Clarifying your Rice Wine (Jiu)

A few people have asked me how to stabilize and clarify their Jiu (rice wine). The process involves using hot water, bentonite powder, pasteurizing on your stovetop and cold crashing your wine in the fridge for a few days. This process does remove most of the residual rice solids from the wine, so it will change the flavor from a sweeter wine to a semi-dry or dry rice wine.

What you will need:

Fermented rice wine ready to press
Paint strainer bag or mesh bag from LHBS
Bentonite powder
Sanitizer (star san)
A big bowl
A big jar
A soup/stock pot
Measuring cup
Spoon
Tap water

Ferment your batch of rice wine in your usual method. Collect your equipment and ingredients. Wash and rinse your equipment in tap water only, then sanitize with star san. Here is our equipment and rice ready for pressing.



Place your sanitized mesh bag inside the big bowl and pour out your fermented rice.



Now that all of the fermented rice and liquid are in the mesh bag, close the bag and squeeze all of the liquid into the big bowl. This is what it should look like when it's done....



There we go, a nice big bowl of cloudy Jiu. If you wanted a milky sweet flavor to your rice wine, we'd end our process here. Simply bottle it and drink it young (within a week). But, if what you're after is a shelf stable semi-dry version, let's continue....



Grab your bentonite and measure out 3/4 of a teaspoon and place 1/2 cup of tap water in the measuring cup. Boil the water in the measuring cup in your microwave (takes one minute in my microwave, YMMV). Mix the bentonite into the hot water and stir for two minutes.



Stir it until it's a completely muddy, cloudy mix of water. It's common to have some grit left over in the cup. Don't worry about it if it gets into your wine. It's fine. Slowly pour the bentonite into your Jiu, stirring the Jiu gently while you pour to make sure all of the bentonite comes into contact with the wine.



As you can see, the bentonite is well mixed in and the bright white color of the wine has turned into a muddy color. This is normal and a good sign the bentonite is well incorporated. I also washed out the fermentation jar and sanitized it with star san, as I will be re-using this jar for pasteurizing and then cold crashing the Jiu. See the star san foam in the jar? Doesn't matter, just means its good and sanitary. Take your bentonite treated Jiu and pour it back into your fermenter jar (or another sanitized jar).



Take your soup/stock pot and fill it about 1/2 full. Bring the water in it to 190 degrees f (check it with a thermometer). Yeah, I know. The thermometer says 200 f. That's fine.



Place your jar of bentonited Jiu very gently into the pot of hot water. Remove the pot from heat and let sit for 10 full minutes. If you have a lid that will fit over the top of your jar in the pot, use it. If not, no worries as long as the water completely covers the liquid Jiu. Let it sit off the heat for 10 minutes. This will gradually raise the temperature of the Jiu to a minimum of 160f, pasteurizing it. It won't hurt the flavor, it will kill any potential infection bugs and the yeast in your wine. After 10 minutes, remove the jar from the hot water pasteurizing bath.



Here is our pasteurized batch of Huang Jiu wine. If you look closely, you can already see the rice solids starting to fall out of solution to the bottom of the jar. Place your warm jar of rice wine into your fridge and let it rest for a full 48 hours.

I will post part 2 in two days, stay tuned....

Great post!

I find that if I mix my bentonite in the blender I get really nice results. Just a medium speed for about 2-3 min with near boiling water. Last few times I mixed by hand I think I quit too early and did not mix it well enough.

Damn it. I had to rush it because of the lack of fridge space. I had a gallon of fresh traditional Sake mature today so I had to press that and get it in the fridge so that it can cold crash. I had to re-rack the rice wine to a smaller swing top bottle to take up less fridge territory so the Sake would fit. I decided, hey i'll take a few shots of it at the 24 hour mark just to see the progress it's making. Anyway, here's a look at how the rice wine does at 24 hours. I will post another update after it sits a little longer in a different bottle.



24 hours and you can clearly see that the bentonite has helped pull a lot of rice solids from the wine.



Almost completely clear. There's still a little chill haze but even this will settle out in time. More pics coming at the 48 hour mark.

So I followed this process and after 48 hours am not seeing the results that I expected. Would you say that this may just need more time? I was hoping to bottle it and bring it out tomorrow to drink with some work associates.

Also, when racking, just above the solid white at the bottom is good to go even if it is still a little cloudy?

I would figure that after 48 hours it should be clearer unless you have a pretty high gravity. Was it in the fridge or room temp? If room temp throw it in the fridge and over night it should be much clearer.

If it is not clear by the time you want to bottle then siphon off the rice bed and go ahead and intentionally suck a little up and shake up the bottle a little after corking/capping and also before serving. You can call it "Nigori-zake" which basically means "cloudy sake". Some people prefer sake this way.

So I bottled some for my trip and am drinking the rest tonight. Happy Monday!

And it was chilled so not sure why it didn't clear better. I will try again next batch.

Thanks for the process!

I haven't ever bentonite, only pasturize and my wine turns crystal clear after about 1 week in the basement