Making Traditional rice Wine. Cheap, Fun, and Different

[MarcusKillion]

I got your package yesterday ive got a buddy thats always trying to show me how much more heat he can take then me. ill lab rat him and watch the results

my son ate one and said at first it was not as hot as the red ones . then a little later he said it was burning his stomach real bad and then his mouth He ran for the kitchen and was washing out with everything from water to dish soap .

 

[jak1010]

my son ate one and said at first it was not as hot as the red ones . then a little later he said it was burning his stomach real bad and then his mouth He ran for the kitchen and was washing out with everything from water to dish soap .

Ha, been there before. They say yogurt works best. As for brewing with hot peppers, rice wine work great. It can be easy to overdo it so be careful. I've always put red pepper flakes in my martini's. This stuff, when brewed with hot peppers, makes a great martini. Try it. Somewhere in this thread I shared my experience and even posted pics.

 

[MarcusKillion]

put some peach wine flavoring in a bottle . Not too bad but I think i will try some other flavors . Also used some apricot . it was not too bad either . Just used a couple drops in a shot glass.

 

[Gar]

my son ate one and said at first it was not as hot as the red ones . then a little later he said it was burning his stomach real bad and then his mouth He ran for the kitchen and was washing out with everything from water to dish soap .

i grew some jalapinos and hobaneros (im sure i spelled both those wrong) and some others mild peppers this last summer at a house i just bought and they were the hottest versions of these peppers ive ever grown. ive never grown any as vile as you have sent gonna be interesting this next year.

 

[MarcusKillion]

3 people just tried my wine . did not get any response from any of them except for a odd look on their faces . I think they did not like it . It is a strange flavor for sure

 

[MarcusKillion]

Mold . so I read several posts of people getting mold in their wine . I have not had this problem . Must be something specific causing it .
I have a batch going in a large plastic bowl for about a month now . It has only a piece of saran wrap over it loosely with a lid placed on it that does not snap in place nor does it fit tightly and in fact has about a 1/16 inch gap . No mold . Just sitting on the counter with a towel over it .
I do not use any sanitizer to clean it or my jars . I simply wash them in the sink with dish washing liquid . Dawn to be exact.

 

[trbig]

Finally got a big batch to turn out the way my Chinese friend said to make it, except this time I used Jasmine rice.. though I'll probably throw together a batch with sweet rice tonight like they make it with. This turned out very dry with a touch of sweet, but very potent. Previous batches were sour. My friend says warmer temps make it that way and the best wine making temp for this is @ 60 degrees. For this reason, they don't even make it in the summertime.


10 lbs rice made with 5 cups water to 3 cups dry rice
14 lbs water (1.5 gal)
1 bag Red Yeast Rice
10 yeast balls

Cook the rice, throw it in a ferment bucket, add water, stir well until all clumps are broken up and it's soupy, add RYR and ground up yeast balls. Harvest after a month. After the first few days, you might pop the top and give it a stir a couple different times. It likes to form a crust on top, but not sure if it would as bad if I had ground the RYR.

This time, I didn't even bother grinding up the RYR. I just dumped it in with the ground up yeast balls. At the end, the RYR looked like it hadn't even been converted and had the whole grains all still floating on top like they hadn't been converted, but breaking them revealed just a thin mush inside a red shell. I'll probably go ahead and grind from now on, but as red as the wine is, it did it's job.

I ended up with maybe 3 1/2 gals of wine after filtering. I seem to be in the minority, but I prefer the wine clear. The suspended solids have way too much of a moldy rice aftertaste for me and the wine looks terrible. I've stuck it in the fridge and will cold crash it a few days to clear, then bottle it. I'll post a pic of it bottled later.






After I bottle it, I'm going to put some in the fridge and some out in room temp and see what happens to the taste. My friend ages theirs out at room temps for months.. or longer.

 

[trbig]

Just a few hours and it's starting to settle out nicely already.







And I see my camera has the wrong date on it.. lol

 

[jak1010]

Damn that looks good!

 

[trbig]

Thanks, Jak.

Working on a batch of 10 lbs sweet rice tonight with the same recipe. Now that my oldest has moved out, I've got a spare bedroom to ferment stuff out instead of my kitchen bar. If I keep the door closed to the room in these temps, it stays about 60 degrees in there, so I'm going to let this work off in the cool in there. I know the sweet rice makes a lot more sugar than the Jasmine rice does, so I'm hoping for a batch that has maybe a little more sweetness than this one does.

About 6 oz of this stuff accidentally fell into a glass this evening and had to be drank. Really can't taste any alcohol in it with it cold, but that small glass gave me a decent buzz on an empty stomache. Probably not a good social wine. Everybody will be tanked by the end of the 2nd glass. :cross:

 

[trbig]

Just got this batch finished up and put to bed. Man, that sweet rice is some starchy stuff. I put the first gallon of water in the bucket to get it cooled down a bit and stir into a soup, but the rice quickly absorbed that, so I added the other half gallon along with the ground up RYR and 10 yeast balls, and it is more a paste than a wet soup. I did cut the water added to the dry rice just a bit.. 4 1/2 cups instead of 5 because the rice was coming out pretty wet still.

Good night, sweetheart. See you again in a month!

 

[Gar]

Has anyone ever tried dry hopping rice wine?

 

[RegarRenill]

Harvested my 2nd batch. Definitely sweeter, but still has a citrus/acidic tang...also, this second batch is white. 12 hours of cold crashing outside here in PA there was no separation and it looks like 2% milk. Tastes good, though I couldn't try much since I had to head to work

 

[trbig]

Has anyone ever tried dry hopping rice wine?

I'd never heard of anyone hopping a wine, but just did a check and see it's been done, but mostly to barley wine? I'm not a hop fan and use it sparingly even on my beer batches, but rice is cheap. Give it a try!

 

[jak1010]

Harvested my 2nd batch. Definitely sweeter, but still has a citrus/acidic tang...also, this second batch is white. 12 hours of cold crashing outside here in PA there was no separation and it looks like 2% milk. Tastes good, though I couldn't try much since I had to head to work

It tends to separate quickly when cold. I'd say a day or two and you'll get results.

 

[Gar]

I'd never heard of anyone hopping a wine, but just did a check and see it's been done, but mostly to barley wine? I'm not a hop fan and use it sparingly even on my beer batches, but rice is cheap. Give it a try!

the reason i thought of this was a hopped cider i had tried. ill give it a try the next batch tho

 

[trbig]

I don't know what most of you use for cooking your rice, but I use a Tupperware large rice cooker that looks like this.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q...AAB294F83448EFE9DF83F28845CA&selectedIndex=14


I cook 3 cups (Full cups) of dried rice at a time in them and it's done in @ 20 minutes in the microwave. A few months back, we bought a new over-the-stove microwave when we bought a new oven, but we still have the old microwave on the counter for the time being. So.. I bought another of the Tupperware cookers off Ebay (Be careful because there is a smaller size also that has a handle) and can have two batches of rice going at once, plus, they're great for steaming vegetables for dinner. Probably less work to have the big rice cookers you set and forget, but I know several people that make this stuff in smaller batches.

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

 

[trbig]

Well, 3 days in and my big batch still has no activity to speak of. I bought my yeast balls in bulk and have had them for quite a while and keep in my garage. The yeast has either gone bad or I pitched too hot. I opened the lid and the rice is being broken down nicely and tasting the liquid, it's extremely sweet. There are just a few CO2 bubbles, but not what they should be. So.. I pitched a packet of Champagne yeast. We'll see what happens.

Thinking that a month back, the yeastballs worked fine, I'm betting I just pitched too hot this time.

 

[MarcusKillion]

Well, 3 days in and my big batch still has no activity to speak of. I bought my yeast balls in bulk and have had them for quite a while and keep in my garage. The yeast has either gone bad or I pitched too hot. I opened the lid and the rice is being broken down nicely and tasting the liquid, it's extremely sweet. There are just a few CO2 bubbles, but not what they should be. So.. I pitched a packet of Champagne yeast. We'll see what happens.

Thinking that a month back, the yeastballs worked fine, I'm betting I just pitched too hot this time.

Never seen any bubbles in mine at all . If the rice is being broken down then the mold on the yeast balls is doing it's job converting starch to sugar for the yeast to start eating . Give it a week and see how much liquid you have . the liquid will be sweet until the yeast start at it .

 

[trbig]

Never seen any bubbles in mine at all . If the rice is being broken down then the mold on the yeast balls is doing it's job converting starch to sugar for the yeast to start eating . Give it a week and see how much liquid you have . the liquid will be sweet until the yeast start at it .

When you make these bigger batches with this large an area of rice being fermented, they'll bubble vigorously. I've done several of them and never had them take more than about a day to take off.

Yes, I agree the mold on the yeast balls are doing their job... or the RYR. Still haven't figured out it's role in all this besides fruity taste and color. With having 1.3 times the weight of the dry rice in additional water added, it shouldn't be this sweet. It was almost syrup sweet and very little yeast activity. Hoping this champagne yeast takes off and doesn't change the flavor.

 

[trbig]

Well... I threw in the Champagne yeast last night and the batch seems to be taking off this morning. Problem is, I thought this Red Star champagne yeast (Yellow package) was equivelent to the alc. tolerance of the EC1118 champagne yeast. Wrong. So, do I:

1: Leave it alone and see if what few yeast survived from the yeast balls reproduce sufficiently to take the alc higher.

2: I've got a bottle of White Labs Sake yeast that is past it's due date. Try it while there's still plenty of sugars to take off?

3: I've still got the packet of ARL that Jack sent me. I just hate to waste this just for the yeast in it. The starches are being converted just fine. Apparently the mold has a higher temp tolerance than this yeast in the yeast balls.

I just dug around and don't have any 1118 left. I'm leaning towards leaving it alone, though I am probably needing to pitch something else soon if that's the consensus.

 

[MarcusKillion]

I tried putting in some champagne yeast and it did nothing .

Next time you cook your rice put it in a colander and run cold water over it and stir . this breaks up the clumps and cools it off nicely . besides according to the asians it is supposed to be washed off after cooking .

 

[trbig]

Apparently not all champagne yeasts are equal as far as alc tolerance. The 1118 is good up to 20%.

I've heard of washing before, but not after? Seems like you'd lose a lot of the starches that way? Especially on the sweet rice which is pretty wettish still after cooking. I'd like all those starches converted to alc, not washed down the drain.

With the way I've been adding additional water, it cools the rice down a LOT, and though I didn't take a temp reading, it just seemed warm to my hand. These yeast apparently are more heat sensitive than I thought. My Chinese friend said they try to keep the wine @ 60 degrees. My warmer ran batches have been sour many times, so it makes sense.

I'll just have to make sure my rice is cooled off better next time.

 

[chalkdust41485]

So my wife got this big bag of rice online for sushi but the bag says "all purpose rice (excellent for sushi)". Do you think this will work?

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[trbig]

Sushi rice is sweet/sticky rice. It'll work great!

Premium Sushi rice at the Chinese store I buy it from runs @ a dollar a pound. May I ask how much that was?

 

[chalkdust41485]

$25 for 15 lbs. Almost $2 per pound. I'll inform her that she needs to look at some more local Asian stores.

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[chalkdust41485]

Correction: $23

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[trbig]

No biggie, it's just that a lot of people don't HAVE local Asian stores. Closest one to me is @ 100 miles, so I stock up when I go there.

 

[MarcusKillion]

So my wife got this big bag of rice online for sushi but the bag says "all purpose rice (excellent for sushi)". Do you think this will work?

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Home Brew mobile app

All purpose rice probably does not have the sugar content that sweet rice would have . Still should work i guess but perhaps with less alcohol in the end .
sticky ( sweet ) rice is cheap in any Asian store .

 

[MarcusKillion]

Apparently not all champagne yeasts are equal as far as alc tolerance. The 1118 is good up to 20%.

I've heard of washing before, but not after? Seems like you'd lose a lot of the starches that way? Especially on the sweet rice which is pretty wettish still after cooking. I'd like all those starches converted to alc, not washed down the drain.

With the way I've been adding additional water, it cools the rice down a LOT, and though I didn't take a temp reading, it just seemed warm to my hand. These yeast apparently are more heat sensitive than I thought. My Chinese friend said they try to keep the wine @ 60 degrees. My warmer ran batches have been sour many times, so it makes sense.

I'll just have to make sure my rice is cooled off better next time.

http://www.jiangnan.edu.cn/zhgjiu/u3-6.htm scroll down to 3.6.7 Sealed-jar Rice Wine or 3.6.4 XIANG XUE RICE WINE or 3.6.5 Red-Rice Wine


Basically what I did was from this - from here http://carolynjphillips.blogspot.com/2011/05/homemade-fermented-rice.html

Modern method:
( Note Paragraph 3 for rinsing )

1. You will need a very clean 2-quart glass jar with a lid and an electric rice cooker. Start by scrubbing the jar and the insert for the rice cooker with soap and water, pouring boiling water over them, and allowing them to air dry.


2. Rinse the rice three times in running water, drain the rice in a sieve (note that because of the size of most rice cookers, you'll probably have to wash and cook the rice in two batches), and put half of the rice (24 ounces or 6⅜ cups) in your rice cooker. Add 1⅜ cups filtered water, cover, and turn on the cooker. When the rice is fully cooked, repeat with the other half of the rice.

3. Put the yeast ball in a small, clean bowl and pour in ¼ cup of the cooled, filtered boiled water for fermenting, and allow the yeast to soften while you rinse the cooked rice. Place a very clean sieve with medium holes in the sink. Dump one portion of cooked rice into the sieve and rinse the rice under cool tap water to break up any clumps; shake off the water and pour some cooled boiled, filtered water over the rice. Drain the rice again and put it into the clean jar. Repeat this step with the rest of the rice until all of it has been rinsed.

4. When all of the rice has been rinsed and placed in the jar, sprinkle the sugar and cornstarch on top. Mash the softened yeast ball with a clean spoon and add it to the jar; use the rest of the cooled, filtered boiled water (1¾ cups) to rinse out the bowl and into the rice so that you get every last bit of the yeast. Wash your hands thoroughly and use one hand to gently toss the rice with these ingredients. Pat the rice into a more or less smooth layer, and then form a well in the center of the rice, which gives the wine a place to gather the first day. (See the picture at the top.)


5. Clean off the top and insides of the jar with a clean paper towel, cover the jar with a piece of clean cheesecloth and plastic wrap, and then put the lid on so that it is loose enough to allow air to escape, but secure enough so that the cheesecloth and plastic wrap will keep any insects out. Use a felt pen to write the date on the jar so that later on you know when you made it.

6. Wrap the jar with a kitchen towel and place it in a very warm place, like a gas oven with only the pilot light on or an electric oven with only the oven light on. Let the jar sit undisturbed for 24 hours. Check it after that time -- there should be liquid in that well you made in the rice, and the top of the rice should not have any mold on it. (If mold forms on the rice, it either was contaminated somewhere along the line or the rice wasn't fermented in a warm enough place. When you have mold on top, it's best to toss everything out and start over, but as always it's up to you.)

7. Remove the jar from the oven and place in a relatively warm place, like on the kitchen counter, so that you can watch the wine formation take place. After two or three days, the mass of rice will float on top of the wine, and you can start mixing the rice and wine together and further deterring any mold by gently swishing the jar around. It will be ready in around a week, but it only improves as the wine ages. Take whiffs of it now and then - and even a taste (with a really clean spoon) - to make certain that the flavor is sweet and alcoholic. At this point where you are pleased with the flavor, you should store the fermented rice in the refrigerator to keep it from fermenting anymore and turning sour.

I store it warm and dark with a campden tablet .