Making Traditional rice Wine. Cheap, Fun, and Different

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These are some angry batches! I brewed these yesterday. They are making my airlocks put in overtime. Kinda screwd myself by limiting that last one to only one gallon. I woke up this morning and had to throw the whole thing jar and all into a home depot bucket...hope it doesn't mold over. I ended up with a left over rice batch (#17) so I threw some rasberries in with it. Wish me luck! Will post these in a few weeks.

View attachment 1416872562973.jpg
 
Zibe said:
Ok bottled my concoction it was 3cups rice and 1pound flaked barley (took water boiled for an hour with a total of 1/4ounce magnum and added flaked barley with 5min left) tasted it and it is rocket fuel. The rice sweetness is gone it tastes dry with a slight hop bitterness and no hop flavor or aroma (even though I did add some of the hops at the end of the boil) no barley or beer flavor at all actually kind of flavor neutral with a little bitterness, unless burning is a flavor cause it friggin burns. Gonna cold crash and rack and reassess right now not sure if I like it or hate it. Debating on throwing a couple whole hop cones (Sorachi Ace of course if LHBS has it) Pic is a 1.5L bottle.

View attachment 237941


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Well I hope you didn't toss it. I make A habit of bottling at least one bottle from all batches and throwing it in the back of the closet for a few months.

My thai pepper batch was insane, I wanted to toss it. I tried it again after a few weeks and it only got better. It was "yeasty" as a friend pointed out, so I started cutting my times down. This batch you made looks tasty! I hope time would mellow it.
 
No I won't toss it I'm looking to make a high abv rice/barley or all barley wine with the rice balls. If I can hit on something that tastes decent I want to collect a few gallons and age it with a little oak. Friend is trying to make a 20+% beer using more traditional methods and I'm trying to beat him with the secret of the balls. Looking for ideas if anyone has done anything similar but I also don't want to hijack this thread as I'm doing something different. What I really want is a Double Russian Imperial Oaked Rice Wine Stout. Yeah that's right now that you've heard of it you want it too.


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Arrheinous said:
To scale this up a bit: I used a whole 15# bag of sushi rice for the latest batch and have been fermenting/conditioning it in a broken keg. I used a 2qt starter of rice with 16 yeastballs crushed up to produce a slurry that I could pour over all that rice to more evenly distribute the yeast to initiate fermentation.
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I attempted a starter slurry like yours, for this last group, and It wouldn't get going. I am going to try again and try it further out, like five days maybe.
I wanted to use up my Viet yeast tabs that I had remaining (24), so I crushed them up with some nutrient and enegizer, two tablespoons of sugar and some rice. Three days out and it never started.
 
Anyone ever make this using corn meal vs rice? Does the rice yeast have enough enzyme to change convert corn?


----------
I ferment pretty much everything.
 
wc1376c said:
I attempted a starter slurry like yours, for this last group, and It wouldn't get going. I am going to try again and try it further out, like five days maybe.
I wanted to use up my Viet yeast tabs that I had remaining (24), so I crushed them up with some nutrient and enegizer, two tablespoons of sugar and some rice. Three days out and it never started.
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What's your definition of "never started"? How can you tell it never started? 3days is pretty short, too, to give up on them. You should wait longer to tell if saccharification is taking place.
I've also found the Vietnamese yeast tabs to not ferment as dry as the Chinese yeast balls do. The Vietnamese ones are apparently for making a sweet dessert, not wine. Both generally take 3-4 days before liquid starts to appear in the bottom of the vessel. I don't use airlocks on my batches, so can't speak to CO2 production, though.
 
pdxal said:
What's your definition of "never started"? How can you tell it never started? 3days is pretty short, too, to give up on them. You should wait longer to tell if saccharification is taking place.
I've also found the Vietnamese yeast tabs to not ferment as dry as the Chinese yeast balls do. The Vietnamese ones are apparently for making a sweet dessert, not wine. Both generally take 3-4 days before liquid starts to appear in the bottom of the vessel. I don't use airlocks on my batches, so can't speak to CO2 production, though.
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Hmm never new that @ the Viet ones. I wonderd why there was such a difference in my batches with the two. Chalked it up to different water. Any way there was no motion in that starter ocean...to the observable eye. I still split it between the two big batches (800ml each) soguess I will see post T day. BTW those are the two agressive ones I mentioned in an earlier post.
 
So here is the Kraken soaked Heavy Oaked batch. Pulled this AM for fining over the T day weekend.
Initial impressions...nice color, nice Kraken/Oak flavor, not strong at the moment. I will give it a taste again next week, before pasturizing.

View attachment 1416996253711.jpg
 
wc1376c said:
So here is the Kraken soaked Heavy Oaked batch. Pulled this AM for fining over the T day weekend.
Initial impressions...nice color, nice Kraken/Oak flavor, not strong at the moment. I will give it a taste again next week, before pasturizing.
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That looks a lot better than how I imagined it in my head. Nice color.
 
Harvested a Gallon+ today:D

IMG_5339.jpg
 
The 15# batch of rice wine came out a bit sour. It might have been from some nearby sour beers or fermenting at 75F for so long. The broken keg also wasn't very easy to seal so there's probably a bit of oxidation going on. I didn't think it would be any worse than the jar with cheese cloth method though.

I've got the bottles washed and plan to carry on. What I did find is backsweetening with something like Splenda kills the sour flavor and makes the wine far more palatable. If it's fixed then I'll have 12 750ml for the office party next week on top of 5G milk stout and 5G Xmas tripel.
 
I couldn't stand it any longer and I squeezed mine on Thanksgiving (3 1/2 weeks) From 1 cup of sweet rice, 1 cup of medium-grain, and 2 cups of water, I got about 3 cups of cloudy white liquid (looked kinda like milk) and a ball of solids about the size of a tennis ball.

It (the liquid) was very sweet, and also had a little bitterness to it that I didn't expect. The flavor was complex and kind of fruity, and alcoholic. It mixed well with a little unsweetened cranberry juice. It lasted about 3 days. ;)

I will try to let the 2nd batch go a full 5 weeks. I've bought another package of yeastballs.
 
So no sooner did I take this pic and pull out some Lalvin K1 to rehydrate....and noticed some airlock bubblige.
 
So I think I saved the soured rice wine in the 15# batch.

Overall I mixed up 6L of the clear liquor, 2.5L of filtered solids/sediment slurry, and used 2 cups of generic non-sugar (Splenda) sweetener. This ratio was prepared on a 3 oz scale in a big graduated shot glass. A lot of sampling went on to get it right, not too sweet but enough to counter the sourness.

There really wasn't enough flavor going on - it didn't feel like rice wine. So I boiled a few fractions of an ounce of galangal and annato with a few threads of saffron in a ~1/2 cup of water. Then added this filtered spice water back and pasteurized the whole thing. It scorched the solids a little bit which is okay because that ends up adding a toasted flavor that went over well last time when it happened in the original batch of rice.

Out of the 15# batch I ended up with 11 750mL bottles and a pint-sized mason jar of wine.
 
Arrheinous said:
So I think I saved the soured rice wine in the 15# batch.

Overall I mixed up 6L of the clear liquor, 2.5L of filtered solids/sediment slurry, and used 2 cups of generic non-sugar (Splenda) sweetener. This ratio was prepared on a 3 oz scale in a big graduated shot glass. A lot of sampling went on to get it right, not too sweet but enough to counter the sourness.

There really wasn't enough flavor going on - it didn't feel like rice wine. So I boiled a few fractions of an ounce of galangal and annato with a few threads of saffron in a ~1/2 cup of water. Then added this filtered spice water back and pasteurized the whole thing. It scorched the solids a little bit which is okay because that ends up adding a toasted flavor that went over well last time when it happened in the original batch of rice.

Out of the 15# batch I ended up with 11 750mL bottles and a pint-sized mason jar of wine.
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Dude...you rock! BTW rum toasted oak works, you just gotta pasturize and let it age.
 
The starter was done in two quart jars. I made up the rice, cooled some of it down and ground up the yeast balls into that starter rice. This contained all of the yeast balls for the batch so 16 in two jars. It's pretty much a very wet portion of the cooked rice with all the initial yeast concentrated in it.

Then add some water, maybe 1/2 cup per jar and shake whenever you can for a few days. Storing at room temp was fine. It will generate CO2 after 24 hours and if the lid is on too tight it will carbonate it somewhat.

The goal was to create a slurry that could more uniformly be poured out over the rice bed to begin fermenting everything at once. The yeast is also a year or two old but it started up just fine.

IIRC I only gave the starter a day. And if you want to let it go longer then make the starter batch of rice separate from the main batch. Can't remember how long I waited before adding the starter.
 
The other thing about the rice starter is that I didn't get a lot of flavor and aroma. It's like the yeast wasn't stressed enough to generate all the floral and fruit qualities it had before.
 
Arrheinous said:
The other thing about the rice starter is that I didn't get a lot of flavor and aroma. It's like the yeast wasn't stressed enough to generate all the floral and fruit qualities it had before.
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Got it. Mine is going now, i think it will be full bore by Friday night. Going to do a Blackberry/ Pear batch this weekend.
On another note, I cannot believe how the raisen batches aged. It seems they get stronger everyday. Seems I need to do another few batches.
 
Here is what I pulled last night from my 23 November batches.

From left to right,
-this was batch 17 a mix of left over brown and sweet rice with rasberrys thrown in. total unplanned brewing.

-plain ole brown rice, first time tryin it so I went missionary.

-last one is blackberry

I'll let you know how they turned out later, becaue they looks good.
The second pic is of two of my larger brews, the flavors not where I want it. I might throw them back under a blanket, or rack and let sit for another week.

View attachment 1417775602010.jpg

View attachment 1417776112246.jpg
 
This looks just like Chhaang I had in Nepal. Delicious! But they do add water after a week or so of fermentation then filter out the solids.
 
correction...blueberry not blackberry. Blackberry is coming, about two to three weeks off.
 
wc1376c said:
correction...blueberry not blackberry. Blackberry is coming, about two to three weeks off.
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Both work but blueberries are my favorite.

BTW, this stuff makes for a crazy good martini. Throw in a dash of red pepper flakes and enjoy.
 
I've read this entire thread but it's been a while. Red yeast rice, do I need to pulverize it or is it okay to toss some in as is?
 
I've got an idea stuck in my head to try purifying and culturing the yeast from a yeast ball to see what kind of beer it makes. (it seems to be doing okay in a high-gravity cider, but I don't want to open it up to test it until it clears completely) It might be perfect for barleywines, RIS, quads, etc.

What would be a good way to do that? Brew a gallon of low-gravity extract beer with it, and collect and wash the sediment? Then maybe sanitize it with Cl02 before growing it up?

I don't think the sediment from the cider would be a good starting point, it has been stressed too much by high alcohol and low nutrients.
 
danmerk23 said:
I've asked this before; anyone use corn meal in place of the rice?
Click to expand...

I can't remember if corn meal was done but i do know that someone in this thread posted a bunch of experiments with other items. There was potatoes, spaghetti and others but I don't recall corn meal.

According to the posts, I don't think there was much success.
 
jak1010 said:
I can't remember if corn meal was done but i do know that someone in this thread posted a bunch of experiments with other items. There was potatoes, spaghetti and others but I don't recall corn meal.

According to the posts, I don't think there was much success.
Click to expand...

I thought someone tried it and it didn't really work with regular cornmeal or cracked corn, but it did work with nixtamalized (sp?) corn (tamale mix.) I might have that mixed up with somebody brewing with cornmeal without a cereal mash. Or something.
 
So the Black/Red rice batch was poo poo. No taste, no %. Keeping it around just for intrest, to see if its a late bloomer. The Almond powder batch, didn't flavor out, but the % is there. Oh well on to the next batches.
 
I have read thru about 2/3 of this thread (it took me about two weeks) and I've got one little tiny batch humming along in my cabinet. Despite following all the best practices (sanitizing everything, cooling the rice, proper ratio of water to rice, etc.) it still has a pretty strong acetone aroma. (I think. I don't find it unpleasant, and my brand of nail polish remover has floral fragrance added, so maybe my nose is just mistaken.) I'm not freaking about it. It's still got two weeks to go, so I'm going to continue leaving it alone and let it do what it's gonna do. It's in the back of my kitchen cabinet, so it gets no light. Mine has lots of liquid and the rice grains are still (sort of) intact, but mine has no fuzz growth at all. I used ARL and yeast balls I got from jak. (Thank you!)

Now I'm gonna start my monster batch (brew big or go home!!) with:

15 c. sweet rice / 3.2 kg according to my scale (it's what I've got on hand, and I plan to age it for a while.)
3.2 kg water
1 teaspoon white labs yeast nutrient in the rice boil (we're halfway thru a move and I JUST CAN'T WAIT so I'm gonna do it without my rice maker. I got perfect rice with a pot last time, so I'm gonna use it again.)
5 tablespoons sugar in the boil, to give the yeast something to much on while the amylase gets to work.
40 g. starter balls (4-ish)
1 pkt angel rice leaven
150 g. red yeast rice

Cool the rice well, use sanitized hands to roll the rice into ping pong ball sized, well, balls.
Roll the balls in my powdered starter mix (ARL, RYR, and Chinese balls spun thru my food processor) and stack them in a sanitized 5-gal food bucket with airlock.
Stash it for 3-4 weeks, to be determined by airlock activity.

I'll post progress in about a month!

:)

Thanks to all of you who have contributed to the thread. I'm of half a mind to try to distill and compile it all into a single outlined document at some point. Would anyone want that? I have about six pages of handwritten notes already (up to about pg 280). Maybe an FAQ?
 
emwinna said:
I have read thru about 2/3 of this thread (it took me about two weeks) and I've got one little tiny batch humming along in my cabinet. Despite following all the best practices (sanitizing everything, cooling the rice, proper ratio of water to rice, etc.) it still has a pretty strong acetone aroma. (I think. I don't find it unpleasant, and my brand of nail polish remover has floral fragrance added, so maybe my nose is just mistaken.) I'm not freaking about it. It's still got two weeks to go, so I'm going to continue leaving it alone and let it do what it's gonna do. It's in the back of my kitchen cabinet, so it gets no light. Mine has lots of liquid and the rice grains are still (sort of) intact, but mine has no fuzz growth at all. I used ARL and yeast balls I got from jak. (Thank you!)

Now I'm gonna start my monster batch (brew big or go home!!) with:

15 c. sweet rice / 3.2 kg according to my scale (it's what I've got on hand, and I plan to age it for a while.)
3.2 kg water
1 teaspoon white labs yeast nutrient in the rice boil (we're halfway thru a move and I JUST CAN'T WAIT so I'm gonna do it without my rice maker. I got perfect rice with a pot last time, so I'm gonna use it again.)
5 tablespoons sugar in the boil, to give the yeast something to much on while the amylase gets to work.
40 g. starter balls (4-ish)
1 pkt angel rice leaven
150 g. red yeast rice

Cool the rice well, use sanitized hands to roll the rice into ping pong ball sized, well, balls.
Roll the balls in my powdered starter mix (ARL, RYR, and Chinese balls spun thru my food processor) and stack them in a sanitized 5-gal food bucket with airlock.
Stash it for 3-4 weeks, to be determined by airlock activity.

I'll post progress in about a month!

:)

Thanks to all of you who have contributed to the thread. I'm of half a mind to try to distill and compile it all into a single outlined document at some point. Would anyone want that? I have about six pages of handwritten notes already (up to about pg 280). Maybe an FAQ?
Click to expand...

The acetone smell is not a good sign, there was probably oxidation. I just had 2 bottles of acetone rice wine, it was unpleasant to drink.
 

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