Hitachino Nest Red rice ale and Koji?

Yeah, that's a great thread. Long too! I have a thread for the batch of rice wine I'm doing, using red yeast rice and bakers yeast. I was scared of the Chinese "yeast cakes" but those guys seem to be having a lot of success with it. They have to have some molds in them... just not sure what kind. Yeast alone can't convert rice to ethanol. I think it's probably Aspergillus Oryzae.

BonsaiBrewa said:

Glad to see some activity on this one again! Found this one a couple years ago when I first tried the Nest's Red Rice Ale.
I just stumbled onto the "Making Traditional Rice Wine..." thread and it got me interested in this again. I'm only on page 16...out of over 160!... and wondering about the possibility of combining the normal beer brewing process with a little of the wine process, but using red rice yeast with (or instead of) the yeast balls they use for the wine.
Anyway, I've got quite a few more pages to go on the wine thread, but getting excited about trying this!

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I was looking for some info on monascus purpureus, stumbled across this. If I read that correctly, it was cultured successfully in a liquid medium instead of on a solid one. Solid medium growth being more common when making rice wine.

I was also able to find some red yeast rice, or RYR, at an Asian market in town.

Since the RYR produces an enzyme that converts starch into fermentable sugar, you may need to have starch in the fermentor in order to get any significant growth of the monascus purpureus.

All the red rice wine recipes I've seen have also included some additional sources of yeast. That would imply that the RYR either doesn't ferment, or does so in some way that is undesirable. IE: Fusel alcohol production, and/or very slowly.

I am going to run an experiment with just RYR and rice, but that will probably wait until this weekend. It also won't yield all that much data for about 3 weeks...

Thanks for the links, this weekend I steamed some rice and made a one gallon batch with red rice cultures and some 1.040 wort. Added german ale yeast, it's turned pink and is bubbling away.

Very Cool - ill definitely keep an eye on this!

subscribed!!

The following is from the wikipedia page on Jiuqu, the mold/yeast/bacterial starter from which Baijiu and other chinese liquors are made...

Hongqu

Hongqu or "red starter" (Chinese: 紅麴, 红曲; pinyin: hóng q&#363, also called Angkak, is rice that had been cultured primarily with Monascus purpureus or other red rice molds of the Monascus genus. Available as dried, mold-encrusted rice with a unique red colour, sold as Red Yeast Rice through western Chinese suppliers. Used mostly for Huangjiu and Cu (vinegars) this starter gives the beverage a unique red or purple colour due to the pigments that are produced by members of the Monascus genus. Two very popular varieties of starter ferments are Wuyi Hongqu that involves culturing Monascus with a black mold (Aspergillus niger and/or A. luchuensis) to make the rice black outside/red inside and Huangyi Hongqu that involves Monascus with a yellow mold (Aspergillus oryzae or A. flavus) to make the rice yellow outside/red inside.[5][12][27][35]

Hongqu is prepared in a very similar way to Japanese koji: rice is steamed, cooled and then mixed with the inoculum (1-2%). It is then transferred to an incubation room where the temperature is maintained at 35-40 °C for 4–5 days and the rice is stirred frequently. A modern practice is to steep the rice in weak acetic acid solution for a short period to help create the optimum pH of 3-3.5 that favours Monascus growth. Afterward incubation the rice is removed and dried.[5][35]

Often in the production of Hongqu rice wine, both Hongqu and Xiaoqu are utilized. Recent studies have revealed that Monascus species show strong gluco-amylase activity, but poor proteolytic and lipolytic enzyme production. Also the fermentative yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae was mostly absent from Hongqu starters but present in Xiaoqu. Thus Hongqu is used only to provide red pigmentation and saccharification and as such, they should generally be used in conjunction with another starter with high fermentative capability.[5][12][27][35]

Hey guys, any new discovery? This thread is really interesting.

Just did buy some red koji. Will convert 50% of the grain bill as rice with it, will add it to the mash with Pilsener or pale malt and then afterwards will ferment "normal" with a beer yeast. Will create a new thread for this.

Miraculix said:

Just did buy some red koji. Will convert 50% of the grain bill as rice with it, will add it to the mash with Pilsener or pale malt and then afterwards will ferment "normal" with a beer yeast. Will create a new thread for this.

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A bit late to the party but do you have an update on this attempt? I'm planning on doing basically the same thing to avoid souring instead of adding it to the fermentation like sake. Any koji character left after boiling or just extra enzymes for the mash?

ofKohrs said:

A bit late to the party but do you have an update on this attempt? I'm planning on doing basically the same thing to avoid souring instead of adding it to the fermentation like sake. Any koji character left after boiling or just extra enzymes for the mash?

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Didn't do it at the end, made some red rice wine with the red yeast rice. I doubt that it has conversion potential tbh.