So. Much. Rice.

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Nodak_Brewer

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So I went ahead and decided to make a simple rice wine with Thai Jasmine rice and dried yeast balls from the local asian market. However, my SO and I love the stuff, so decided to ramp up the recipe to 10 lb of rice to maybe get close to 2 gallons of wine once fermented. Well, little did we know just how long the washing, cooking, and cooling process would take, and I learned quickly that cool rice on top doesn't mean you should plunge your sanitized hand into the kettle to stir the gelatinous blob (still can't feel part of my right hand). Burn injuries aside, who else has attempted a larger scale rice wine? Hopefully ours turns out okay, it's currently fermenting in two little big mouth bubblers up in my entryway closet, capped with cheese cloth and twine. If nothing else, we'll have lots of rice vinegar. :rockin:
 
I followed the recommendation of 2g/kilo, but ended up just using two 10 gram yeast balls.
 
In the mega-thread about rice wine, there's directions how to make it, cooking 5 (?) pounds of rice in your brewpot in the oven, then ferment in a paint strainer bag in a bucket.

Sorry about your hand. It should grow back. ;)
 
I frequently make batches in a full 5 gallon bucket. I just leave the lid on loose.
We have an 8-9 cups of rice rice cooker, so I will make 5-6 batches with 2-4 yeast balls crushed and thrown in along with each batch as they are added to the bucket over a day or two. Generally 4+ hours from cooking to cool enough to add to bucket, cooled sitting in rice cooker pot. I'll generally do this over a weekend.
I don't rinse or wash the rice, and let it ferment 5-6 weeks or more. Generally yield 1 cup of rice wine for each cup of dry rice, give or take. I often water it down to get more commercial sake-like, too, which would increase the yield about 15-20%.
 
Thanks for the replies, I definitely will follow in your footsteps to make the process much easier.

I noticed that the jar packed by my SO is fermenting nicely, whereas the other bottle I loaded is not. I packed mine very full and densely, perhaps that will have a negative effect? I suppose I could add a few "bore holes" with a spoon handle or something...
 
The combination of slight over-cooking and heavy mashing with my hand resulted in a paste rather than rice in my fermenter. Will it still be able to ferment easily when this dense?

edit: Moved the contents of the small fermenters into a 5 gal bucket with the lid sitting loosely on top. It's already delicious, as evidenced by the overflow into my closet!
 
I've made around 20 gallons since last october. Tips for making large batches:

1. Use a large oven safe pot (and preheat oven to 375), bring your desired amount of water to a boil on the stove (1.25c per c rice). Remove the pot from the heat, stir in rice, cover and place in oven for 20-35 minutes.

2. Then pour all of your now perfectly cooked rice onto a table covered with aluminum foil. Spread as thin as possible to speed cooling, and increase surface area for mold/yeast spreading.

3. Wait for it to hit 100F then spread the yeast/mold.

4. Move to your fermenter and try to retain heat of 100F for 24-48 hours (drastically decreases brew time, with no sacrifice in quality).

5. After the mold startup period in #4, drop to 65 degrees for remainder of fermentation.

I like to use a fermenter with an airlock as this reduces bacteria sourness, and you can tell when the yeast has slowed to a bottleable rate.

Finally, taste your finished, filtered product at bottling. If it's too sweet, add some water. This extends the yeast's production, gives you more alcohol, and a more accurate flavor.

5 gallons takes roughly 20 lbs of rice.
 
Thanks all. I'll definitely implement improvements next time.

How oxidation resistant is rice wine? After fermentation I plan on pouring the liquid/solid mix into a 5 gal paint strainer bag in another food bucket, then squeezing the liquids out of the rice mush. I anticipate there will be more than a few splashes. Maybe I'm just paranoid from my mead/beer making, but I try to always avoid splashing post fermentation.

I'd also like to stabilize, but I doubt I'll be able to stop fermentation for my normal sorbate/sulfite addition. Besides, I have no clue what volume I'll have anyway.
 
Very resistant, some sake brewers put the slurry in a bag and let gravity do all the straining. Lots of contact with air in that process.

You can also pasteurize, this helps settle particulate even without bentonite (and preserves flavor).
 
Does pasteurization drive off flavor like it tends to do with mead? I like the idea of pasteurizing sake as it seems like a simpler way to stop fermentation prior to stabilisation. Also, what method do you use to pasteurize?
 
No need to pasteurize if you just let it finish fermentation completely before bottling. You can always back sweeten as with ciders and meads. Just an idea. The other ideas suggested will work just fine too.
 
If you don't pasteurize, letting it finish w/ yeast ball will make it sour. Pasteurizing kills the yeast, but doesn't significantly change the flavor if you use this method: 165 for 15 seconds or 140 for 45 seconds. 165 uncovered should remove some of the methanol since it evaporates at lower temps than ethanol. I've only done the 140 so far though.

Volume should be 1:1 dry cups rice to rice wine.
 
I took a small sample today with my dedicated turkey baster. It's boozy and sour, which makes me a little nervous. I didn't expect the sourness and hopefully that'll go away. I moved the fermenter to my chest freezer that's at 64F, it had been at room temp in my closet for two weeks.

Assuming the sourness isn't an issue later, I plan on pasteurizing as mentioned but also would like to use bentonite to clear it up, then add sulfite (sorbate isn't required after pasteurizing due to killed yeast I assume).
 
This has been covered in the main rice wine thread, but I have never had a batch go sour. I have used Hang Hing (Maritime Products, Co.) yeast balls for 25+ batches now without a single incidence of souring. I also always let it finish fermenting, 5-6+ weeks, before harvesting. Not sure which yeast balls everyone else is using, nor their sanitation practices. This has included fermentation at a wide range of temperatures in a jar or bucket with a loose lid to allow CO2 escape.
That said, I doubt that the sourness will decrease, if anything it will likely increase if you do not pasteurize. If the rice wine is strong enough, and has enough sweet to balance the sour, I would pasteurize it to stop fermentation as well as souring.
 
I'm aware of that mega thread, but I like the one I started too :D. Anyway, I decided to strain out the rice wine (basically wine vinegar now) and pasteaurize/sulfite a gallon of it at about 50 ppm. I then bottled it in five 750s. I don't need/want ten bottles of rice wine vinegar so I dumped the remaining gallon. My final volume was exactly what I planned on.. roughly two gallons of wine with 10# of rice. I could've squeezed another half gallon out of the mush, but I was irritated at the loss of my rice wine and gave up.

I'm trying to figure out where we went wrong. I'm very meticulous about cleaning and sanitizing, and about researching prior to starting a batch of something. I know very little about rice wine, though. All I know is that about one week after starting the batch, it tasted wonderful with zero sourness. Perhaps doubling the yeast accelerated the fermentation. Huh. :confused:
 
Temperature, oxygen, and too much water are the three reasons rice wine can sour.
 
Thank you chonas. I read through the mega thread more carefully and found your detailed responses in there as well. I noted all your advice, as well as the advice of others on here and over there. Would it be wise to just leave it alone during the first 24-48 hour 100F initial stage (agitating if a larger batch) and then sampling it occasionally while sitting around 64-65 in an airlocked fermenter? That way I could make sure it's not beginning to sour, and pasteurize when it's where it seems finished and tastes right. Or am I shooting myself in the foot with the sampling by introducing excess oxygen?

My plan for the next batch is 5# glutinous rice cooked to your spec and just one or two yeast balls (5 or 10 g), no excess water. Should I squeeze the bag when the time comes to remove all the liquid, or just let it drip? I had difficulty squeezing 10 pounds of rice effectively.

Regarding bentonite: I would like to clear the wine, but would fear souring during the clearing time where the wine is still unpasteurized. I could pour the wine back out of the bottles once pasteurized into a fermenter again, but that seems like a lot of work and excess oxygen, even with 50 to 100 ppm of sulfite added at bottling.
 
If you're using rice balls, 24 hours tops at 100. The bacteria in them which produces the acid to make the mold habitat more favorable kick into overdrive at high temps. It's a good jumpstart, but risky.

I say you incubate 24 h, add additional yeast (strong strains), agitate, airlock, don't touch for 4 weeks (or bubbles are 20+ seconds apart), pasteurize, bottle for best results.

There are 3 methods of extracting sake in Japan,
1. squeeze the **** out of it.
2. layer the bags so the weight of the top squeezes the bottoms gradually. 3. suspend the bag and let the liquid drain out from the weight of itself.

Those are in order of least to most expensive, wildest to most refined flavor, and largest to least quantity extracted.

Some people add the bentonite while pasteurizing as they require similar temps, never worked with it, I use filters. Pasteurizing + cold crashing will result in 2 weeks of settling time tops, after which you can siphon, then pour the remaining lees into a muslin/canvas bag (1 micron filtration) if you really want to get the most out of your efforts.
 
I noticed that you pasteurize outside the bottle, or that's what I gathered from your explanation. Do you use a double boiler? Surely you don't boil the sake directly, as that seems dangerous/detrimental to alcohol content. Also, wouldn't in-bottle pasteurization result in less alcohol evaporation? I was thinking of using a false bottom in a boil kettle, with the filled bottles placed inside with foil over the tops and cool water heated to 140 for 45 seconds, then removing the bottles to cool then cork. However, that method makes clearing a tad complicated. (see edit below)

You also mentioned incubation; that's the first I've heard of it in terms of rice wine. I'm not totally sure I understand that step, as I just figured I would cook the rice, lay it out over aluminum foil to cool to 100F, sprinkle the crushed yeast ball(s), then put it in a strainer bag in a 5 gal bucket with lid on loosely (never had infections/oxidation with this method). That way it's already in the bag when the time comes to squeeze/press out the liquid. Oh, and very interesting points about flavor versus squeeze method. I had no idea it would affect flavor so much. Interesting!

edit re. pasteurization: I got the idea of pasteurizing a ~2.0 gal batch (around 10# rice) by separating it into two 1.0 gallon glass carboys, like this:

1) place filled carboys on trivet in large kettle with cool water. Measure temp in sake itself, bring to 140F and hold it there for about a minute.
2) remove carboys, let cool
3) add bentonite slurry to each carboy
4) let sit a few days
5) rack clear liquid from carboys into bottling bucket containing k-meta dose
6) bottle with spigot and bottling wand

I'm pretty surprised I didn't think of this sooner. Hopefully it works out.. it's much easier than my previous ideas.
 
Incubating is the 24 hours at 100F, since you're allowing the dormant mold to proliferate.

Pasteurizing in bottles means you can't cool the liquid down immediately. Alcohol lost from pasteurization will be a higher percentage of methanol since it has a lower vapor point, so you don't have to worry about that. Especially since ethanol (good stuff) evaporates at 173F theoretically.

Make sure you remove from heat at asap, and add bentonite when it comes back down to 140. Otherwise, sounds good.
 
Especially since ethanol (good stuff) evaporates at 173F theoretically.

I know you know this already, but just as water evaporates at room temperature, ethanol will definitely evaporate at temperatures much lower than 173F -- just more slowly. I did a batch where I open-pot pasteurized and you could see large amounts of vapor steaming off the pot even at relatively low temperatures. The resulting rice wine was rather flavorless and doesn't have as much alcohol as my other batches which were all pasteurized in sealed bottles. Maybe there are other reasons for that... I don't know for sure. I do know that the vapors coming off the pot were darn powerful. Something to consider if open-air pasteurizing over an open flame.
 
I know you know this already

Hence the "theoretically." The combination of ethanol, water, and methanol also changes the vapor point of each of the individual ingredients.

I guess I should take hydrometer readings before pasteurizing w/ open containers to check alcohol loss at different pasteurization temps. Will only tell total alcohol, and not meth:eth, but still useful.
 
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