Making Traditional rice Wine. Cheap, Fun, and Different

My folks do this on Lunar new year celebration as well, but instead of wine they made a rice ball and serve as desert. After mixing the rice with yeast, they would form the rice into individual ball about the size of a tennis ball or golf ball. They placed the rice ball neatly in a glass container cover and let it ferment for 3 days only. At 3 days is ready to eat. Take the rice ball out and put on a serving bowl, pour a little bit of the wine liquid that got created during fermentation around the rice ball. Sprinkle it with roasted sesame seed or roasted crushed peanuts. Very delicious. The more you eat the happier you'll get

karalaok said:

My folks do this on Lunar new year celebration as well, but instead of wine they made a rice ball and serve as desert. After mixing the rice with yeast, they would form the rice into individual ball about the size of a tennis ball or golf ball. They placed the rice ball neatly in a glass container cover and let it ferment for 3 days only. At 3 days is ready to eat. Take the rice ball out and put on a serving bowl, pour a little bit of the wine liquid that got created during fermentation around the rice ball. Sprinkle it with roasted sesame seed or roasted crushed peanuts. Very delicious. The more you eat the happier you'll get

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That sounds pretty cool. Is it still just rice and yeast? Or do they add something to make it sweeter?

The wine tastes pretty sweet already.

Unferth said:

That sounds pretty cool. Is it still just rice and yeast? Or do they add something to make it sweeter?

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The sweetness is there without adding anything but some time we add liquid sugar. With a cup of water, sugar to taste and some chop up ginger, bring everything up to a boil and let it shimmer for about 5 minutes. Add a teaspoon of that would be great too.

So to everyone making this, it looks like -

Ratio of Yeast Balls to rice =
1 yeast ball / 1 cup uncooked rice?

Planning on trying it out with some Calrose sushi rice this weekend.
Thanks.

Unferth said:

And how much might this yield?

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Traditional white rice should provide 2 1/4 cup raw rice per pound, and 6 3/4 cup cooked per pkg instructions...168.75 cups per 25 pounds. Whew, that is a tad over ten gallons of cooked rice. I am just imagining cooking it all.

Unferth said:

That sounds pretty cool. Is it still just rice and yeast? Or do they add something to make it sweeter?

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There is a link to sweet fermented rice on page three of this thread. I posted for anyone interested, but you can find recipes aplenty on web, just search for 'fermented rice dessert' or 'fermented sweet rice'. And the three day fermented sushi rice drizzled with its own wine and a few slices of fresh mango is how I enjoyed it, nice and cold. The rice alone was sweet.

nsrooen said:

So to everyone making this, it looks like -

Ratio of Yeast Balls to rice =
1 yeast ball / 1 cup uncooked rice?

Planning on trying it out with some Calrose sushi rice this weekend.
Thanks.

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I used 1 yeast ball/1 cup uncooked sushi rice, but actually meant to use 1 ball to 2 cups uncooked. I plan to use one yeast ball per three cups uncooked rice next go round, and can add more yeast powder if I think I need to--since I have looked at it every single day.

Finally found info about sake rice: http://www.sake-world.com/html/rice.html

sonofgrok said:

Wow well that stinks. For this wine at least, I have added juice straight to the filtered wine and then put it right in the fridge numerous times with no issues. I have not gotten carbonation or anything in the bottle either.

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It sure did. Almost ended my home brewing adventures. But I am super excited about this and want to supruse my wife in a good way. Just wanted to make sure that wouldn't go south. Great thread. Also just figured out how to attach.

chiteface said:

It sure did. Almost ended my home brewing adventures. But I am super excited about this and want to supruse my wife in a good way. Just wanted to make sure that wouldn't go south. Great thread. Also just figured out how to attach.

View attachment 86120

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HOLY ****!!!!!!!!! Um, yeah, my wife would be wary of homebrewing after that too... And I'm not sure I could blame her.


That adds a whole new layer of meaning to cold crashing your wine!

I took my bottle over to a friend's house last week and it "popped" pretty well when I pulled the stopper out, and there was just the very slightest hint of carbonation detectable in the wine...maybe something like 0.2-0.5 volumes CO2. Of course, I didn't add any sugar to it after fermentation...just transferred it to the bottle. Personally if I were to add any flavorings with additional sugars, I'd use the typical wine processes to stabilize with potassium metabisulfite or campden tablets.



Sticking it in the fridge doesn't halt fermentation, it just slows it down. After all, that is how lagers work.

chiteface said:

It sure did. Almost ended my home brewing adventures. But I am super excited about this and want to supruse my wife in a good way. Just wanted to make sure that wouldn't go south. Great thread. Also just figured out how to attach.

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Um... WOW! Glad you are alright lol. This will be fermented enough already that you should not have any problems.

Great thread, I found the rice balls at my Asian food market in town. The only thing is that it only says rice as the ingredients. Is it the wrong one?

Brewing Clamper said:

Great thread, I found the rice balls at my Asian food market in town. The only thing is that it only says rice as the ingredients. Is it the wrong one?

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Mine just say "Rice, water" for the ingredients.

Brewing Clamper said:

Great thread, I found the rice balls at my Asian food market in town. The only thing is that it only says rice as the ingredients. Is it the wrong one?

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The Shanghai Dried Yeast Balls I am using are made of rice flour, yeast, water; product of Macau.
They do sell just simple rice balls at market (think rice dumplings for soups/stews), so you want to make sure these are yeast balls, or sometimes sold in cake or patty form.

My husband was just wondering if there was a rice wine thread on here and after reading this, we are both excited to make some just in time for Christmas! Thanks for all the research and experimentation! We have a 25 lb bag of jasmine rice and some leftover glutinous sweet rice we use for making sticky rice, and another small bag of sushi rice. I think Santa's getting drunk for Christmas...

Will be happy to share my findings! So excited I want to got start it now!

I am gonna mix this up tonight. At the Asian grocery tonight they had never heard of dried rice balls with yeast in them. They looked at me kinda weird. When I said "sake" they showed me this koji mold rice in the refrigerator section. I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

groundling said:

I am gonna mix this up tonight. At the Asian grocery tonight they had never heard of dried rice balls with yeast in them. They looked at me kinda weird. When I said "sake" they showed me this koji mold rice in the refrigerator section. I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

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That's probably like the difference between dry and liquid yeast. Both will probably work but you may get a little extra complexity from the fresh rice. I think I can get that down in the city if I look around a little, please keep updating.

bottlebomber said:

That's probably like the difference between dry and liquid yeast. Both will probably work but you may get a little extra complexity from the fresh rice. I think I can get that down in the city if I look around a little, please keep updating.

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I got a similar response at 99Ranch market in plano, tx. Eventually I was pointed towards some rice/water balls. No mention of yeast. Probably 25 for $5 so I wasn't too worried. I'll post a pic and let you know how it turns out.

How might one go about safely bottle priming this stuff? I was thinking of cutting it with water to about 9 % and putting it in a beer bottle or two. i wonder at what point this yeast poops out.

My latest batch of blueberry. Delicious.

I have to confess that it carbed ever so slightly.

I am looking forward to some of you all hopefully posting up your final products!

I will definitely update once I get started. My larger glass vessels are all holding Kombucha, kimchee and pickles at the moment, so I will need to acquire another vessel for this. I would really like to start with at least a gallon of cooked rice. It doesn't seem worth it to only end up with a 12 ounce bottle or two, and there is very little that I don't like in the world of alcohol so not liking it really isn't a concern of mine.

bottlebomber said:

It doesn't seem worth it to only end up with a 12 ounce bottle or two

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That is a 1 liter bottle

sonofgrok said:

That is a 1 liter bottle

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How much rice did it take to fill that?

saramc said:

The Shanghai Dried Yeast Balls I am using are made of rice flour, yeast, water; product of Macau.
They do sell just simple rice balls at market (think rice dumplings for soups/stews), so you want to make sure these are yeast balls, or sometimes sold in cake or patty form.

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So about this yeast. Clearly it is a highly alcohol tolerant strain and low flocculating, any ideas on how it would work with a big beer? It seems like it would finish pretty clean as well given the clean crisp taste rice wine typically has.

bottlebomber said:

How much rice did it take to fill that?

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Well it is hard to say because I brewed up about 5-6 cups rice dry but when it came to filtering out the wine, I accidentally spilled probably a 1/4 o it or so.

chiteface said:

So about this yeast. Clearly it is a highly alcohol tolerant strain and low flocculating, any ideas on how it would work with a big beer? It seems like it would finish pretty clean as well given the clean crisp taste rice wine typically has.

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No clue. Worse case scenario, you pour your beer out. The site below mentions a style of rice beer.

I was reading on a sake page, http://homebrewsake.com/home/recipe/, which of course uses koji they grow, etc., but it had steps week by week, talks about priming, aging, etc., and it mentioned that they recommend pasteurizing when finished because it tends to pick up lactobacillus infection quite easily.

Earlier in the thread I read that a couple batches of rice wine got mold on it while it was fermenting. I know this is probably a little normal because it's mold spores that is fermenting it? I'd like to try making a batch but I don' t think I could handle drinking something that had fuzzies growing on it..does this happen every time?

ErinRae said:

Earlier in the thread I read that a couple batches of rice wine got mold on it while it was fermenting. I know this is probably a little normal because it's mold spores that is fermenting it? I'd like to try making a batch but I don' t think I could handle drinking something that had fuzzies growing on it..does this happen every time?

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Mold will happen in this whether you like it or not. Just the degree of visible mold is dependant on the fermenting environment. Now I am more familiar to traditional Japanese style Sake ferments that use Koji or Rice covered in different types of Aspergillus mold. The style used here I have recently learned is more akin to Chinese brewing methods that uses both Aspergillus mold and Rhizopus mold in order to convert the starches into Fructose, Glucose & some Dextrose. Now if you really want to inhibit mold growth you can ferment the brew at a lower temperature. To keep Aspergillus from getting hairy, you want temps as low as 50*F and as high as 55*F. Yet you also need a yeast that can handle being that cold. I am not sure if the yeast in the yeast balls used here has that low of a temperature tolerance. Also not sure on the tolerances of Rhizopus mold so it may get a bit hairy still at those temps or it may slow it down so that the relatively short ferment time here does not allow for it to get hairy. Just try it out regardless & from the sounds of everyone you should be happy with the end result. A little good mold doesn’t hurt anyone

Let it be known that my two batches that are currently fermenting both are hairy on top after a couple weeks, maybe an inch of fuzz, to the point where the rice grains themselves are not visible. It's a nice downy soft white fuzz. I'm fermenting around 80F (ambient temps in my FL garage). I'm still going to harvest the resulting liquid, although I am not sure I want my liquid to come into contact with that fuzz, so the harvesting process might be a bit sketchy. Definitely not going to discard what I have, but I think the next batch I might add water to my jars to get the rice just submerged below the surface, on the hunch that the water will prevent the onset of fuzz, or at least slow it down

negativereaction said:

Let it be known that my two batches that are currently fermenting both are hairy on top after a couple weeks, maybe an inch of fuzz, to the point where the rice grains themselves are not visible. It's a nice downy soft white fuzz. I'm fermenting around 80F (ambient temps in my FL garage). I'm still going to harvest the resulting liquid, although I am not sure I want my liquid to come into contact with that fuzz, so the harvesting process might be a bit sketchy. Definitely not going to discard what I have, but I think the next batch I might add water to my jars to get the rice just submerged below the surface, on the hunch that the water will prevent the onset of fuzz, or at least slow it down

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I definitely would not add water. There is a Thai version like this and it just invites unwanted molds. Do you have your cloth/lid airlock on tight, sanitized everything well etc.?

Ah, ok, thanks for the info on the water.

I'm sure my lid if not tight enough, and probably not sanitized well enough. Going to fire up another batch with a new jar, drowning everything in starsan first, and with extra effort to keeping things clean.

Yeah, I am not a sanitation Nazi or anything but I rinse the jar, lid, and cheesecloth with starsan and I keep the rice covered while it is cooling and stuff. Never have any trouble.

Ugg reading anything about mold just makes me cringe! Mold scares me..if I open something that has mold I usually jump back, or drop it, definitely run for my husband to take care of it Aww well sounds like a great experiment though!!

Okay, I feel a little better. I have some mold in one of my rice wine vessels growing on the top that looks just like post 118 think it was. I guess it's no biggie and to be expected even. My next question is it sounds like most of you are stirring it over the course of fermentation. I haven't yet and I'm about a week in. I guess I'll do that when I get home.

ErinRae said:

Ugg reading anything about mold just makes me cringe! Mold scares me..if I open something that has mold I usually jump back, or drop it, definitely run for my husband to take care of it Aww well sounds like a great experiment though!!

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I hope you never need a shot of penicillin!

mrkrausen said:

Okay, I feel a little better. I have some mold in one of my rice wine vessels growing on the top that looks just like post 118 think it was. I guess it's no biggie and to be expected even. My next question is it sounds like most of you are stirring it over the course of fermentation. I haven't yet and I'm about a week in. I guess I'll do that when I get home.

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I have not ever stirred. I have read its ok to do though.

I'm so not afraid of mold... I'll eat moldy cheese, bread, I don't care. Not black mold, but face it everything is covered with bacteria, parasites and microorganisms.

OK, found this thread yesterday and went out and got some sticky rice and yeast balls today. The lady at the oriental grocry said one yeast ball to 2 pounds of rice. Batch is now "cooking" in a one gallon glass container. Hopefully will end up with something tasty.

3 days in and there is about a cup of liquid in it now. I was concerned at first because I over cooked it slightly and this was the stickiest rice I have ever seen. I mean, it was difficult to get off my hands with soap and water. Anyway, when I first put it in the jar I was concerned that no oxygen would get into the middle. clearly that didn't make a wit of difference.

Also of interest, the top of it is covered in a white mold. Really fluffy looking. I'm not concerned about it because the koji rice had a fine hairy later on it to begin with. I assume that is what koji looks like.