Making Traditional rice Wine. Cheap, Fun, and Different

bottlebomber said:

Has anyone drunk enough of this to get a tremendous buzz yet?

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I drank about 24oz of mine + 3 beers and was feeling very buzzed. No hangover though.

bottlebomber said:

Has anyone drunk enough of this to get a tremendous buzz yet?

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Oh yeah. I got a whole wine tasting party pretty darn buzzed on it.

There's a place down the road that ended up being what I think is a Thai store. Couldn't find any yeast rice. They had some kind of red rice but didn't know anything about koji.

I was curious to know if you could pastuerize the rice wine after completion to prevent refermentation while having it out in warm temperature. Would the pastuerization alter the wine?
Thank you for the help, and i apologize if this has been asked, I have only read through half the posts.

I pasteurized mine as soon as I closed up the bottle. It tasted pretty damn good after it chilled.

I'm planning in just refrigerating mine, but I'm a little leery after seeing someone's fridge explosion pic. I don't think this stuff is real stable. But I also don't want to pasteurize..

I have been reading through this thread and y'all have convinced me to give this a try. I pass by quite a few Asian grocery stores and markets while working. I'm going to try to get the stuff this week. So, is jasmine rice a good choice? My wife and I only use jasmine rice when cooking so we always have it around. But I'll buy something different for this if it will yield better results.

bottlebomber said:

I'm planning in just refrigerating mine, but I'm a little leery after seeing someone's fridge explosion pic. I don't think this stuff is real stable. But I also don't want to pasteurize..

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In all fairness that explosion wasn't from a ferment of this...

WesleyS said:

I have been reading through this thread and y'all have convinced me to give this a try. I pass by quite a few Asian grocery stores and markets while working. I'm going to try to get the stuff this week. So, is jasmine rice a good choice? My wife and I only use jasmine rice when cooking so we always have it around. But I'll buy something different for this if it will yield better results.

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I like the jasmine myself.

sonofgrok said:

I like the jasmine myself.

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Sweet! Thanks! If I can find the yeast balls this week, I'll probably start a batch this weekend. I guess I'll start small on the off chance I don't care for the stuff.

2 days down and things are going well. I skimmed through the chinese directions on the jiuqu i bought and it said to sprinkle some crushed jiuqu on top of everything after you've mixed some in. So i'm two days in and already have a pretty sweet mold colony on top. We will see how it turns out it time.

Has anyone tried topping off with fresh cooked rice halfway through, after the rice has broken down and given you more room? Just curious, kinda want to maximize my yield from this jar.

Arrheinous said:

There's a place down the road that ended up being what I think is a Thai store. Couldn't find any yeast rice. They had some kind of red rice but didn't know anything about koji.

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Red rice yeast will produce a red rice wine. I believe saramc tried this, if you want to dig back through the thread.

hethacker12 said:

I was curious to know if you could pastuerize the rice wine after completion to prevent refermentation while having it out in warm temperature. Would the pastuerization alter the wine?
Thank you for the help, and i apologize if this has been asked, I have only read through half the posts.

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I do not think pasteurization will substantially alter the flavor of the wine, as that is very common in sake making.

bottlebomber said:

I'm planning in just refrigerating mine, but I'm a little leery after seeing someone's fridge explosion pic. I don't think this stuff is real stable. But I also don't want to pasteurize..

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If you are worried about a bottle bomb, bottle in a wine bottle or belgian bottle. Something with a cork, but do not use a wire hood. If you get any real pressure in the bottle it will pop the cork out. That might make a mess, but it won't have enough force to turn the bottle into a missile.

I took a smell of my rice wine today and OMG. There is a tart sour smell for sure. I was pretty clean with my process and would not think a lacto infection would settle in and take over this quick. I hope that the sour smell is part of the process and the taste will be different.

Leadgolem said:

If you are worried about a bottle bomb, bottle in a wine bottle or belgian bottle. Something with a cork, but do not use a wire hood. If you get any real pressure in the bottle it will pop the cork out. That might make a mess, but it won't have enough force to turn the bottle into a missile.

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Good point, I've got plenty of Belgian bottles and corks.

Hey everyone, I have a little confession here, and I thought you all would want to hear. I tried making a 10 lb batch with sweet rice. I ended up with ~3 gallons of rice, and put it all in a paint strainer bag, in my fermenter bucket, with an airlock. All went well, except I couldn't see the progress like you folks. I bottled it this weekend, and I got 1 gallon of rice from it after draining it in a basket and squeezing the crap out of the bag. I racked this into my brew kettle and heated it to ~155-160 (I forget exactly), to do a bulk stovetop pasteurization. I tried it after and it was delicious! It does have some bite. After trying it, I have no doubts this is all of 20% abv. Then I realized I bottled a week early! Oops. I'll be making it in bulk again, but this time I'll wait the full 3 weeks, instead of 2. :-/

Ok I've made two batches now, both with short grain, sweet sticky rice and yeast balls from the local Chinese grocery. While it is very good, it is not sweet at all. Both of the Chinese students in my lab say it is way more dry than they're used to also. I am letting it go 21 days. Ambient is probably only 66 degrees though. Do you think I am not getting enough amylase activity and the yeast are able to dry everything out?

My gf's uncle just gave me a bottle of red rice wine he made. It's Delicious, A little tart, but it'd be a shame not to try and replicate it. Thanks for the info.

hethacker12 said:

I was curious to know if you could pastuerize the rice wine after completion to prevent refermentation while having it out in warm temperature. Would the pastuerization alter the wine?
Thank you for the help, and i apologize if this has been asked, I have only read through half the posts.

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Pasteurization is the preferred stabilization method of rice wine. It is super prone to lactbacillus if you do not. I cannot tell a difference in the batch I pasteurized vs a control bottle. The one thing, if left unpasteurized and kept in refrig it will continue to ferment any residual sugar available for a while.

kosciel4 said:

I found this on a webpage for anyone interested in the abv of their wine.
I haven't tried it myself, but it said take a gravity reading, take 250ml of your final product, boil it until its 125ml, then add 125ml of water to bring it back to 250ml, take another reading and use this equation.
AbV=((SGfinal-SGorig)/2.11)*1000

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Is the FG in this equation the true FG, easy to read that....but is the boil down, dilute and take the new reading the OG used in the equation? Because we obviously do not know our true OG based off of conventional method since we are working with a solid.

saramc said:

Is the FG in this equation the true FG, easy to read that....but is the boil down, dilute and take the new reading the OG used in the equation? Because we obviously do not know our true OG based off of conventional method since we are working with a solid.

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Like I said, I found this online and haven't tried it myself yet, but I imagine
SGfinal would be what you have after the boil with the addition of water. Whereas SGorig is what you have right before you boil. I understand we can't use the hydrometer because we start with a solid, that's how I came across this equation while researching how to get an accurate abv reading

If you REALLY wanted to know what the alcohol content was in an economical and accurate manner, you would buy one of these.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/white-labs-alcohol-test-kit-plus.html

I am going to try to produce a dry Chinese rice wine. I will try 1 kg dry rice, 0.01 kg Chinese yeast ball, 1.5 kg water as a starting point.

standardized recipes from http://www.jiangnan.edu.cn/zhgjiu/u3-6.htm

The ingredients of (YUAN HONG RICE WINE) (dry, 15% alcohol)
polished glutinous rice 100 kg
wheat koji 10.5 kg
traditional seed mash 6 kg
total water 136 (acidified rice steeping 58 kg, fresh 78 kg)

home brew version

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/54126-chinesetaiwanese-rice-wine/

standerized recipe

Ingredients
100 kg dry weight polished glutinous rice, steamed
1 kg Chinese yeast balls
water (none = sweet, 100 kg = semi sweet, 200 kg = dry ~16%)

It will be a week or so until my yeast balls arrive.

nhamilto40 said:

I am going to try to produce a dry Chinese rice wine. I will try 1 kg dry rice, 0.01 kg Chinese yeast ball, 1.5 kg water as a starting point.

standardized recipes from http://www.jiangnan.edu.cn/zhgjiu/u3-6.htm

The ingredients of (YUAN HONG RICE WINE) (dry, 15% alcohol)
polished glutinous rice 100 kg
wheat koji 10.5 kg
traditional seed mash 6 kg
total water 136 (acidified rice steeping 58 kg, fresh 78 kg)

home brew version

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/54126-chinesetaiwanese-rice-wine/

standerized recipe

Ingredients
100 kg dry weight polished glutinous rice, steamed
1 kg Chinese yeast balls
water (none = sweet, 100 kg = semi sweet, 200 kg = dry ~16%)

It will be a week or so until my yeast balls arrive.

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Welcome to the forum. So you aren't going to cook the rice?

The plan is to cook the rice and then add water to total 1.5 times the dry weight of the uncooked rice (dry rice = 1 kg, adsorbed + added water = 1.5 kg).

Well, it looks like I'll be making rice wine this weekend. I stopped in to a large Asian market that I pass by all the time but never go in. This place has things I didn't even know existed and more noodles and rice than I've seen anywhere else. After only about a minute of looking I found the yeast balls, picked out some jasmine rice and got out the door for less than $8. I'm going to have to go back in when I have the time to look around for other things.

Guessing Ranch 99?, thats where I got mine also but took way more than a minute to find the yeast balls. They do have a lot of interesting stuff there for sure

Tinhorn said:

Guessing Ranch 99?, thats where I got mine also but took way more than a minute to find the yeast balls. They do have a lot of interesting stuff there for sure

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Yep, that's the place. I really think I got lucky finding them so fast because the side of the store I started on has the rice and noodles and the yeast was on the second aisle I went to.

WesleyS said:

Yep, that's the place. I really think I got lucky finding them so fast because the side of the store I started on has the rice and noodles and the yeast was on the second aisle I went to.

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I asked for help from another shopper and they asked me what they were for and didnt know the culinary use at all so that wasnt very productive haha . Finally just started looking for any kind of balls and found them in about 5 minutes.
Off topic but they have some amazing sweet soy sauce called Kecap Manis that is an awesome marinade for pork and for fried rice.

Tinhorn said:

I asked for help from another shopper and they asked me what they were for and didnt know the culinary use at all so that wasnt very productive haha . Finally just started looking for any kind of balls and found them in about 5 minutes.
Off topic but they have some amazing sweet soy sauce called Kecap Manis that is an awesome marinade for pork and for fried rice.

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Thanks for the tip. I love soy sauce or pretty much any Asian sauce/marinade/condiment so I'll look for it.

WesleyS said:

Well, it looks like I'll be making rice wine this weekend. I stopped in to a large Asian market that I pass by all the time but never go in. This place has things I didn't even know existed and more noodles and rice than I've seen anywhere else. After only about a minute of looking I found the yeast balls, picked out some jasmine rice and got out the door for less than $8. I'm going to have to go back in when I have the time to look around for other things.

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I can vouch for those balls. I love Asian markets, there's some pretty cool stuff and always for dirt cheap.

bottlebomber said:

I can vouch for those balls. I love Asian markets, there's some pretty cool stuff and always for dirt cheap.

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Taken alone, this statement reminds me of a Tobias Funke quote.

pabloj13 said:

Taken alone, this statement reminds me of a Tobias Funke quote.

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Reminds me of this famous quote ( at least around my family ) . Thanks for the laugh

So I ju mped on this yesterday and boiled the rice instead of steaming on the recomendation of the guy that ran the asian market. Says the mush left makes great rice pudding anyone tryed that yet. And do you think the boiling will have a negative effect? 3cups sweet rice and 2 white yeast balls."Makes good sweet for drinking" he said.

Jdix said:

So I ju mped on this yesterday and boiled the rice instead of steaming on the recomendation of the guy that ran the asian market. Says the mush left makes great rice pudding anyone tryed that yet. And do you think the boiling will have a negative effect? 3cups sweet rice and 2 white yeast balls."Makes good sweet for drinking" he said.

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Im definately gonna look into doing something with the rice afterwards. Just checked on mine (day4) and its blooming Koji beautifully on top. Theres a large tunnel I made down the middle as suggested at my local asian mkt. And the tunnel is filling nicely with sweet smelling liquid.

Jdix said:

So I ju mped on this yesterday and boiled the rice instead of steaming on the recomendation of the guy that ran the asian market. Says the mush left makes great rice pudding anyone tryed that yet. And do you think the boiling will have a negative effect? 3cups sweet rice and 2 white yeast balls."Makes good sweet for drinking" he said.

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You are fine, many boil the rice. Try the fermented rice around day 3, quite nice in my opinion.

saramc said:

You are fine, many boil the rice. Try the fermented rice around day 3, quite nice in my opinion.

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Did you just steal a small scoop and eat it as is?

pabloj13 said:

Ok I've made two batches now, both with short grain, sweet sticky rice and yeast balls from the local Chinese grocery. While it is very good, it is not sweet at all. Both of the Chinese students in my lab say it is way more dry than they're used to also. I am letting it go 21 days. Ambient is probably only 66 degrees though. Do you think I am not getting enough amylase activity and the yeast are able to dry everything out?

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Any ideas?

pabloj13 said:

Any ideas?

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Did you try it along the way at all? Did you observe it drying out? You could always back sweeten, especially if you're going to be pasteurizing it.

bottlebomber said:

Did you try it along the way at all? Did you observe it drying out? You could always back sweeten, especially if you're going to be pasteurizing it.

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Yeah. I stirred it once a week the second time and tasted each time. It tasted dry and tart almost right away. Both times (stirred and not stirred) tasted the same at the end.

pabloj13 said:

Yeah. I stirred it once a week the second time and tasted each time. It tasted dry and tart almost right away. Both times (stirred and not stirred) tasted the same at the end.

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Rice and yeast type probably played a role too.