Beni-Koji. Red Yeast Rice. Old School... like really really Old School

Uranus = Heaven. Nelson Voice - HaaaaHa!

Euripides, you pay for these.

Jocasta: What is it like? What annoys the exile?
Polyneices: One thing most of all; he cannot speak his mind.
Jocasta: This is a slave's lot you speak of, not to say what one thinks.
Polyneices: The follies of the rulers must be borne.
Jocasta: That too is painful, to join in the folly of fools. (Euripides, Phoenician Women 390).

Ah, not so much the drinking eh? I hope you enjoyed the fruits of your labor.

I need a breathalyzer for my laptop

Big Weekend coming up! Off Sat and Sunday, sat is 21 days on the ryr/yeastballs rice wine. Two 5 gallon batches of Gerber ready one @22% w/dady and one @14% Hodgsons Mills, and I'm going to open the ryr/masa bucket again, maybe stir it, maybe even run it. How's you guys stuff coming along?

The last batch of red rice wine I made with the starch mass harvested from the previous batch yielded 2 gallons. I expected closer to 1 1/2 so that was nice. I'm running another crazy 7 way rice wine experiment.

I'm on the first vacation I've had in a long time. It's only a week, but I haven't been able to take a day off in seven months so... Ripped out my bathroom, tomorrow I will start putting it back together.

I also made and bottled an experimental type of banana wine.

...Yeah, I'm rambling. I'll shut up now.

Leadgolem said:

The last batch of red rice wine I made with the starch mass harvested from the previous batch yielded 2 gallons. I expected closer to 1 1/2 so that was nice. I'm running another crazy 7 way rice wine experiment.

I'm on the first vacation I've had in a long time. It's only a week, but I haven't been able to take a day off in seven months so... Ripped out my bathroom, tomorrow I will start putting it back together.

I also made and bottled an experimental type of banana wine.

...Yeah, I'm rambling. I'll shut up now.

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The banana wine looks really interesting, you did a good write-up on the instructions. I'll be harvesting a batch of rice wine either today or tomorrow, but I haven't been doing much experimenting lately.

Mmmmm.... Bananna....... Looks great. Jealous!

edds5p0 said:

The banana wine looks really interesting, you did a good write-up on the instructions. I'll be harvesting a batch of rice wine either today or tomorrow, but I haven't been doing much experimenting lately.

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Thank you. I figured if I was going to post it, it should be clear enough to be duplicate-able. Personally, I can't seem to stop experimenting. I've really only got a couple of recipes that aren't subject to change.

TheDemonSlick said:

Mmmmm.... Bananna....... Looks great. Jealous!

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We will see how things go in a few months. It could still turn nasty, but I doubt it will.

it'll turn out better if you only use glutinous rice.
by the way optimum temp for the enzyme activation is 30-35'C
I have done this wine before as i stay in Malaysia... but it cannot last s best is to drink it all ASAP

choong I think you're talking about nuruk and magkeoli, but I don't have any in any buckets right now. I'm scared to make it because everybody says it's an "acquired taste", and I don't want to do the work then hate it. I will eventually, no doubt....
Today is day 21 on my ryr/yeastballs batch and I'm going to strain it out, here's a pic of it, bucket is tilted to show the liquid. Also, masa/ryr/yballs is looking good, before and after stirring, it's still bubbling away, I'd say at least another week.... but it's watery, not thick like it was, even when I stirred up all the sediment it didn't have that sticky thickness like when I started it. Strong smell of sweet sweet ethanol. Pretty excited for that one.

Ryr/yballs rice wine yeilded 5 ltrs, just over a gallon. It's good though, sweeter and less dry than my last batch, still tastes boozy, guesstimate 12-13%. Bringing a jar to the neighbors for the Bruins game, and got more rice cooking, going to start it back up again asap.
***Edit - The Jar was a Hit. A Couple diffirent chicks said it made them feel warm, I didn't feel that.
Every one of the girls was interested in big Bananna....... drink. Or something.

Very interesting thread.

Making me think about trying this. I feel pretty comfortable with using yeast for beer. And I reallllly love sake. Plus rice is cheap.

I know that sake rice is polished and removes anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of the grain. The more polished, generally the better tasting the wine. I've had some that are highly polished and made in the traditional style not adding water at the end to create a 16% abv, and they're awesome. You guys are just going at it with regular rice and I know that polished rice can be difficult to find, and a rice polishing machine is kinda expensive for a hobby. But good sake is expensive... like $40+ for a bottle. Making it with regular rice would be cost effective.


A few questions though...

Are you soaking the rice before steaming? how long?

When you guys are just putting the koji and yeast straight into the fermentor? Why? When producing sake the rice is usually kept at a warm temp and slightly dried at and the Koji is added. Then the koji is cultivated for 24-36 hours. The pictures I've seen are of rice that looks moldy as if it were going bad. But, really this is the scarification step, akin to having the grains in the mash tun. I think just doing this in the oven at a lowish temp would suffice to create a well converted rice mash. This is where I think I'll start once I get time and gumption. Obviously a bit more work then just dropping it in a bucket and walking away...

Are you using regular beer yeasts? Bakers yeast? I think this would be a big influence on flavor but, with the selection of yeasts available, this would make for a great range of 'tuning'.

After fermentation is done, do you press out the solids when removing them from the liquid? Why so, or not?

What water are you using? As with beer, sake flavor and quality is highly dependent on water. In the early days of sake production, breweries used to cart water from springs over land to the brewery to make the best sake. Now minerals and such can be added... I'll even bet we could find a mineral composition breakdown like with beer.

I think some of the question i'm asking might be redundant, but reading through 18 pages of posts makes it hard to keep everything in memory at once. I'm not even drinking! yet....

thanks, and awesome work!

In no particular order... I don't add any water, although the first batch I did add distilled. I don't soak and steam the rice, although I did the first time. I do rinse the rice very well before cooking it in my rice cooker. I do soak the yeast balls and ryr in warm water. For about 20 minutes before mixing them in. Because polished rice is expensive. And Because we're not making Sake. We are making rice wines, red or white, and experimenting with the asian yeasts. I don't add any yeast except the chinese yestballs and red yeast rice, although I did the first time. I don't press mine because there's a lot of rice solids. The solids don't settle all the way, but I don't mind it, shake it up and drink deep.

Sammymatik said:

... I know that sake rice is polished and removes anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of the grain. The more polished, generally the better tasting the wine. I've had some that are highly polished and made in the traditional style not adding water at the end to create a 16% abv, and they're awesome. You guys are just going at it with regular rice and I know that polished rice can be difficult to find, and a rice polishing machine is kinda expensive for a hobby. But good sake is expensive... like $40+ for a bottle. Making it with regular rice would be cost effective.

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You are bang on with the price consideration. It's just to expensive, and a bit annoying to find.

Sammymatik said:

Are you soaking the rice before steaming? how long?

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I was soaking, I find that it isn't necessary. Cooking the rice with a ratio of 1:1.5 dry rice to water by volume works just as well.

Sammymatik said:

When you guys are just putting the koji and yeast straight into the fermentor? Why? When producing sake the rice is usually kept at a warm temp and slightly dried at and the Koji is added. Then the koji is cultivated for 24-36 hours. The pictures I've seen are of rice that looks moldy as if it were going bad. But, really this is the scarification step, akin to having the grains in the mash tun. I think just doing this in the oven at a lowish temp would suffice to create a well converted rice mash. This is where I think I'll start once I get time and gumption. Obviously a bit more work then just dropping it in a bucket and walking away...

Are you using regular beer yeasts? Bakers yeast? I think this would be a big influence on flavor but, with the selection of yeasts available, this would make for a great range of 'tuning'.

Click to expand...

Though you might not realize it, these two things are related. The rice yeast balls contain both the fungus that produces the enzyme that saccharifies the rice and the yeast. The fungus produces the enzyme, the rice is saccharified, and the alcohol is all being produced simultaneously.

In sake making the steamed rice is first inoculated with koji-kin spores, the koji grows through the rice turning it into koji-komi, then that is added with water and more rice to a larger container where the yeast is added. You then step that up again after allowing the fungus and yeast to work for a little while. All in all, the whole process generally takes between 4-8 weeks depending on the style of sake being made.

The additional water makes sake prone to lacto and acetobacter infection. That is controlled in sake making by careful temperature regulation.


Since high precision temperature regulation is a little beyond the level of work I'm willing to go to, the production of the enzyme, sugar, and alcohol all at the same time is better for me. By controlling the amount of water in the rice, and the length of time the wine goes, you can control the level of lactic and/or acetic acid in the final product fairly easily.

An easy rule of thumb is 3 weeks, then either refrigerate the wine to drink immediately or pasteurize to kill off the acetobacter/lacto. Red rice wine seems to be much more tolerant in this respect, with batches that go to 5 weeks still being consistently good. The flavor is not at all what the "white" rice wine is though. It's much more fruity, and substantially less floral.


Since the enzyme is being produced by a biological source through the whole course of the fermentation, it would not be possible to do this in an oven on a low setting. The necessary enzyme simply wouldn't be present early in the process. You would also be running a risk of killing off the fungus that produces it. Those little guys seem to be even more temperature sensitive then yeast. You could do this late in the process, say at week 2 or so. At that point you should have the enzyme needed to do the conversion, but you would probably kill your yeast and then need to re-pitch.

You could, of course, saccharify the rice artificially with enzyme and then ferment the resulting liquid. Though, I think the flavor you would get would much more closely resemble raw sugar wash then rice wine.

Sammymatik said:

After fermentation is done, do you press out the solids when removing them from the liquid? Why so, or not?

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I do. I scoop solids into a tea towel, and then carefully wring them out. I find this gives me a good yield from the rice, though it is time consuming. It also sometimes leaves more solids in the wine then is desirable. Lately I've been trying filtering red rice wine through coffee filters. It takes a fairly long time for the liquid to percolate, but I find the proportion of remaining solids to liquid is to my liking.

Sammymatik said:

What water are you using? As with beer, sake flavor and quality is highly dependent on water. In the early days of sake production, breweries used to cart water from springs over land to the brewery to make the best sake. Now minerals and such can be added... I'll even bet we could find a mineral composition breakdown like with beer.

Click to expand...

My tap water tastes pretty good. So that's what I'm using.

Sammymatik said:

I think some of the question i'm asking might be redundant, but reading through 18 pages of posts makes it hard to keep everything in memory at once. I'm not even drinking! yet....

thanks, and awesome work!

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Although some of your questions are redundant, I don't think they are redundant to this thread.

Main rice wine thread.
Main sake thread.

Yeah all the Sake recipes were a buttload of work on a pretty strict shedule. Totally not my style.

I did it...

I made red corn whisky...

Half your bucket is junk, rack off the liquid,
The rest is like molasses...

Run it.

Tasty. Still learning it.

Nice! I bet it's really something. Is it still red like I've heard it should be?

TheDemonSlick said:

I did it...

I made red corn whisky...

Half your bucket is junk, rack off the liquid,
The rest is like molasses...

Run it.

Tasty. Still learning it.

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I was so drunk when I posted this...

What I mean is, rack off the liquid and run it...

The sediment is useless, except maybe to reuse as trub,
that's what is like molasses... prolly 1/3 of the volume of the bucket is wasted in this way.

I didn't get red in re gosh darned flux, just to eff with the search engines,
but maybe in pot, we'll see.

Straight at white came clear, back colored w/red angak, impresses the bejeezus out of my Friends.

Cheers!

How did the liquid taste before you ran it? I know you had no will power NOT to try it. lol.