kako187
Well-Known Member
Mine smells like nail polish remover. Is this normal? 7 Days in..
Sent from my HTCONE using Home Brew mobile app
Sent from my HTCONE using Home Brew mobile app
Mine smells like nail polish remover. Is this normal? 7 Days in..
Sent from my HTCONE using Home Brew mobile app
It should smell like cotton candy when it's working right, at least my 28 successful batches have. I dumped 4 when they smelled.
nail polish remover is acetone . since this rice stuff is similar to a starch mash I would think since it starts with nothing but starch it could turn this into acetone . Special fermentations turn starch mashes into acetone and then they separate it with fractional distilling .
you may need to toss this . Acetone does not taste very good . It may also have just made a lot of fusel alcohols that smell similar and that also is not going to taste good .
What could have gone wrong?
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Kako, what type of rice are you using? If you can provide an overview of ingredients, volume and procedure, we may be able to reflect on previous experiences throughout this thread.
I used Thai Sweet Rice, 8 cups dry rice to 12 cups water and 4 yeast balls.
Well, dear fellow rice wine aficionados - I am now up to page 106 of this fine thread but I simply couldn't wait any longer to start my brew. I swore I was gonna read to the end first but...nope!
Started it on Monday 2/10, with 4 cups of sticky rice and 7 cups of water (this was before I read to keep the ratio a bit lower) and cooked that stovetop per some directions I found on the Interwebness about cooking sticky rice. After it was done, I spread it out on a rimmed baking sheet and let cool to about body temp, busted up two rice balls and sprinkled them evenly over the rice, then folded it in on itself a few times and stuffed it into my big plastic gallon (I think!) jug with a lid.
I wrapped it all up in a towel, put the lid on and then backed it off a turn or two to facilitate CO2 release, loosely draped another dishtowel over top of it and set it on the hearth. (No fire happeneing!)
Ambient room temp this time of year runs between 59* and 66*, depending on how warm the day is and whether or not the furnace is running (which is set to 64*).
HWMBO wanted it out of the house because he wants to brew beer this coming weekend and didn't want any weird yeasties abounding, so I put my jar of goodness out in the laundry room, still swaddled, and into a picnic-type cooler.
I checked the temp with a laser thermometer and it's running about 62*. There is a fair amount of liquid developing already, and no mold that I can discern yet. I have NOT opened the top on it nor otherwise molested the stuff, except to take the towel off just enough to check the temp, and the aforementioned banishment to the laundry room!
So far, I'm thinking this is a very fun science experiment and I cannot WAIT to see how it turns out!
THANKS to everyone contributing to this thread, and especially SonofGrok for starting it, and Saramc for all her wonderfully scientific advice (not that I understand it all, but hey - it's intriguing reading if nothing else!).
I'll update at the 3 week mark or in between now and then if anything funky or otherwise interesting is going on.
Temptd2, I think most would suggest not stirring it. Just forget about it until harvest (then make a batch with thai jasmine).
Yep, I'm gonna just let it RELAXXXXX for 3 weeks with no intervention from me!
As for the jasmine rice, it will have to wait a bit - the local Asian market had 5 pound bags of sweet rice at $3.99 each - so I bought 4 bags! I'll definitely try some of the Thai Jasmine after that though, they had it there too.
I like your idea of spreading the rice to cool it faster, although some might argue it makes the rice more vulnerable to unwanted infections. My guess is that the yeast balls are strong enough to overwhelm any such short-term potential infections....Well, dear fellow rice wine aficionados - I am now up to page 106 of this fine thread but I simply couldn't wait any longer to start my brew. I swore I was gonna read to the end first but...nope!
Started it on Monday 2/10, with 4 cups of sticky rice and 7 cups of water (this was before I read to keep the ratio a bit lower) and cooked that stovetop per some directions I found on the Interwebness about cooking sticky rice. After it was done, I spread it out on a rimmed baking sheet and let cool to about body temp, busted up two rice balls and sprinkled them evenly over the rice, then folded it in on itself a few times and stuffed it into my big plastic gallon (I think!) jug with a lid.
I wrapped it all up in a towel, put the lid on and then backed it off a turn or two to facilitate CO2 release, loosely draped another dishtowel over top of it and set it on the hearth. (No fire happeneing!)
Ambient room temp this time of year runs between 59* and 66*, depending on how warm the day is and whether or not the furnace is running (which is set to 64*).
KotC (King of the Castle) wanted it out of the house because he wants to brew beer this coming weekend and didn't want any weird yeasties abounding, so I put my jar of goodness out in the laundry room, still swaddled, and into a picnic-type cooler.
I checked the temp with a laser thermometer and it's running about 62*. There is a fair amount of liquid developing already, and no mold that I can discern yet. I have NOT opened the top on it nor otherwise molested the stuff, except to take the towel off just enough to check the temp, and the aforementioned banishment to the laundry room!
So far, I'm thinking this is a very fun science experiment and I cannot WAIT to see how it turns out!
THANKS to everyone contributing to this thread, and especially SonofGrok for starting it, and Saramc for all her wonderfully scientific advice (not that I understand it all, but hey - it's intriguing reading if nothing else!).
I'll update at the 3 week mark or in between now and then if anything funky or otherwise interesting is going on.
KotC (King of the Castle) wanted it out of the house because he wants to brew beer this coming weekend and didn't want any weird yeasties abounding, so I put my jar of goodness out in the laundry room, still swaddled, and into a picnic-type cooler.
Well, I might have found a new business opportunity while searching locally for yeast balls. Since I knew most the employees/owners of our Asian markets speak very little English, I brought my ipad with pictures from this thread. The first two markets I tried thought I was a salesman and we're overjoyed. Apparently (as far as I could catch) there distributor used to supply them but can no longer get them.
Finally found them at third location I tried, but payed about double the price compared to those I've seen on this thread. Guess they know they have the market cornered!........
buy them online . Not sure how good this deal is but here it is http://www.asiansupermarket365.com/Shanghai-Rice-Cakes-p/hshrcijj.htm
you can also buy that and ryr from china by the kilo real cheap. Search it .
I get them here.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DRIED-YEAST...243?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e851900eb
I know....seamless plug.
After a couple of weeks my first taste and wow! This is tasty, still quite sweet. I see this in a regular rotation, ca't wait to have it when it dries out a bit.
Jak thanks for the hook up!
You're welcome! Glad you like it. Being a brewer of beer and other things, isn't it amazing that you can ferment rice using some strange yeast balls and get alcohol?
I didn't believe it until I tried it for myself.
You know where to find me if (when) you need more.
Day 24 spaghetti and potato finished
Since it is 8:00 am I will not be swallowing.
First the spaghetti:
Color: Cloudy urine.
Smell: Not bad but not great. Very alcoholic. A faint grainy smell. Many floral beer like smells much like a trappist ale or maybe a lambic. Almost smells like a bowl of Wheaties. The smell makes me wish it had some hops in it. A rather sweet floral citrusy smell.
Taste: Also not bad but not great. Drinkable...I think. Quite sweet. Floral notes. Lots of citrusy notes like orange juice. Lots of citrusy aftertaste. Lots of body. Very citrusy like a mixture of orange, lemon, and maybe pineapple juice. A taste almost like several day old Mountain Dew. Has a strong mouth bite but not in an alcoholic way.
Conclusion: Not something I will be doing again. Produced a drinkable product but its just not my thing. But for others this might be worth doing some more investigating.
Potato:
Color: The color of lemon juice.
Smell: Very paint like. Smells exactly like my wife's finger nail polish with a little bit of rotten egg mixed in. I should not have smelled it as hard as I did. Wasn't sure if I was going to survive it. Kind of nauseating.
Taste: It was very hard to bring myself to taste it. When I did taste it I actually gagged and almost vomited.
Conclusion: Nasty! Disgusting!
Epilogue: For others that are interested the spaghetti might be ok. I strongly advise everyone to not make the potato. However, YMMV.
Ewwww.... or you could just stick to rice.![]()
Most of my batches have a kind of "peak" alcohol aroma. Usually in the middle of the fermentation process, and they then calm down during week 3. It doesn't seem to effect the final flavor significantly.I used Thai Sweet Rice, 8 cups dry rice to 12 cups water and 4 yeast balls.
You are actually on the cool side for rice wine, so you might not have as good of a conversion efficiency as you might want....Ambient room temp this time of year runs between 59* and 66*, depending on how warm the day is and whether or not the furnace is running (which is set to 64*).
KotC (King of the Castle) wanted it out of the house because he wants to brew beer this coming weekend and didn't want any weird yeasties abounding, so I put my jar of goodness out in the laundry room, still swaddled, and into a picnic-type cooler.
I checked the temp with a laser thermometer and it's running about 62*. There is a fair amount of liquid developing already, and no mold that I can discern yet. I have NOT opened the top on it nor otherwise molested the stuff, except to take the towel off just enough to check the temp, and the aforementioned banishment to the laundry room!...
I've gotten consistently better results from short grain sweet rice myself. I also personally prefer the wine it produces to the jasmine. The aroma of the jasmine is better, but I like the flavor of the sweet rice better.Yep, I'm gonna just let it RELAXXXXX for 3 weeks with no intervention from me!
As for the jasmine rice, it will have to wait a bit - the local Asian market had 5 pound bags of sweet rice at $3.99 each - so I bought 4 bags! I'll definitely try some of the Thai Jasmine after that though, they had it there too.
Hmm aspergillus likes starch, but I wonder about it being able to address simpler sugars. So, even if it did get in the beer, would it be able to do anything?I laughed at this part! I brew other stuff around my rice wine all the time! Aspergillus which is likely what is performing the saccharification though is a prolific contaminant at least in the laboratory environment.
Hey Jak, you still out of ARL? I'm wanting to do a largish batch with ARL but haven't seen it locally.I get them here.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DRIED-YEAST...243?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e851900eb
I know....seamless plug.
I'm sorry, I can't seem to find the original post. Did you cook the potatoes prior to fermentation?Day 24 spaghetti and potato finished...
Epilogue: For others that are interested the spaghetti might be ok. I strongly advise everyone to not make the potato. However, YMMV.
I'm sorry, I can't seem to find the original post. Did you cook the potatoes prior to fermentation?