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Why do you have a bottle of white vinegar sitting next to a bottle of apple cider vinegar in this rice wine thread?

Did you decant it off after it settled? Hard to see in the red one but the white one looks like there aren't any lees in the bottom.
 
TBBrewer said:
Check out how clear this wine became. This was pasteurized and allowed to settle for a few weeks, nothing else. The pickle car has the wine aging on cacao nibs.
Click to expand...
You have a pickle car? I want one too....


Nice clarity. Interesting that it settled out that much on it's own. I assume you decanted off of the sediment from another container.

I just got some ARL from jak1010 today. This weekend there shall be a new round of experiments. :)
 
dgr said:
Why do you have a bottle of white vinegar sitting next to a bottle of apple cider vinegar in this rice wine thread?

Did you decant it off after it settled? Hard to see in the red one but the white one looks like there aren't any lees in the bottom.
Click to expand...

Yep, just drew off the top of the wine and left the sediment behind.
 
Leadgolem said:
You have a pickle car? I want one too....

Nice clarity. Interesting that it settled out that much on it's own. I assume you decanted off of the sediment from another container.

I just got some ARL from jak1010 today. This weekend there shall be a new round of experiments. :)
Click to expand...

Fixed....

Settled out really well after pasteurization.

ARL is already working for me :)
 
Harvest a liter tonight made from square balls. 22 days in. It's definitely sweeter than the last batch. I find the glass oddly appropriate.
FdxmVvZ.jpg
 
Uncontrollable urge to quote Meet The Parents. "Oh, you can milk just about anything with nipples." "I have nipples Greg. Could you milk me?"

Please do. Try some instant ones while you are at it. Seriously. I would bet you could use these to ferment just about any gelatinized starch. There's a recipe here for potato wine but I don't see where they got any enzymatic activity.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f79/potato-wine-295099/
 
jak1010 said:
Glad to hear it. I've used 1/2 of a packet for 3 cups of dry rice. Let me know how it turns out.

FYI, I've got another ARL experiment that I'm working on. In about 3 days I should be able to share if it turns out. Made with ARL, rice, sugar and a habanero pepper.
Click to expand...

OK, it's finished and I can say that I'm both surprised and impressed. I'm no taste tester but this has a strong alcohol level, a mild sweetness, the distinct heat from the habanero pepper and for the surprises, a noticable fruitiness. I have to think that the fruitiness is from the habanero or the ARL because I didn't use any red yeast rice.

My initial idea was to make a rice wine bloody Mary but this stuff tastes great as is.

I often make vodka martinis and use stuffed olives with a sprinkle of red pepper flake and this reminds me of it.

In about an hour I'll be making a dirty martini with this amazing new favorite of mine.
 
jak1010 said:
OK, it's finished and I can say that I'm both surprised and impressed. I'm no taste tester but this has a strong alcohol level, a mild sweetness, the distinct heat from the habanero pepper and for the surprises, a noticable fruitiness. I have to think that the fruitiness is from the habanero or the ARL because I didn't use any red yeast rice.

My initial idea was to make a rice wine bloody Mary but this stuff tastes great as is.

I often make vodka martinis and use stuffed olives with a sprinkle of red pepper flake and this reminds me of it.

In about an hour I'll be making a dirty martini with this amazing new favorite of mine.
Click to expand...

Awesome! I will be ordering some ARL from you very soon
 
Leadgolem said:
You have a pickle car? I want one too....

Nice clarity. Interesting that it settled out that much on it's own. I assume you decanted off of the sediment from another container.

I just got some ARL from jak1010 today. This weekend there shall be a new round of experiments. :)
Click to expand...

This guy does...


image-2973317001.jpg
 
Fuzzymittenbrewing said:
Awesome! I will be ordering some ARL from you very soon
Click to expand...

Oh yeah baby, this is good stuff. I made and drank the first martini then made another. The third one was half finished when the first 2 clobbered me like a sledgehammer to the head.

I'm hosting a fantasy football draft at my place on 9/3 and I'm serving this. Gonna get the league fu*#'d up!!!
 
trbig said:
I've got a 12 cup batch batch I used the energizer in and in the bin cooling for the night also. So 12 cups dry rice would be a cup and a half of the RYR and 4 yeast balls. I went with just a little more water in the rice this time.. 5 cups water to 3 cups rice. I'll be rolling the rice into balls like you suggested.
Click to expand...


I went on a motorcycle trip for a week and a half. When I left, my rice wine was bubbling nicely. Today, I just got back home, and it's the 21 day mark. Still bubbling nicely and smelling great. Looks like at LEAST the full 28 day mark for this batch... and beyond if it's still working.

What was weird, is when I made it up, the air lock started bubbling after a few hours and bubbled most of the night. Next morning it had stopped and didn't bubble again for several days. Then it started again and hasn't stopped.
 
OK, could someone do a quick explanation of the difference between the ARL and just the yeast balls? Does it taste different? Is it cheaper?
 
trbig said:
OK, could someone do a quick explanation of the difference between the ARL and just the yeast balls? Does it taste different? Is it cheaper?
Click to expand...
What's the difference between US-05, WL-001 and Nottingham and you'd be explaining the differences between the rice wine yeasts.

Angel is the name of the Chinese yeast producer. It happens to come in a powder form. Just like yeast balls, it contains yeast and a mold. The mold converts the start to sugar and the yeast converts the sugar to alcohol. Here's what the mfg has to say about their rice wine yeast.

"Angel Rice Wine leaven is manufactured with microbial culture technology and advanced equipment, and the microbial it contains is very useful to the rice wine fermentation. High purity strains, stable quality, very small quantities can achieve the desired effect."

As far as price, they are ridiculously inexpensive. People are using WAY more than they need to from what I could find. Anecdotally, the woman at the store told me to use one package or one square in 10 lbs of rice. Angel specifies .3% to .4% which is 15 grams for 5 kilos of rice assuming my math is correct. Either way, that's 25 cups of rice which I think I could get 5 or 6 liters out of. My package of square balls was 99 cents. A couple of Chinese round balls is somewhere between 99 cents and $2. I haven't found Vietnamese balls or ARL yet.

I would suggest use what you can find local. If you're ordering, get some of each off ebay from the member that posts here. They're cheap.

I think big balls (Chinese), small balls (Vietnamese), square balls (I don't know) and ARL have all been used successfully in this thread.

I got two distinctly different wines from Chinese round vs square but they weren't made at the same time, temperature or length of fermentation so it really means nothing. Both were excellent and have plenty of alcohol in them.
 
Holy cow I just got lost on google

Fun little step by step for making traditional rice wine.
http://www.trax2.com/stickyrice/stickyricerecipe_01.html

Which through the magic of Chinese characters and google translation led me to find that ARL contains Mucor, Rhizopus and a small amount of yeast. If we trust the translation, they contain Rhizopus nigricans and Rhizopus oryzae
Further google-fu shows scholarly articles on Rhizopus used for saccharification which I believe isn't new knowledge on this board. It appears the Mucor contributes to the process by breaking proteins down to amino acids.

I found a couple of references on fermenting between 70 and 95 degrees.

I found a tasty tidbit on how to culture Rhizopus on bread which could lead someone to making his own rice balls. This plus chewing up a piece of ball leads me to believe that wheat flour is the likely media.
http://translate.google.com/transla...tm&prev=/search?q=%E7%94%9C%E9%85%92%E6%9B%B2

AND the motherload!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Rice wine makes women's breasts larger :ban:

http://translate.googleusercontent....36.htm&usg=ALkJrhjD-aMuVPhwG-lFHNKzBcJkZaY8mQ
 
Wow! I had no idea there was so much knowledge information out there for ARL.

They're the 2nd site I've seen selling ARL for $5 per pack. The other sites say out of stock though. I feel MUCH better about my $2 per pack listing now.

Someone just bought a pack of 5 from me on eBay last night... trb was that you?
 
jak1010 said:
Someone just bought a pack of 5 from me on eBay last night... trb was that you?
Click to expand...


Nope, wasn't me, but another PM sent to you.

Thanks for the ARL info. I wonder though... Since this ARL is powdered, I wonder if you can just kind of sprinkle the pack over the top and close the container up, and let it kind of percolate down to the other rice, or if mixing it throughout is needed. I'm always afraid of contamination in the mixing process I do out on the cookie sheet, and it's tough to try to stir that stuff around in a bucket full of glue-like sweet rice. It'd be nice if I could put the hot rice in the container, close it up over night, then next morning, open just long enough to sprinkle the powder, then close back up. May have to go ahead and try this with a small batch and the powdered yeast balls. I could see it maybe taking a bit longer to finish, but think it should still work.
 
trbig,
Inoculating one small area and letting the mold grow is a common technique in another hobby that grows mushrooms. One of the sites I read last night they put the rice in a container, poked a hole in the middle and poured boiled and cooled water mixed with the powder into the hole. What I can't remember is if they also mixed some of the powder throughout.

Let is know how it goes.
 
Found a quick overview of making your own 'koji rice', since I now want to make miso and refuse to pay $12-20/lb for the koji rice. And I know it is discussed in the sake making thread, the koji rice making. http://www.homegrown.org/m/discussion?id=2263119:Topic:157909 Anyway down in the section, after all the numbered steps, there is a section on temp control & how the koji is impacted by temperature, how one temp range would be desired when the koji is being used for alcohol production versus a flavorful food like miso... "One really interesting thing about koji is that between 32 and 36C (90 and 97F), it produces more amino acids as it breaks down the starches, and between 36 and 42C down the starches it produces more amylase, or sugar..."

But I also liked how the article describes the white furry growth, the matting, etc. And I am tempted to innoculate steamed rice with yeast ball powder and see how a batch of miso turns out. I realize it is not all Aspergillus oryzae , but it does make me wonder. Or just not risk it and use my Vision Brewing koji-kin and go from here, http://www.taylor-madeak.org/index.php/2008/10/17/growing-koji-for-homebrewing-sake?page=2
 
So active today. Lots of links to read. That makes me happy.

I'll be running an experiment this weekend aimed at determining what the optimal proportion of ARL to dry rice is. I'll be running a parallel batch with Chinese rice yeast balls, so I can do a taste comparison as well. Now, should I run some with short grain rice as compared to the Thai jasmine rice... Hmmm, probably to many batches to be practical for a single experiment.
 
dgr said:
golem,
I should have posted this link too. Good starting point for your experiments.
http://en.angelyeast.com/product/17179.html
Click to expand...
Here's something interesting. I've got a known working recipe of 1/2 of a packet of ARL to 3 cups of dry rice. That would be 4 grams of ARL. I just weighed a cup of dry Thai jasmine rice. It weighed, according to my not particularly sensitive food scale, 212 grams. Not a recipe I've tried, but it's jak1010's so it's from a good source. That makes the ARL addition ~0.63% of the dry rice weight.

The manufacturer would have you use about half that, or ~1.9 grams for the same weight of rice.

I've got a very sensitive food scale as well, but it caps out at 200grams. For that reason I'll be doing the rice by volume, and the ARL by weight. The idea here is to establish a best working ratio, and I do have the equipment to do batches that are very precise, so here are the intended experiments.

1. 1.5 cups dry rice. 1 rice yeast balls. 1/3 oz or ~9.4 grams. (control)
2. 1.5 cups dry rice. 2 grams ARL. (known working ratio)
3. 1.5 cups dry rice. 1 grams ARL. (manufactures suggestion, approximate)
4. 1.5 cups dry rice. 0.5 grams ARL.

Typically, I would think you would want to use whichever ratio works the best in batches at least twice this size. Especially since the ARL packet is 8 grams. I'm going to go start the rice now.
 
I would suspect that if one were working clean, the difference between under pitching and over pitching would be a matter of days. There is a set amount of media and if we can prevent infection, we only need to account for the propagation of the mold through the media. In theory, adding one spore or each mold would be enough to get this party started. Any more than that is just using a pitch rate to fight off infection. The magic mushroom guys use nanograms of spores to inoculate their media.

Some of the instructions I read talked about days before removing the liquid from the rice mash. Darn if I could find it now.

I was thinking about one of your earlier experiments. I think it was yours. One of the six or so samples didn't produce much of a result. But the picture showed your media as completely covered in mold. I wonder if that couldn't be used to inoculate a batch of rice?

Sorry if I'm rambling. Vicodin, Flexeril, mead and rice wine are a nasty combination. I highly recommend it.
 
LOL.. dgr, Gonna have to use that last line in my signature if you don't mind.
 
dgr said:
I would suspect that if one were working clean, the difference between under pitching and over pitching would be a matter of days. There is a set amount of media and if we can prevent infection, we only need to account for the propagation of the mold through the media. In theory, adding one spore or each mold would be enough to get this party started. Any more than that is just using a pitch rate to fight off infection. The magic mushroom guys use nanograms of spores to inoculate their media.

Some of the instructions I read talked about days before removing the liquid from the rice mash. Darn if I could find it now.

I was thinking about one of your earlier experiments. I think it was yours. One of the six or so samples didn't produce much of a result. But the picture showed your media as completely covered in mold. I wonder if that couldn't be used to inoculate a batch of rice?

Sorry if I'm rambling. Vicodin, Flexeril, mead and rice wine are a nasty combination. I highly recommend it.
Click to expand...
It probably was my grains experiment. Both the brown rice and the wheat berries failed to yield any useful amount of liquid. The wheat berries did grow completely over with white mold.

It might have been possible to use that to inoculate another batch, but it would have to be done relatively soon in the process I think. I eventually dumped them as they clearly had started rotting from the bottom up.
 
trying this with potatoes. Scrubbed, shredded, and rinsed until clean, 5 medium sized russet potatoes. Steaming now. Will drain until pretty much dry. Looking to get about halfway full on a gallon jar. 2 Chinese balls...
 
Leadgolem said:
Here's something interesting. I've got a known working recipe of 1/2 of a packet of ARL to 3 cups of dry rice. That would be 4 grams of ARL. I just weighed a cup of dry Thai jasmine rice. It weighed, according to my not particularly sensitive food scale, 212 grams. Not a recipe I've tried, but it's jak1010's so it's from a good source. That makes the ARL addition ~0.63% of the dry rice weight.

The manufacturer would have you use about half that, or ~1.9 grams for the same weight of rice.

I've got a very sensitive food scale as well, but it caps out at 200grams. For that reason I'll be doing the rice by volume, and the ARL by weight. The idea here is to establish a best working ratio, and I do have the equipment to do batches that are very precise, so here are the intended experiments.

1. 1.5 cups dry rice. 1 rice yeast balls. 1/3 oz or ~9.4 grams. (control)
2. 1.5 cups dry rice. 2 grams ARL. (known working ratio)
3. 1.5 cups dry rice. 1 grams ARL. (manufactures suggestion, approximate)
4. 1.5 cups dry rice. 0.5 grams ARL.

Typically, I would think you would want to use whichever ratio works the best in batches at least twice this size. Especially since the ARL packet is 8 grams. I'm going to go start the rice now.
Click to expand...

This is interesting... I never knew what the right ratio was. Although, I've come to find that no matter what I brew, beer, wines and meads, I have a tendency to over pitch yeast.
This is great info to have!
 
jak1010 said:
This is interesting... I never knew what the right ratio was. Although, I've come to find that no matter what I brew, beer, wines and meads, I have a tendency to over pitch yeast.
This is great info to have!
Click to expand...

I did 6 cups dry rice to 1 pkt so I guess that is 8 grams. This would put me at .75: 1.
 
jak1010 said:
This is interesting... I never knew what the right ratio was. Although, I've come to find that no matter what I brew, beer, wines and meads, I have a tendency to over pitch yeast.
This is great info to have!
Click to expand...
Haha, me too. The ARL is a little difficult for some of us to get though, so I thought it would be a good idea to find out how much you really need.

TBBrewer said:
I did 6 cups dry rice to 1 pkt so I guess that is 8 grams. This would put me at .75: 1.
Click to expand...
Well, the ratio jack1010 told me he was using was 1/2 packet to 3 cups dry rice. So, you've actually been using exactly the same ratio.

Ok, I've got all 4 batches running now. I was dividing a single batch of rice into 4 different batches of rice wine. Either my scale is a little less accurate then I thought, or there was more wastage in the process then I thought. I'm leaning toward the second, based on how much rice was in my sinks debris catcher. I did the batches in order of lowest ARL content to highest, then the rice yeast ball batch.

I first weighed one of the same kind of jars. Hit tare on my food scale. Then weighed each filled jar with the lid on. I knew I was a little short on cooked rice when I got to the last batch, but I wanted it for flavor comparison anyway. For that, it should work just fine. I just won't be able to use the data comparing the yields...Or rather it will be indicative, but not definitive. That is, after some extra math. In any case, I'll want to do a separate yield comparison experiment.

1. 0.5 grams ARL: 802 grams
2. 1 gram ARL: 785 grams
3. 2 grams ARL: 784 grams
4. Rice yeast ball: 682 grams

I'll post a checkup of them in a week. :)

DSC_0029.jpg
 
Descender said:
trying this with potatoes. Scrubbed, shredded, and rinsed until clean, 5 medium sized russet potatoes. Steaming now. Will drain until pretty much dry. Looking to get about halfway full on a gallon jar. 2 Chinese balls...
Click to expand...

I was actually thinking of trying this with grits yesterday...as soon as I get some more yeast, I think I will. I hope your taters do something good :cross:
 
Descender said:
trying this with potatoes. Scrubbed, shredded, and rinsed until clean, 5 medium sized russet potatoes. Steaming now. Will drain until pretty much dry. Looking to get about halfway full on a gallon jar. 2 Chinese balls...
Click to expand...

Yes. You need to post pictures. 1000 words, you know

;)
 
I started four batches, each one week apart. I'm starting to doubt this will be as useful as I hoped. The temps did vary slightly over the last 5 weeks and I could only control the rest of the process so much when cooking the rice on four different occasions. They were all chinese balls from the same package, same soak, rinse, cook time, and water ratio.

That said... what dates would you harvest at to compare???
2,3,4, & 5 weeks?
3,4,5, & 6 weeks?
Let a couple jars ride longer to see a more pronounced difference like 3,4, 6, & 8 weeks?

Thank in advance for the input. This board is amazing and I honestly read this thread religiously :)
 

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