Making Traditional rice Wine. Cheap, Fun, and Different

[FermentNEthinG]

asiansupermarket365.com

Search red yeast. I ordered from them and had my order on my door step a day and a half later. Super fast shipping.

 

[sonofgrok]

Your soak might have been a little long too. I usually soak mine for an hour, then rinse in cold water. You might have ended up with more water absorbed in the rice then you might think. The extra water might account for the tang.

or try not soaking

 

[sonofgrok]

Latest batch at a little under 2 weeks. You can see really well the liquid about 3/4 of the way up and nice rice cap with the visible white mold.

If anyone wants to try some of this... too bad... its mine.

 

[edds5p0]

asiansupermarket365.com

Search red yeast. I ordered from them and had my order on my door step a day and a half later. Super fast shipping.

Thanks, I just ordered a bag.

 

[edds5p0]

or try not soaking

I did not soak my latest batch and it seems to be doing well.

 

[jak1010]

Thanks, I just ordered a bag.

How much was it?

 

[FermentNEthinG]

How much was it?

like 3 dollars. Not bad at all!

 

[jak1010]

like 3 dollars. Not bad at all!

OK good deal. I'm selling them to a few people who don't have easy access to red yeast rice and dried yeast balls. I'm looking to help them and don't want to profit from them so this is good information. Thanks for the help.

 

[SIXFOOTER]

asiansupermarket365.com

Search red yeast. I ordered from them and had my order on my door step a day and a half later. Super fast shipping.

Thank You!
That got it done

 

[edds5p0]

like 3 dollars. Not bad at all!

I did have to pay 8 bucks for shipping though. Your experience may vary.

 

[bottlebomber]

So when I made mine I put a quart jar in the cupboard and kind of forgot about it. It had dropped fairly clear, and is delicious. It is just the one batch so far so I can't claim to know too much about this, but I'm not sure you need to pasteurize this. It seems very stable, the alcohol has smoothed, but very little flavor change over the last 2 months. The mouthfeel is lighter with the solids off, but it is very similar to a white wine, amazingly rice aromatics, balanced sweetness with a soft bite. Delicious. Time to make more.

 

[Leadgolem]

So when I made mine I put a quart jar in the cupboard and kind of forgot about it. It had dropped fairly clear, and is delicious. It is just the one batch so far so I can't claim to know too much about this, but I'm not sure you need to pasteurize this. It seems very stable, the alcohol has smoothed, but very little flavor change over the last 2 months. The mouthfeel is lighter with the solids off, but it is very similar to a white wine, amazingly rice aromatics, balanced sweetness with a soft bite. Delicious. Time to make more.

Huh, ok. I would have thought it would go vinegary.

It's always that time.

 

[Ostomo517]

So when I made mine I put a quart jar in the cupboard and kind of forgot about it. It had dropped fairly clear, and is delicious. It is just the one batch so far so I can't claim to know too much about this, but I'm not sure you need to pasteurize this. It seems very stable, the alcohol has smoothed, but very little flavor change over the last 2 months. The mouthfeel is lighter with the solids off, but it is very similar to a white wine, amazingly rice aromatics, balanced sweetness with a soft bite. Delicious. Time to make more.

I did not pasteurize my last batch and it was fine. Pretty sure Im going to clear out the next batch as well before flavoring. Doing grapefruit again and dry hop not sure what hop going with though.

 

[bottlebomber]

Huh, ok. I would have thought it would go vinegary.

It's always that time.

It may indeed, but not with these ball I've got and not in that timeframe. I'm kind of tempted to make a much larger batch, 15 lbs of rice or so.

 

[edds5p0]

So when I made mine I put a quart jar in the cupboard and kind of forgot about it. It had dropped fairly clear, and is delicious. It is just the one batch so far so I can't claim to know too much about this, but I'm not sure you need to pasteurize this. It seems very stable, the alcohol has smoothed, but very little flavor change over the last 2 months. The mouthfeel is lighter with the solids off, but it is very similar to a white wine, amazingly rice aromatics, balanced sweetness with a soft bite. Delicious. Time to make more.

I suspect that you keeping it from being exposed to fresh air prevented oxidation of the ethanol to acetic acid. You probably also have fermented the sugars moe completely, thus giving anaerobic bugs less chance to make acetic or lactic acids. I like how fast this rice wine is ready, but it seems that we may benefit from giving it a bit more time.

 

[sonofgrok]

dry hop not sure what hop going with though.

Citra

 

[jak1010]

I made these on Wed 3/27 so I'm 1 week and 3 days in...

The big glass jug is made as described in the original post. The welches grape juice container was made with the Red Yeast Rice. Since I made so much Tai Jasmine Rice I had enough to use saramc's method. I rolled the rice into golfball sized balls, rolled them through a bowl with crushed dried yeast balls and then through another bowl of crushed RYR. Dropped them into the container (which was easy since they were small enough to drop right in) filled it right to the top with as many balls as I could, covered it with a coffee filter, rubber band and the original welches lid.

Both of these are 1 week and 3 days old and both have liquid. My only concern is that the RYR batch smells great but the regular batch doesn't smell much of anything. Is it too soon for an alcohol smell?

 

[sonofgrok]

How is everyone smelling these just out of curiosity? Are you opening it? I never smell a thing until harvesting time because that is the first time I ever open it. Maybe that is why mine always smells great...

 

[SIXFOOTER]

So I have clearly done something wrong. I made 2 batches, 1 right after the other. Batch 1 has about an inch of gray fuzz on top, batch 2 none. Identical processing. Everything was clean, I used Iodophor because it was handy. Both batched started out smelling a bit sour, still does. I didn't have a large glass container so I used white food prep buckets 1 gallon. Can't easily see the liquid action going on in there but I can see some seperation. This is day 7.
Suggestions?

 

[WesleyS]

How is everyone smelling these just out of curiosity? Are you opening it? I never smell a thing until harvesting time because that is the first time I ever open it. Maybe that is why mine always smells great...

I was able to pick the jars up and smell near the lid. I'm the same as you. I like to just leave everything alone and not mess with it,opening, stirring, etc. The smell was strong enough where I didn't need to open the jars. I did find myself looking at the jars every day. This latest batch is a little different. I put it all in a 2 gallon bucket with a lid and airlock and put it in the back of my brew closet with my wine and sours not to be disturbed until the 21 days are up.

 

[bottlebomber]

Ha, sonofgrok is becoming like the Revvy of rice wine. "Do not open the jar. You WILL make wine if you leave it the hell alone."

 

[jak1010]

How is everyone smelling these just out of curiosity? Are you opening it? I never smell a thing until harvesting time because that is the first time I ever open it. Maybe that is why mine always smells great...

Never really opened them. But, I smelled near the lids. The one with the RYR does smell good. The other "regular" batch has a smell that reminds me of the glue/paste that we used as kids back in grammar school.

 

[Tabb]

I have few more days till the 21 day harvest day. I really want to pitch some of this on to Asian pear and some on to plum. I'd like to put the fruit in the bottle. Should I pasteurize the whole batch then cut up fruit and put fruit in freezer then put in bottle then bottle pasteurized rice wine on to it? Or should I divide pasteurize some bottle that. Transfer to two buckets some with each kind of fruit?
I need advice.

Any thoughts?

 

[SIXFOOTER]

Putting fruit in there with it unpasturized will wake up the yeasties and get fermentation started again, you will lose some sugar that way and its sweetnes but gain a bit of alcohol. Pasturize, then put on fruit and let it sit a while, thats my story

 

[sonofgrok]

Putting fruit in there with it unpasturized will wake up the yeasties and get fermentation started again, you will lose some sugar that way and its sweetnes but gain a bit of alcohol. Pasturize, then put on fruit and let it sit a while, thats my story

I always add fruit after harvesting and never pasteurize. We drink it all within a week or two though.

 

[bruin_ale]

Started my second batch today, harvesting the first batch soon - maybe tonight, it's been 3 weeks but it's hard to tell how much liquid is in there. This batch went really well as I was more patient and waited for things to properly cool before adding the yeast balls. My admin at work has a container of peanut butter pretzels on her desk at all times that you can buy at Costco, turns out that it's a gallon and PET, so I grabbed one of the empties and put a batch of rice wine in it. 6C of rice fit perfectly, I may just have her keep giving me the empties

 

[Tabb]

Putting fruit in there with it unpasturized will wake up the yeasties and get fermentation started again, you will lose some sugar that way and its sweetnes but gain a bit of alcohol. Pasturize, then put on fruit and let it sit a while, thats my story

Thanks. Saturday is harvest day so I'll plan on getting the fruits Wednesday or Thursday so I can cut they up and get it frozen.

 

[mpride1911]

I just had a small sample for the first time in a few weeks. Completely different taste than the last time. Tastes like a standard wine, very smooth. I'm impressed, much better than I expected it to turn out after those first samples.

 

[Leadgolem]

How is everyone smelling these just out of curiosity? Are you opening it? I never smell a thing until harvesting time because that is the first time I ever open it. Maybe that is why mine always smells great...

I was able to pick the jars up and smell near the lid. I'm the same as you. I like to just leave everything alone and not mess with it,opening, stirring, etc. The smell was strong enough where I didn't need to open the jars...

Never really opened them. But, I smelled near the lids. The one with the RYR does smell good. The other "regular" batch has a smell that reminds me of the glue/paste that we used as kids back in grammar school.

This is what I did too. Just stuck my nose right next to the threads on the jar and took a long whiff.

The only time I've smelled library paste was when I was harvesting the batch made with regular long grain rice. It was such a clear loser in the grains experiment I didn't see a need to really go into it in all that much detail.

When I was crushing the RYR for the 4+1 batch RYR experiment I did notice that the crushed RYR has a very definite raisin smell. It's rather nice actually.

Any thoughts?

Putting fruit in there with it unpasturized will wake up the yeasties and get fermentation started again, you will lose some sugar that way and its sweetnes but gain a bit of alcohol. Pasturize, then put on fruit and let it sit a while, thats my story

This is true. I usually like to let my yeast break up solid fruit a bit though. I haven't done any fruit additions to the rice wine yet though. I'd like to get a good process worked out before I go messing with it to much.

 

[TheDemonSlick]

Fruits can contain natural yeasts and other stuff especially on the skins. It can grow. If you have pure ethanol it kills everything, but in lower alcohol levels be careful. If you're drinking it like right after adding fruit no worries, but its a posssibility if you let it sit for more than 6 hours depending on temp. Most fruit juices you buy commercially are already pastuerized.