Making Traditional rice Wine. Cheap, Fun, and Different

[trbig]

I'm shopping for a rice cooker. Are the ratings (10 cup, 20 cup, 28 cup) for cooked rice or uncooked?

 

[markm2151]

I'm enjoying a glass of my rice wine now, keep up the good work guys!

 

[trbig]

Also, has anyone made a batch, drained the liquid off, then tried throwing another batch of rice in, mix well, and seen if this works?

 

[Ostomo517]

Also, has anyone made a batch, drained the liquid off, then tried throwing another batch of rice in, mix well, and seen if this works?

I think Leadgolem tried with limited success. I didnt really worry about it because I can readily find the yeast balls 12 for .99 cents

 

[SFGiantsFan925]

I am having interesting results so far with my batch. After almost a week, I still have my 3 mason jars. One all Sweet rice, one all Jasmine rice, and the other a combo of the two. In the jar that is all sweet, there is a LOT more liquid. The combo jar has a decent amount of liquid, and the Jasmine rice jar has the least amount of liquid.

Not sure what any of this means, but maybe the "sweet" ruce has more readily available starches/sugars to convert for the yeast. I will measure the liquid in the end, but the jasmine rice is either slower to produce the liquid, or is just prodces less in general.

FYI: All jars started with pretty much the same amount, cooked the same way, and same size jars. Im excited to see the taste differences in the 3 types. I used about 1 ball per cup of uncooked rice.

 

[nhamilto40]

I'm shopping for a rice cooker. Are the ratings (10 cup, 20 cup, 28 cup) for cooked rice or uncooked?

Rice cooker "cups" are 180 ml of dry rice. They are approximately equal to 3/4 of a US cup.

So a "10 cup" rice cooker can cook up to 10*.75 = 7.5 US cups of dry rice.

If the cooker is just for brewing purposes a steamer works better and is typically cheaper.

 

[WesleyS]

I am having interesting results so far with my batch. After almost a week, I still have my 3 mason jars. One all Sweet rice, one all Jasmine rice, and the other a combo of the two. In the jar that is all sweet, there is a LOT more liquid. The combo jar has a decent amount of liquid, and the Jasmine rice jar has the least amount of liquid.

Not sure what any of this means, but maybe the "sweet" ruce has more readily available starches/sugars to convert for the yeast. I will measure the liquid in the end, but the jasmine rice is either slower to produce the liquid, or is just prodces less in general.

FYI: All jars started with pretty much the same amount, cooked the same way, and same size jars. Im excited to see the taste differences in the 3 types. I used about 1 ball per cup of uncooked rice.

I'll probably experiment a little with sweet rice and a mixture next time. With my current batch I did all Jasmine. This Thursday will be 3 weeks and I have a lot of liquid in my jars. I'm interested to see how much wine I get from them.

 

[Leadgolem]

Also, has anyone made a batch, drained the liquid off, then tried throwing another batch of rice in, mix well, and seen if this works?

I think Leadgolem tried with limited success. I didnt really worry about it because I can readily find the yeast balls 12 for .99 cents

Yup, I did. I used the leftover starch mass to do a second batch. It was successful in that it produced a second batch of rice wine. It did get mold in it, which was not present in the first batch. I considered the experiment inherently prone to infection, so I wasn't exactly shocked.

The rice wine that batch yielded was just fine, but I wouldn't use the starch mass from that batch to start another. The level of infection from a reused starch mass from an already infected batch is very likely to be incredibly high.

The leftover starch mass I had was actually pretty cohesive once the liquid was squeezed out. I ended up breaking it up into lumps about the size of my thumb, and then mixed those into the new rice. I believe a major factor in the infection of the resulting batch was the distance between sections of starch mass. The infecting mold appeared to have originated in the gap between starch mass pieces, not from the starch mass it's self. Though I can't be sure as I didn't discover the infection until I harvested the wine, and the container was opaque.

I hope that helps.

 

[natedoggaz]

For those who need a picture to explain what you need - or for those who are curious and want to know what dried yeast balls look like....here ya go:

 

[Leadgolem]

You need to remove <> from your image embed code.

EDIT: There you go.

 

[Arrheinous]

I'm about a week into the process.

It seems like there's a few discrete phases as far as what I've observed:

Day 1 - Dry phase: no moisture detected other than condensation from putting the rice in.

Day 2 to 3- Sweating phase: Sort of a thick clear (later, straw yellow) liquid is draining to the bottom of the jar and may rise in level along the side of the jar to the top of the rice. Smells a bit strange. I stir up the jar a bit to spread around any yeast in the liquid so it hits more surface area rather than sitting at the bottom.

Day 4 to 5 - Initial breakdown phase: It seems like the individual grains are starting to loose definition especially at the bottom. The somewhat clear or straw-colored liquid is beginning to cloud up.

Day 6 to 7 - Re-absorption of water: The initial liquid separated from the solids in the sweating phase has blended back into the rice as it's breaking down further. The liquid is going into the bulk of the rice rather than being excluded to along the jar. I think one of the jars is 'breathing' CO2 or was just settling from touching it. Starting to smell like rice wine. It has a kind of ice cream texture to it but there are still some grains (they look like they're expanding).

 

[EndlessPurple]

Have my batch going about a week now. Made one batch with 5 dry cups thai jasmine but had to put it in two jars. Interesting in that one jar has mold one top and the other does not. It looks like that photo of the koji on the grain of rice except my mold is about an inch and a half high. Is that how high the mold is for everyone getting it or is it normally just a fuzz level?

 

[HBJ]

I was trying to sift through the whole thread but it's become huge and I can see why. When I was in Taiwan I had an Oolong tea rice wine, I'm trying to figure out if the way to introduce the tea would be during fermentation or as an add on after. Does anyone have some insight into this? Thanks.

 

[sonofgrok]

I was trying to sift through the whole thread but it's become huge and I can see why. When I was in Taiwan I had an Oolong tea rice wine, I'm trying to figure out if the way to introduce the tea would be during fermentation or as an add on after. Does anyone have some insight into this? Thanks.

I don't have any direct experience trying this but my hunch would be to add the tea to finished wine when serving.

 

[saramc]

I was trying to sift through the whole thread but it's become huge and I can see why. When I was in Taiwan I had an Oolong tea rice wine, I'm trying to figure out if the way to introduce the tea would be during fermentation or as an add on after. Does anyone have some insight into this? Thanks.

Many of us add fruit/juice after harvesting. I see no reason you could not add tea.
The other thing, and I may try this, soak your rinsed rice in oolong tea until you achieve the 1/3 volume increase, and/or if you cook instead of steam use oolong tea as your liquid base. I make herb i.fused or flavored rice all the time, and I see no reason that would not work with rice wine.

 

[Ostomo517]

I mixed some of mine with horchata which is a sweet mexican rice drink and its awesome! Just another flavoring option to put out there.

 

[Tamarlane]

I was trying to sift through the whole thread but it's become huge and I can see why. When I was in Taiwan I had an Oolong tea rice wine, I'm trying to figure out if the way to introduce the tea would be during fermentation or as an add on after. Does anyone have some insight into this? Thanks.

you can make the rice with tea as the liquid....google green tea rice and you'll find plenty of recipes...matter of fact I think I saw that on a No Reservations episode about Taiwan so that may be what you are looking for

 

[Xantus954]

Just put together my first attempt. The people at the asian market aren't very helpful but after the 3rd lap around the store I found what I needed. Can't wait for this to be done!

 

[Arrheinous]

I imagine a Mr. Beer setup would work kind of well for this. You could pour off the liquid as it is generated. I'm curious if the initial liquid produced in the first few days (clear stuff) is any different than when it starts to become cloudy without filtering.

 

[BlackPriest]

Hi all,

Looking for some advise, I'm one week into my first attempt, for the first 6 days when I took a whif it smelled quite good really, then yesterday when I sniffed it had a nailpolish remover smell... not at all pleasant.

I haven't read this whole thread (that's a daunting task!) but have seen a few posts when people reported the same smell. Was it concluded that I should trash this and try again instead of waiting another two weeks? My initial error was making the rice like I would do to eat it, mixing 4 cups rice with 8 cups water, boiling, then simmering for 30 minutes, I think it was decided that a 1/1 or 1/1.25 ratio worked better right?

I'll let it sit if others have had success with it, but if not I want to start over and not waste two weeks waiting for my nail polish remover to be finished

Thanks for any input

 

[Pastorken]

I don't know about nail polish smell, but my first couple attempts using sushi rice got a very strong yeast smell after about a week. Almost like sourdough starter. They were drinkable if you held your nose, but not terrible. My latest attempt is now on week #3 using thai jasmine and it still smells petty good. Kind of like a bread dough. I'll probably strain it this weekend.

 

[HBJ]

Thank you for all of the input on the Oolong tea question, they're all good suggestions. I'll just have to try a few different ways and that means mulitple jars...darn. I'll let you know how it turns out!

 

[BlackPriest]

I don't know about nail polish smell, but my first couple attempts using sushi rice got a very strong yeast smell after about a week. Almost like sourdough starter. They were drinkable if you held your nose, but not terrible. My latest attempt is now on week #3 using thai jasmine and it still smells petty good. Kind of like a bread dough. I'll probably strain it this weekend.

Yea it's a definite nail polish remover smell, there was a discussion about it somewhere in this thread, but I'm at work and unable to search too much into what was decided. But if you were to blind fold someone and ask what it smelled like, nail polish would be the answer.

 

[sonofgrok]

Yea it's a definite nail polish remover smell, there was a discussion about it somewhere in this thread, but I'm at work and unable to search too much into what was decided. But if you were to blind fold someone and ask what it smelled like, nail polish would be the answer.

That smell = acetone = not good. Still, what do you have to lose if you let it go and see what happens? Like an unruly child, it may just be a phase...

 

[Ostomo517]

That smell = acetone = not good. Still, what do you have to lose if you let it go and see what happens? Like an unruly child, it may just be a phase...

So just wondering, is it possible to accidentally make acetone instead of wine??

 

[Inner10]

So just wondering, is it possible to accidentally make acetone instead of wine??

You can make ethyl acetate which is similar.

 

[BlackPriest]

That smell = acetone = not good. Still, what do you have to lose if you let it go and see what happens? Like an unruly child, it may just be a phase...

That's what I thought,not good. All I have to loose is waiting five weeks for a decent batch assuming this one will turn out bad instead of trashing it, or trashing it, doing it right and having something tasty to drink in three weeks. So yea, I don't know, if the acetone smell has happened before and the wine has been salvageable then fair enough I'll sit it out, but if all the ones which have had this smell have been no good then I would prefer to trash it and start new like tomorrow.

Just not sure if any of the attempts that have the nail polish removal smell have turned out drinkable. Hope that makes sense, sorry 3/4 of the way through my Belgian 1l Tripple right now lol

 

[saramc]

BlackPriest...why do you say 5 weeks? The recommended harvest is between days 21-30. Just wondering.

From Jack Keller on ethyl acetate contamination via his page on Wine Problems @ http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/problems.asp. (I want to stress acetic acid IS NOT the same thing as vinegar, it only has a similar sour tang and is not recognized by the FDA as vinegar)....

There are three ways a wine can become contaminated and have that famous fingernail polish remover odor.
(1) Ethyl alcohol and oxygen can interact to create acetaldehyde, which can react with oxygen to create acetic acid (vinegar), which in turn can react with ethyl alcohol to create ethyl acetate. This pathway can be easily shut down by preventing oxygen exposure with the wine. Since this is impossible, one can at least minimize it to what is absolutely necessary (racking, stirring, testing, bottling). This can be done by topping up adequately, using an inert gas (such as argon -- or even CO2) to sparge the new carboy of oxygen when racking, leaving the bung on the carboy except when absolutely necessary to break the seal, and keeping sulfur dioxide levels sufficiently high that no vacant molecular interstices exist for oxygen to populate. (2) Bacterial contamination of the wine (by acetobacter) can allow the creation of acetic acid, which then combines with ethyl alcohol in the wine to form ethyl acetate. The key to prevention, again, is maintaining an aseptic level of sulfur dioxide to preclude contamination and/or prevent contamination the same way oxygen exposure is prevented.
(3) Finally, ethyl acetate contamination can be created by yeast under stress as well as by many bacteria besides acetobacter. In the first instance, maintaining an optimal temperature for the yeast strain employed, using a good mineral water in the must (if water is even used), yeast nutrient for non- grape wines, and a nitrogen source (Yeastex-61 or some other specialized nutrient) for yeast strains requiring ample nitrogen will eliminate this type of yeast stress, see Strains of Wine Yeast @ http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/strains.asp.

In the second instance, if you follow the procedures for preventing acetobacter contamination, you will prevent the others as well.

In many cases of ethyl acetate contamination, running a small aquarium pump through an airstone "blows" ethyl acetate away in just a few days. Of course, the wine usually oxidizes during this treatment but can be consumed quickly or converted into a fortified wine in which oxidation is a requirement (such as Sherry or Madeira-type wines). In more severe cases, the ethyl acetate will be blown off only to reveal excessive acetic acid. When this occurs, the wine cannot be saved.
........................................................................

I say just let your batch continue the process and see how this pans out. Of course you can apply any of the recommendations listed by Mr. Keller--may be the saving grace and I do not see any harm coming from the steps. Worst case scenario is you toss it out.

 

[Ostomo517]

I wont quote that huge deal, but thanks sara you rock!

 

[sonofgrok]

I am going to go ahead and re-recommend people use Thai jasmine rice at least for their first batch. It is the only rice I have ever used for this and based on feedback through the thread it seems like the highest success rate. Most of the troubled batches I see here are sushi rice.

This would fit right in with the " more water = more opportunity for trouble" hypothesis.