... more sweetness more sugars, less means more booze... most of my other ferments work that way. Pastuerize and backsweeten it with a simple syrup or fruit juice, and let the Missus have another go at it.
 
Your soak might have been a little long too. I usually soak mine for an hour, then rinse in cold water. You might have ended up with more water absorbed in the rice then you might think. The extra water might account for the tang.
 
I have few more days till the 21 day harvest day. I really want to pitch some of this on to Asian pear and some on to plum. I'd like to put the fruit in the bottle. Should I pasteurize the whole batch then cut up fruit and put fruit in freezer then put in bottle then bottle pasteurized rice wine on to it? Or should I divide pasteurize some bottle that. Transfer to two buckets some with each kind of fruit?
I need advice.
 
asiansupermarket365.com

Search red yeast. I ordered from them and had my order on my door step a day and a half later. Super fast shipping.
 
FermentNEthinG said:
asiansupermarket365.com

Search red yeast. I ordered from them and had my order on my door step a day and a half later. Super fast shipping.

Thanks, I just ordered a bag.
 
like 3 dollars. Not bad at all!

OK good deal. I'm selling them to a few people who don't have easy access to red yeast rice and dried yeast balls. I'm looking to help them and don't want to profit from them so this is good information. Thanks for the help.
 
So when I made mine I put a quart jar in the cupboard and kind of forgot about it. It had dropped fairly clear, and is delicious. It is just the one batch so far so I can't claim to know too much about this, but I'm not sure you need to pasteurize this. It seems very stable, the alcohol has smoothed, but very little flavor change over the last 2 months. The mouthfeel is lighter with the solids off, but it is very similar to a white wine, amazingly rice aromatics, balanced sweetness with a soft bite. Delicious. Time to make more.

image-713202672.jpg


image-817242181.jpg
 
So when I made mine I put a quart jar in the cupboard and kind of forgot about it. It had dropped fairly clear, and is delicious. It is just the one batch so far so I can't claim to know too much about this, but I'm not sure you need to pasteurize this. It seems very stable, the alcohol has smoothed, but very little flavor change over the last 2 months. The mouthfeel is lighter with the solids off, but it is very similar to a white wine, amazingly rice aromatics, balanced sweetness with a soft bite. Delicious. Time to make more.
Huh, ok. I would have thought it would go vinegary.

It's always that time. :)
 
So when I made mine I put a quart jar in the cupboard and kind of forgot about it. It had dropped fairly clear, and is delicious. It is just the one batch so far so I can't claim to know too much about this, but I'm not sure you need to pasteurize this. It seems very stable, the alcohol has smoothed, but very little flavor change over the last 2 months. The mouthfeel is lighter with the solids off, but it is very similar to a white wine, amazingly rice aromatics, balanced sweetness with a soft bite. Delicious. Time to make more.

I did not pasteurize my last batch and it was fine. Pretty sure Im going to clear out the next batch as well before flavoring. Doing grapefruit again and dry hop not sure what hop going with though.
 
Leadgolem said:
Huh, ok. I would have thought it would go vinegary.

It's always that time. :)

It may indeed, but not with these ball I've got ;) and not in that timeframe. I'm kind of tempted to make a much larger batch, 15 lbs of rice or so.
 
bottlebomber said:
So when I made mine I put a quart jar in the cupboard and kind of forgot about it. It had dropped fairly clear, and is delicious. It is just the one batch so far so I can't claim to know too much about this, but I'm not sure you need to pasteurize this. It seems very stable, the alcohol has smoothed, but very little flavor change over the last 2 months. The mouthfeel is lighter with the solids off, but it is very similar to a white wine, amazingly rice aromatics, balanced sweetness with a soft bite. Delicious. Time to make more.

I suspect that you keeping it from being exposed to fresh air prevented oxidation of the ethanol to acetic acid. You probably also have fermented the sugars moe completely, thus giving anaerobic bugs less chance to make acetic or lactic acids. I like how fast this rice wine is ready, but it seems that we may benefit from giving it a bit more time.
 
I made these on Wed 3/27 so I'm 1 week and 3 days in...

The big glass jug is made as described in the original post. The welches grape juice container was made with the Red Yeast Rice. Since I made so much Tai Jasmine Rice I had enough to use saramc's method. I rolled the rice into golfball sized balls, rolled them through a bowl with crushed dried yeast balls and then through another bowl of crushed RYR. Dropped them into the container (which was easy since they were small enough to drop right in) filled it right to the top with as many balls as I could, covered it with a coffee filter, rubber band and the original welches lid.

Both of these are 1 week and 3 days old and both have liquid. My only concern is that the RYR batch smells great but the regular batch doesn't smell much of anything. Is it too soon for an alcohol smell?

RW 1wk 3 days.jpg


RYR Pic.jpg
 
How is everyone smelling these just out of curiosity? Are you opening it? I never smell a thing until harvesting time because that is the first time I ever open it. Maybe that is why mine always smells great...
 
So I have clearly done something wrong. I made 2 batches, 1 right after the other. Batch 1 has about an inch of gray fuzz on top, batch 2 none. Identical processing. Everything was clean, I used Iodophor because it was handy. Both batched started out smelling a bit sour, still does. I didn't have a large glass container so I used white food prep buckets 1 gallon. Can't easily see the liquid action going on in there but I can see some seperation. This is day 7.
Suggestions?
 
sonofgrok said:
How is everyone smelling these just out of curiosity? Are you opening it? I never smell a thing until harvesting time because that is the first time I ever open it. Maybe that is why mine always smells great...

I was able to pick the jars up and smell near the lid. I'm the same as you. I like to just leave everything alone and not mess with it,opening, stirring, etc. The smell was strong enough where I didn't need to open the jars. I did find myself looking at the jars every day. This latest batch is a little different. I put it all in a 2 gallon bucket with a lid and airlock and put it in the back of my brew closet with my wine and sours not to be disturbed until the 21 days are up.
 
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