Making Traditional rice Wine. Cheap, Fun, and Different

Very impressive! I love all of the ARL batches and experiments..

It paves the way for me since all of my batches are now done with ARL.

Please let me know if/when you need more and I'll be glad to sponsor more tests. You must be running low by now.

jak1010 said:

Very impressive! I love all of the ARL batches and experiments..

It paves the way for me since all of my batches are now done with ARL.

Please let me know if/when you need more and I'll be glad to sponsor more tests. You must be running low by now.

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Will do. I'm actually not that low yet though. I've got 2 unopened packets and a couple of grams in an opened packet. That's why I ran the ratio experiment first. ARL is some really concentrated stuff.

Ok, I just moved batches 4,5,9, and 10 to 1 gallon cracker jars. I kept having visions of the kind of mess these things make when they spill over. Especially the RYR. That's capable of making a truly impressive, and red, mess. Since I had to agitate the jars a good deal to get everything out, I'm also going to shake the rest of the jars.

Update the rice is completely submerged took the lid off it smelled boozy took a taste very hot the alcohol is blazing in this batch. the fruit smells and tastes are taking a back seat to it.

Should've taken a picture, but I put my first batch in two jars. The one I've been sipping on remained cloudy, but there's a slow settling of the cloudy rice solids in the second jar and what's left on top is a clear yellow liquor, slightly less sweet and tastier than the cloudy stuff (though that stuff's really nice too). Now I'm really tempted to make a huge batch in my extra fermenting bucket and bottle it so I can age a couple gallons and let the whole batch settle clear. Biggest downsides: I can only do 3 1/2 cups of rice at a time in my rice cooker, and my girlfriend would definitely think I'm an alcoholic (not even close - I maybe average a drink a day) and maybe put the nix on homebrewing - it's a new hobby for me so her support/acceptance is still very volatile.

ok going to try this for sure

I was just out looking for some gallon jars and they are pricey if you can find them . so I went to Walmart and bought a half gallon jar of pickles for about 3.50 . Not bad .toss the pickles and make wine . Might go to Sams Club and get something by the gallon

MarcusKillion said:

I was just out looking for some gallon jars and they are pricey if you can find them . so I went to Walmart and bought a half gallon jar of pickles for about 3.50 . Not bad .toss the pickles and make wine . Might go to Sams Club and get something by the gallon

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go back to walmart look in there section were they sell plates and glasses and you should find a 1 and 2.5 gallon glass cookie jars there 9 bux here it may be a few isles over but there in that section.

Got some Sushi rice . Used 6 cups with 3 yeast balls . Found this great 2 gallon jar with a lid , it is nice and heavy , at Kmart for 15 bucks . Lid just sets on but it is heavy and built like the lid on a crock pot . should work great .
also found these 1/2 gallon mason jars at ace for 12.99 a six pack . http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2841638&cp=2568443.2568448.11927733.11927746

thats the same ones they sell at walmart

MarcusKillion said:

I was just out looking for some gallon jars and they are pricey if you can find them . so I went to Walmart and bought a half gallon jar of pickles for about 3.50 . Not bad .toss the pickles and make wine . Might go to Sams Club and get something by the gallon

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Problem with pickle jars is that they somehow maintain the essence of pickle no matter how much you wash them...

sonofgrok said:

Problem with pickle jars is that they somehow maintain the essence of pickle no matter how much you wash them...

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Not true. I have a few former pickle jars that I use for all sorts of things, and they have absolutely no pickle smell and haven't for quite a while. It took quite a bit of washing and soaking to get rid of the initial smell, but once it's gone, it's gone.

Got a couple jars of this going about 5 days ago; they're floating already on an inch or so of liquid and one has rice starting to sink back down. Does that mean it's ready to strain out or should I let it go for a few weeks anyway? Also the tops of the rice are covered in white furry stuff, is bad or just from spores in the yeast balls?

DavidLiebeHart said:

Got a couple jars of this going about 5 days ago; they're floating already on an inch or so of liquid and one has rice starting to sink back down. Does that mean it's ready to strain out or should I let it go for a few weeks anyway? Also the tops of the rice are covered in white furry stuff, is bad or just from spores in the yeast balls?

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I believe there's been some debate about how long you need to leave it, but three weeks has been the standard answer. I don't recall exactly why that is - might have to do with yield, or giving the yeast time to attenuate, or something else - but I'm certain somebody will chime in.

My spores are microscopic black mushrooms with filaments that run between them. A guy a few pages back posted a picture of a batch he made that ended up with a big white mold colony on top. He said the wine tasted fine, and the general consensus was that nothing harmful could survive in the wine, but he said it smelled so bad that he tossed it out anyway. If you post a picture that clearly shows the white furry stuff, someone here might be able to help.

FatDragon said:

Not true. I have a few former pickle jars that I use for all sorts of things, and they have absolutely no pickle smell and haven't for quite a while. It took quite a bit of washing and soaking to get rid of the initial smell, but once it's gone, it's gone.

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Hmm, interesting. I haven't had any trouble getting the aroma off the glass of course. Getting it off the lid now...Why do we need the lid again? Just throw a cloth over the jar and tie a string around it.

DavidLiebeHart said:

Got a couple jars of this going about 5 days ago; they're floating already on an inch or so of liquid and one has rice starting to sink back down. Does that mean it's ready to strain out or should I let it go for a few weeks anyway? Also the tops of the rice are covered in white furry stuff, is bad or just from spores in the yeast balls?

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FatDragon said:

I believe there's been some debate about how long you need to leave it, but three weeks has been the standard answer. I don't recall exactly why that is - might have to do with yield, or giving the yeast time to attenuate, or something else - but I'm certain somebody will chime in.

My spores are microscopic black mushrooms with filaments that run between them. A guy a few pages back posted a picture of a batch he made that ended up with a big white mold colony on top. He said the wine tasted fine, and the general consensus was that nothing harmful could survive in the wine, but he said it smelled so bad that he tossed it out anyway. If you post a picture that clearly shows the white furry stuff, someone here might be able to help.

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It seems to depend on exactly what yeast balls you get. Some of them produce a tiny black headed mushroom, some produce a white "furry" mold. I find that about 1/2 of my batches end up with fairly dense and short white "fur" on the top.

I've got the big balls. The ones with the red writing on them. I think the mini Vietnamese balls with the blue writing produce the black heads.

Leadgolem said:

Hmm, interesting. I haven't had any trouble getting the aroma off the glass of course. Getting it off the lid now...Why do we need the lid again? Just throw a cloth over the jar and tie a string around it.

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The lids took some soaking, but it wasn't that bad. I used them to transport and drink the juices I made with my juicer before I started using them with rice wine, so I needed the lids functional and odorless.

Leadgolem said:

It seems to depend on exactly what yeast balls you get. Some of them produce a tiny black headed mushroom, some produce a white "furry" mold. I find that about 1/2 of my batches end up with fairly dense and short white "fur" on the top.

I've got the big balls. The ones with the red writing on them. I think the mini Vietnamese balls with the blue writing produce the black heads.

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My locally-produced Chinese yeast balls produce the black fungus, but at least with my first batch, it was gone by the time I harvested. I wasn't aware any of them produced a big white colony - the post I was referring to made me think that a white colony was bad, since that batch ended up being dumped due to the smell.

FatDragon said:

The lids took some soaking, but it wasn't that bad. I used them to transport and drink the juices I made with my juicer before I started using them with rice wine, so I needed the lids functional and odorless.



My locally-produced Chinese yeast balls produce the black fungus, but at least with my first batch, it was gone by the time I harvested. I wasn't aware any of them produced a big white colony - the post I was referring to made me think that a white colony was bad, since that batch ended up being dumped due to the smell.

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I think the kind of cotton candy stuff he got was bad. I think that the short white fuzz I'm talking about is actually frequently present, it's just usually hard to see on rice.

Here's a picture of what I'm talking about. This is a photo of it growing on a batch of red rice wine. That makes it much easier to see. It's also odd, I would say less then 1/8th of my red rice wine batches get this visible white fuzz. Though about 3/4 of my white rice wine batches get it. It gets a little more visible at harvest time if the top of the rice oxidizes and turns yellow.

EDIT:Here's another picture of it after it's really gone to town on some wheat berries.

Sorry the pictures aren't that clear. In the first one I couldn't get the camera to focus on the jar contents. I actually took several pictures and that was the best one. In the second I was taking a picture of the whole lineup of jars. That's just cropped out of the "family" photo from the original grains experiment.

Great thread guys! I'm looking forward to getting some yeast balls and trying this out tomorrow. I've read about 1/3 of the thread from the beginning and at this point the ideal formulation is 1:1 water to rice and 2 10g yeast balls per KG of dry rice (I think that is the equivalent of ~1g yeast per cup of dry rice ). Has the process been any more fine tuned in the 250 or so pages of this thread I haven't yet read? Sorry in advance but a whole bunch of questions are coming up:

Does the brand of yeast ball make a difference? Where I'm at now (it's like reading a book, who know what will happen next ) some have suggested that certain yeast balls may be responsible for dark mold growth or acetone smell

Has the cause of acetone smell been determined?

Is there an ideal rice to head room ratio in the fermentation vessel?

Is there an ideal batch size?

red_skittles said:

Great thread guys! I'm looking forward to getting some yeast balls and trying this out tomorrow. I've read about 1/3 of the thread from the beginning and at this point the ideal formulation is 1:1 water to rice and 2 10g yeast balls per KG of dry rice (I think that is the equivalent of ~1g yeast per cup of dry rice ). Has the process been any more fine tuned in the 250 or so pages of this thread I haven't yet read? Sorry in advance but a whole bunch of questions are coming up:

Does the brand of yeast ball make a difference? Where I'm at now (it's like reading a book, who know what will happen next ) some have suggested that certain yeast balls may be responsible for dark mold growth or acetone smell

Has the cause of acetone smell been determined?

Is there an ideal rice to head room ratio in the fermentation vessel?

Is there an ideal batch size?

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Wow, ok. Lots of questions that haven't really been answered. There are some variations on the recipe, but I don't think there is a general agreement on a "refined" version. The brand of yeast ball does seem to matter, though we have had conflicting reports on exactly what the difference is. I've never gotten an acetone smell, I have gotten some strong young alcohol smells. Those go away with aging. Head room ratio hasn't been a variable that I think anyone has looked at specifically.

The ideal batch size is determined more by your rice cooker then anything else. Some larger batches have developed a dense rice "cap" that floats on the rest of the wine and does not want to saccharify. That can be avoided by forming the rice into balls as it's being added to the fermenter. After it's been inoculated.

Since I don't have the answers, those must be some good questions. The yeast ball brand in particular would be an interesting one to test. I'll have to see if I can find an online vendor who has several types.

Thanks guys, I couldn't get a good picture of it but it looks similar to LeadGolem's pic. Basically the top looks like white velvet. I think it's probably ok because the only smell I get off the jars is sweet and rice-y, and the fact that it appeared pretty uniformly over each of 4 jars seems to suggest it coming from the yeast balls rather than some freak contaminant.

DavidLiebeHart said:

Got a couple jars of this going about 5 days ago; they're floating already on an inch or so of liquid and one has rice starting to sink back down. Does that mean it's ready to strain out or should I let it go for a few weeks anyway? Also the tops of the rice are covered in white furry stuff, is bad or just from spores in the yeast balls?

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My mold is white.

I've had soft white fuzzy blankets of mold and I've also had other batches that produce white with tiny black dots.

So far, I've never produced anything that made me throw away a batch. In most cases, I've mixed the mold back in and it always turns out good.

I've even left a batch for 3 months and still ended up with a drinkable end product after harvest.

First batch started today. I went to the mainstream/commercial (maybe those aren't the right words) Asian grocery story and found a pack of 20-10g yeast balls for $4. I picked up 2 packs. On my way home I took a detour through Chinatown and found the Happy Panda brand yeast balls that were previously mentioned in this thread at $4 for 300g. The package of the yeast balls I picked up says "Use 600g sticky rice and steamed, take two yeast balls put in the steamed rice, brewing 14 days can be served as rice wine."

For my batch I went with ~1KG dry jasmine rice and 2 of the 10g yeast balls. I rinsed the rice until the water ran clear but didn't bother letting it soak. Rice was cooked on the stovetop at ~1:1.25 rice to water. The rice came out a lot "dryer" than I was expecting but stuck together in larger clumps. After seeing the volume of cooked rice I ended up with I was thinking about doubling up on the yeast balls but after layer the rice and yeast in my fermenting containers I think that probably would have been overkill. M fermenting jug is in the back of the closet and I have decided to wrap it in a blanket for the first 3 days. I have no means of knowing what the temperature in my apartment is but if I had to guess I would say high 60s. Maybe I should leave the blanket on for the entire ferment??? If there's is one thing I've learned from this thread it is that poking, prodding, stirring and smelling the wine do more harm than good so I am hoping I can control myself and keep my hands off it for the full 3 weeks

Leadgolem said:

Wow, ok. Lots of questions that haven't really been answered. There are some variations on the recipe, but I don't think there is a general agreement on a "refined" version. The brand of yeast ball does seem to matter, though we have had conflicting reports on exactly what the difference is. I've never gotten an acetone smell, I have gotten some strong young alcohol smells. Those go away with aging. Head room ratio hasn't been a variable that I think anyone has looked at specifically.

The ideal batch size is determined more by your rice cooker then anything else. Some larger batches have developed a dense rice "cap" that floats on the rest of the wine and does not want to saccharify. That can be avoided by forming the rice into balls as it's being added to the fermenter. After it's been inoculated.

Since I don't have the answers, those must be some good questions. The yeast ball brand in particular would be an interesting one to test. I'll have to see if I can find an online vendor who has several types.

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Most of these variables were suggested by posters who had failed attempts earlier on in the thread so I thought maybe they had been tested. This wine seems like its pretty forgiving so if people are still making deliciousness with no regard for headroom or batch size I am not that concerned

Has anyone tried just chucking the rice balls in with their rice as is? I mean it comes as a ball and not a powder for reason. If crushing the yeast ball is a step that can be skipped I'm all for making the process as easy as possible

Woo Hoo! 3 days in and liquid in all of my test batches! This stuff smells so good. Nutty, floral and alcoholic.

I tried the following combinations with chinese yeast balls:

• 4 cups cooked Jasmine
• 3 cups cooked Jasmine with 1 cup cooked Sweet
• 2 cups cooked Jasmine with 2 cups cooked Sweet
• 3 cups cooked Sweet with 1 cup cooked Jasmine
• 4 cups cooked Sweet

Thanks for posting this info sonofgrok!

red_skittles said:

Most of these variables were suggested by posters who had failed attempts earlier on in the thread so I thought maybe they had been tested. This wine seems like its pretty forgiving so if people are still making deliciousness with no regard for headroom or batch size I am not that concerned

Has anyone tried just chucking the rice balls in with their rice as is? I mean it comes as a ball and not a powder for reason. If crushing the yeast ball is a step that can be skipped I'm all for making the process as easy as possible

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Yet another untested variable.

The only batch failures I've had I can lay at the feet of two things. First, my own impatience in not letting the rice cool adequately. Second, using a rice with to many long chain carbohydrates. IE: Typical long grain white rice.

I crush the yeast balls to speed the spread of the mycelium through the substrate. That gives it a competitive advantage over anything else that might get in the batch, and therefore limits the impact of a contaminant. The same thing goes for denying the wine light. Lots of algae would love to live in/on the wet rice, but most of them need light to grow. Keeping things out of the light limits the number of species that could successfully propagate in the rice substrate.

BenjaminJonah said:

Woo Hoo! 3 days in and liquid in all of my test batches! This stuff smells so good. Nutty, floral and alcoholic.

I tried the following combinations with chinese yeast balls:

• 4 cups cooked Jasmine
• 3 cups cooked Jasmine with 1 cup cooked Sweet
• 2 cups cooked Jasmine with 2 cups cooked Sweet
• 3 cups cooked Sweet with 1 cup cooked Jasmine
• 4 cups cooked Sweet

Thanks for posting this info sonofgrok!

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Please keep us updated.

I've done many tests and love doing them. But, I'm not sure about pitching the whole yeast ball as apposed to crushing them. I'm adventurous but even I wouldn't do this...

Then again, when I first started brewing, I always rehydrated yeast and made starers. Now, I just pitch and trust.

the first batch i did i didn't crush the balls very well and for better then a week i saw chunks. that batch took off much slower then the others i've done. i don't know if the chunks caused the slower ferment. the latest batch i done i didn't grind up the ryr and as fast as everything fired off the ryr seem to take a long time to make it around the jar.

My first post ever on this great forum, thank you all guys!

Followed Sonofgrok's method and it tuned just perfect at the first shot: strong alcohol buzz, pleasantly tart, subtle sweetness with vanilla and banana notes. Sort of reminds me of a tocai but stronger.

10 dry cups of sweet glutinous rice boiled 1:1, 4 上海酒饼 yeast balls, 21 days "on the warm side", bottled and pasteurised.

Sonofgrok, thanks man!

sushi rice might not be so good . It has been about a week and nothing happening at all that I can see.
back to thew drawing board and to the sweet rice . Really sticky stuff though . But I guess that is the way to go .

MarcusKillion said:

sushi rice might not be so good . It has been about a week and nothing happening at all that I can see.
back to thew drawing board and to the sweet rice . Really sticky stuff though . But I guess that is the way to go .

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Here's the directions I used to cook sweet rice for my last batch and it wasn't a sticky mess.
http://thaifood.about.com/od/thaisnacks/ss/stickyricehowto.htm
Only thing I did different was I omitted the salt.
I think I still might like my jasmine rice wine, but I just drank a bottle of the sweet rice wine that's been in my keezer for a few months unpasteurized. It was really really good and there was only maybe a 1/4 inch of sediment in the bottom. I need to get another batch going soon.

Here's the 1 week checkup photo for the water additions experiment. This is actually a day late, I've changed days off and hours. All of the rest of the checkups and harvest will probably be on Saturdays too. Batch contents:

1. 358 grams cooked sweet rice. 0.5 grams ARL. (Control)
2. 358 grams cooked sweet rice. 0.5 grams ARL. 179 grams water. (50%)
3. 358 grams cooked sweet rice. 0.5 grams ARL. 358 grams water. (100%)
4. 358 grams cooked sweet rice. 0.5 grams ARL. 465 grams water. (130%)
5. 358 grams cooked sweet rice. 0.5 grams ARL. 537 grams water. (150%)
6. 358 grams cooked sweet rice. 0.5 grams ARL. 4.5 tsp crushed RYR. (RYR Control)
7. 358 grams cooked sweet rice. 0.5 grams ARL. 179 grams water. 4.5 tsp crushed RYR. (50%)
8. 358 grams cooked sweet rice. 0.5 grams ARL. 358 grams water. 4.5 tsp crushed RYR. (100%)
9. 358 grams cooked sweet rice. 0.5 grams ARL. 465 grams water. 4.5 tsp crushed RYR. (130%)
10. 358 grams cooked sweet rice. 0.5 grams ARL. 537 grams water. 4.5 tsp crushed RYR. (150%)

Not a lot of clues from either appearance or aroma as to how things are going. Unless there is something noteworthy, I'm not going to make written recordings of the appearance.

1. Aroma, rice wine. IE: Yeast, lots of cooked starch aroma. No fruit, no acid.
2. Aroma, rice wine. No fruit, soured milk aroma. Lactic acid may be present.
3. Aroma, rising bread. IE: Very yeast, less starch aroma.
4. Aroma, rising bread.
5. Aroma, rising bread. More alcohol aroma then preceding 4 samples.
6. Aroma, red rice wine. IE: Yeast, fruit, starch smells. This sample has small amounts of visible white mold on the top.
7. Aroma, red rice wine.
8. Aroma, red rice wine and bread.
9. Aroma, red rice wine and bread.
10. Aroma, red rice wine and bread. More alcohol aroma is present then the preceding 4 samples. This sample has moderate amounts of visible white mold on the top.

Nothing really earth shattering this week. Honestly, I'm not expecting much to really compare until harvest time.

I just poured about 1/2 cup of water in my jar . Stirred it up . thought maybe that would help get it going . If not I am going to use some sweet rice and go again

found this very interesting article . scroll down to get to the rice wine http://carolynjphillips.blogspot.com/2011/05/homemade-fermented-rice.html
not the paragraph at bottom about stirring it around after a few days to keep the mold from growing

Just bought a Aroma 20 cup rice cooker . POS cooked it twice and it still was not even close to being cooked except for the little bit in the bottom .
took it back . Bought a 3 cup Oster . it works perfectly and is very fast .
got a new batch going with sweet rice

I finally put this together 3 days ago and all looks good so far. Really looking forward to this. I used 6 cups dry cooked in a standard rice cooker after soaking for 2 hours and straining rinsing until water was running clear. Added 4 yeast ball crushed up and folded into the rice after cooled and being added to a one gallon cookie jar. A few layers of cheese cloth under the lid. Day 2 and I have a good amount of liquid in the bottom (hard to see in pic).

Day 4: more liquid on bottom, a few rice kernels have fallen to bottom, small black mold colony on top. A hint of white fuzz. I smelled near lid (didn't touch it) and there is definitely fermentation going on. Smell was slightly sweet. I'll keep updating on days I see significant changes .

Pasteurized and clarifying.

Two 1 1/2 cup batches currently around day 10 - one with local yeast balls, one with ARL. The ARL batch has produced decent liquid volume so far and is floating a bit, while the local yeast batch is still on the bottom of the jar but has liquid nearly to the top of the rice. There's a lot of mold on top, though - a thin blanket of white mold all over, four or five thick colonies of the black stuff about 1-2 cm across, and one or two 1 cm spots of green mold (uh-oh?).

I may have acted foolishly yesterday when I shook that one up a bit - the idea was to try and get some alcohol on the mold and see if that would kill it, but as of last night it just mixed a bunch of spores up in the liquid. Even if the white and black molds are both alright, I'm afraid the green spots might make it a dumper.

Does anyone know if cooler temps cause a flavor change? i thought i read in this thread somewhere that the cooler temps are use for the rice desert. ive got mine in a home i bought and is unheated the temps have always been below 62 deg on the temp gauge and the other day it got down to 54 deg took the top off and it was still bubbling. kinda wondering if the lower temps will produce a cleaner smoother wine.

bottled my first batch.

recipe: 9 cups of sushi rice, well rinsed (5+times) ,
rice: water 1:1.3(approximate)
Used pressure cooker 5 minutes of high pressure time and rice was overcooked by eating standards.
4 shanghai jiubing balls crushed (actually ground with a coffee grinder)
fermented in 3 gallon food grade plastic. covered with cheese cloth
went 24 days in mostly dark laundry room with temps 70 to 75 degrees

Notes: Had some black spores on the top early.
had a small fruit fly problem for a day or two in second week.
strained through cheese clothe and squeezed.
seemed to have very good conversion, got 3 or 3.5 quarts of wine,
rice fell apart so much--probably due to over cooking.
guessing on ABV 12 to 15% based on feeling after drinking a tall glass.
SWMBWAW (She-Who-Must-Be-Willingly-Agreed-With), who is Chinese, has passive knowledge of this process (from watching her dad and friends' fathers make it) said it looked and smelled like what she remembered

wine characteristics: drier than I would have thought--although still sweet. definite rocket fuel undertones. strong vanilla flavor, slight toffee flavor (rice was slightly browned on bottom of cooker--typical of pressure cooker rice. Almost savoury. very cloudy and only the most minor of settling even after 48 hours--I feel this is due to over cooking with a tad too much water in a pressure cooker. No aceto- off flavors that I noted--even with fruit flies.

Opinion: liked the pressure cooker. it will sterilize the rice so you can let it cool to room temperature before transferring. browning at bottom gave toffee notes (?) maybe (?)
slight over cooking in pressure cooker allow the rice to disintegrate in the fermentation process, so no problems with trapped CO2.
second batch is a few days from bottling