Making Traditional rice Wine. Cheap, Fun, and Different

[danmerk23]

Does adding RYR do anything more than the normal yeast balls do? I'm currently on a batch I started in August and it's still bubbly. Here is what I made:

2c jasmine rice
6c sweet rice
Steamed

1/4c RYR + 4 yeast balls and made a powder

I have a thick white layer of mold on top and it's open fermenting about a month. I tasted a bit and it was incredibly sweet. More than I've ever tasted. Is that normal to be so sweet?

 

[MasterCrook]

Does adding RYR do anything more than the normal yeast balls do? I'm currently on a batch I started in August and it's still bubbly. Here is what I made:

2c jasmine rice
6c sweet rice
Steamed

1/4c RYR + 4 yeast balls and made a powder

I have a thick white layer of mold on top and it's open fermenting about a month. I tasted a bit and it was incredibly sweet. More than I've ever tasted. Is that normal to be so sweet?

From my experiences, RYR is added mostly just for colour preference and a different taste/aroma. I find it to add an earthier smell and taste, more texture too. The sweetness lessens after aging. If it's too sweet, try adding a little water before closing the fermentation jar for your next batch

 

[user 211287]

Try adding some water and racking it off into a carboy for another week or two. Taste a sample a few times until its gotten to the sweetness level you prefer. It can get tart quickly if the temps are on the warm side.

 

[Bob_McBob]

Any thoughts on why my first two batches ended up looking so different? On the left is jasmine rice, fermented 17 days, pasteurized and then cold crashed. On the right is glutinous rice, fermented 27 days, cold crashed, racked off, and then pasteurized. Both batches were stirred frequently during fermentation and filtered through the same cloth bag. The jasmine rice is absolutely crystal clear (with sediment in the bottom because I didn't rack it off) but the glutinous rice is completely clean with a lot of turbidity.

I'm looking for a result like the left with a fairly dry wine I can use for cooking and potentially age. I have another large batch of glutinous rice going that wasn't stirred at all and I'm not sure what factors influence the clarity. A lot of people in the thread seem to end up with results more like the bottles on the right even after cold crashing and using something like bentonite.

 

[MasterCrook]

Any thoughts on why my first two batches ended up looking so different? On the left is jasmine rice, fermented 17 days, pasteurized and then cold crashed. On the right is glutinous rice, fermented 27 days, cold crashed, racked off, and then pasteurized. Both batches were stirred frequently during fermentation and filtered through the same cloth bag. The jasmine rice is absolutely crystal clear (with sediment in the bottom because I didn't rack it off) but the glutinous rice is completely clean with a lot of turbidity.

I'm looking for a result like the left with a fairly dry wine I can use for cooking and potentially age. I have another large batch of glutinous rice going that wasn't stirred at all and I'm not sure what factors influence the clarity. A lot of people in the thread seem to end up with results more like the bottles on the right even after cold crashing and using something like bentonite.

My batches always turn out crystal clear. I always pasturize right after bottling, and after a few days it's clear

 

[user 211287]

My best guess assuming both were cooked the same way.

Jasmine rinses clean more quickly than sweet rice. You might try rinsing sweet rice longer before cooking.

 

[jsamyn]

My first batch is definitely a huge success thanks to this thread!

On the 22nd of August I started my first batch, which I fermented for 3 weeks and then bottled, pasteurized and cold crashed. I have to admit that when I tried it that first day the alcohol taste was a bit harsh, but we're now another week beyond that and the flavors are just amazing (my wife agrees). Surprisingly, the most prominent flavor is melon and it reminds me of very ripe cavailllon melons. I'm definitely going to get more rice this weekend to make more.

 

[user 211287]

I just made a test batch with:

2 dry cups Akitaotome short grain rice
1 yeast ball ground
6 tsp distillers malt ground with the yeast ball

I carefully warmed the mason jar and wrapped it in a towel yesterday. It still feels a little warm to the touch today and a small amount of liquid is on the bottom.

 

[Revvy]

Finally after a few years of searching for the yeast balls I stumbled onto them right at the checkout of the new Asian Mega Mart that opened in the Detroit Area.

Last night I threw together 2.5# Jasmine and 2.5# Asian Sweet Rice in a 3 gallon fermenter and chucked it into my new brew closet in my post fire new place.

Not sure how much it will produce but I'm hoping enough to use my nitrogen cavitation infusion method to flavor some with Cascade Hops, some with a Chinese 5 spices flavor, some with ginger and ginseng perhaps, and some with some sort of fruit.

Some friends are having a sushi party around Thanksgiving so I'm hoping this will be my contribution to the festivities.

So does anyone have an idea where in this massive thread is any solid info on folks attempts to pasteurize this stuff? I've lost touch with this thread over the years so I don't know what folk's latest experiments with this stuff has been.

Has anyone gone back and added more rice and more yeast to their established batches? I still have another 5 pounds of rices, and it looks like I could still do more rice, but I ran out of time steaming and cooling the stuff last night.

 

[user 211287]

Ive seen several methods such as authentic sake which you add more rice later. Im not sure if i would add more yeast but adding some koji to the additional rice might be a good idea.

How many yeast balls did you use?

 

[MasterCrook]

My first batch is definitely a huge success thanks to this thread!

On the 22nd of August I started my first batch, which I fermented for 3 weeks and then bottled, pasteurized and cold crashed. I have to admit that when I tried it that first day the alcohol taste was a bit harsh, but we're now another week beyond that and the flavors are just amazing (my wife agrees). Surprisingly, the most prominent flavor is melon and it reminds me of very ripe cavailllon melons. I'm definitely going to get more rice this weekend to make more.

Congrats! Sounds good

 

[user 211287]

Added about 2-3 cups of cooked short grain rice to my 9/21 test batch with distiller malt. The 2qt mason jar is now full. liquid was 3/4 the way up the rice before the additional rice.

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

I've got 4 cups of Thai jasmine rice going right now (holy cow 4 cups of rice is a ton of friggin rice). Smells like bananas and peanut butter when I crack the lid open for a sniff (by far the weirdest combination of smells I've ever gotten from something fermenting). I am going to take half of the resultant rice wine and mix it with about 2 liters of plum juice and let it just barely ferment before crashing it in the fridge.

 

[user 211287]

My batch from post #5172 that looked like pepto cleared up nicely. I removed two bottles earlier and put them in the fridge. The rest i let sit an additional 2 weeks (roughly) at room temp....DELICIOUS!!!!

The two bottles in the fridge while quite tasty still have not settled much. There is only about an inch or two of clear in each bottle. The rest looks like pepto bismul. I can only assume the yeast and enzymes are still active but stalled because of the colder temps. There is probably just enough activity to keep particles suspended in the wine.

Im going to take one out and put it back in room temps and/or pasteurize to see if it clears up faster.

 

[Tsuyako]

I made a big jar of this on Saturday, 5 dry cups of Thai Jasmine rice. Accidentally bought broken Jasmine rice so I hope that's not going to be a problem.

Seriously looking forward to drinking this in a month.

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

My batch from post #5172 that looked like pepto cleared up nicely. I removed two bottles earlier and put them in the fridge. The rest i let sit an additional 2 weeks (roughly) at room temp....DELICIOUS!!!!

The two bottles in the fridge while quite tasty still have not settled much. There is only about an inch or two of clear in each bottle. The rest looks like pepto bismul. I can only assume the yeast and enzymes are still active but stalled because of the colder temps. There is probably just enough activity to keep particles suspended in the wine.

Im going to take one out and put it back in room temps and/or pasteurize to see if it clears up faster.

In your experience, or as a general question to those participating in the thread. Would it be a good plan to just go ahead and pasteurize the batch I plan to add plum juice to? Or will fridge temps be enough to shut down the yeast so theres still residual sweetness in the rice/plum wine?

 

[atsen]

I'm less than 200 pages into the thread but noticed that a lot of people are having trouble with finding the yeast. I assume most of you don't know any Chinese or frequent Asian groceries. I am learning Chinese and do most of my shopping at such stores. I notice most people who find the products find them labeled: 上海酒饼 or 上海酒饼丸, with exceptions made for the fourth character which will look slightly different if written in traditional characters rather than the simplified characters I'm using here. It will still look similar. These words are Shanghai jiu bing and Shanghai jiu bing wan respectively, and "jiu" is pronounced not like "joo" or "jyoo" but like "jyoh." One syllable, has a y, rhymes with "oh!"

The translation could be something like Shanghainese wine cake/biscuit or Shanghainese wine cake/biscuit ball. More generally, this type of product can be called 酒曲 or jiu qu, which means wine yeast.

There are lots of types of wine in China, including grape wine actually, and what we are making here seems to be 稠酒 choujiu, which means thick/dense wine. Actually, wine is a bit of a mistranslation itself - it is used for any alcoholic drink. 啤酒 pijiu is beer, 白酒 baijiu is a Chinese white spirit (白 means white actually), 杜松子酒 or dusongzijiu is gin (dusongzi is juniper). Words for acetone， vinegar and methanol also have characters which contain the right-hand radical in 酒， indicating a semantic correlation, and one of the words for methanol even includes the character 酒 itself. This wine may be used in cooking, but is NOT equivalent to Shaoxing or most other types of Chinese "wines" any more than you could substitute a pilsner for a stout in some recipe. It may very well still come out good, but there are bound to be big differences. I suspect if my Chinese were better, I could get much more information for you lot through Baidu about how to produce other types of Chinese alcohol at home, but unfortunately I only know maybe 1000 characters or so, which means I can read quite a bit depending on topics, but I'm not functionally literate. The language is estimated to have somewhere around 10000 characters, and you aren't really truly literate until you know 2-3000 at least.

Anyway, if you want to tell people about your new wine, you can say it's choujiu, I think that's correct. Both words rhyme with "oh" despite being spelled differently. You could also say 江米酒 jiangmijiu or 粘米酒 nianmijiu if you're using glutinous/sweet/sticky rice (there are different styles, but generally these terms are synonymous).

I don't know about the wine made with red yeast rice. The pages I've seen talking about it use transliterations that make me suspect the authors are working from Cantonese or other non-Mandarin sources. If you find the characters for the name, just plug it into google translate and it ought to give you a translation (maybe a bad one) and more importantly a transliteration as well.

Enjoy, I hope this wasn't a waste of my and your time

 

[atsen]

Also: most Asian markets I know tend to carry an assortment of products from various countries but specialize in the foods of a certain country more than another, e.g. Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese. Sometimes this is to appeal to a broader community, but in some cases it might be because some items simply aren't distributed in a given area, but an equivalent product from another country is available. So I could see the Chinese wine cakes being sold at a Vietnamese shop if they can't find the Vietnamese variety, for instance.

However, sake is brewed so differently from choujiu that I do not believe you're going to find an equivalent product in Japan, though to be fair I am not too certain about the methodology actually involved with sake. At any rate, if a store is really focused on Japanese stuff, it's unlikely the owners would even know to look to stock these things if there isn't a similar item commonly used in Japan, unless Chinese customers kept coming in asking about it. But I can't think of many places in the US where that might be a likely scenario. Maybe Hawaii or some techy areas along the west coast? IDK. I'm rambling, sorry

 

[user 211287]

In your experience, or as a general question to those participating in the thread. Would it be a good plan to just go ahead and pasteurize the batch I plan to add plum juice to? Or will fridge temps be enough to shut down the yeast so theres still residual sweetness in the rice/plum wine?

I THINK many people suggest pasteurizing and then cold crash. How well the yeast continues after just getting cold depends a lot on the yeast. My best guess is, that yeast balls and Angel Rice Leaven will slow much more than say...Lavlin 1116 or 1118.

I put mine in the fridge for two reasons. One was to slow the lactic acid producing bacteria and the other was in the hope that it would clear faster than room temp. Oddly the room temp one cleared faster and tasted just as good. Its only slightly less sweet.

 

[z-bob]

I'm not totally convinced that the RYR I bought isn't just white rice coated with powdered red food coloring.

 

[user 211287]

Mine is. I can mix just cooked rice with RYR and it gets sweet.

 

[Tsuyako]

I'm not totally convinced that the RYR I bought isn't just white rice coated with powdered red food coloring.

It should look like this: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q...947&thid=JN.RG6PqXy7HNRfVkEwdXwGFQ&ajaxhist=0

 

[brooklynkayak]

I'm not totally convinced that the RYR I bought isn't just white rice coated with powdered red food coloring.

Your partially right.

RYR is just rice that has red yeast grown on the outside. This red yeast is used as a food coloring and dye. It does add a slight taste to the rice wine that some may like and others dislike.

 

[MasterCrook]

I made a big jar of this on Saturday, 5 dry cups of Thai Jasmine rice. Accidentally bought broken Jasmine rice so I hope that's not going to be a problem.

Seriously looking forward to drinking this in a month.

Broken jasmine rice works very well, I've done lots of batches with it

 

[atsen]

So I have my first batch started with the wine cakes I bought two days ago. Seems to be going along nicely, but it's only two days in.

This would be too expensive for a regular way to do it, but I got curious if it was possible to make wine faster by simply buying a jar of fermented glutinous rice intended for eating out of the jar and let it sit at room temp. I think it will be viable, but the pint jar of the stuff cost around two bucks, and I don't know if I'd pursue this method again even if it turns out well. At any rate, the ingredients don't list anything fishy like salt, the jar is not vacuum sealed, the directions say to keep frozen or refrigerated, and the jar also says it may contain up to 3.3% alcohol. Upon opening there was a quiet hiss of gas escaping, it had a very vinous aroma, and tasting a few drops of the liquid and noticing the fizziness I'd say it's probably a touch higher than that already, but it's just a guess. Based on all of the above, I assume the yeast and all is alive and kicking in that jar, and that if brought up to room temperature in the dark it should work away just fine until the fermentation is complete. Since the jar is already about half milky-white liquid, I'd be surprised if it took more than a week to finish up, just estimating based on what I've seen in you folks' pictures on here.

I found another interesting discovery at the Chinese grocery, though. I maintain that I do not believe Chinese alcohol is distributed in my area (currently central Ohio) for drinking purposes. Even international/Asian markets that do have alcohol might carry some sake, maybe some relatively lower proof soju, and some beers. That's it, nothing Chinese that I've seen.

However, this shop specializes primarily in Chinese, though it does have a good bit of Korean and Japanese stuff.

Anyway, in the sauces aisle, they have maybe two or three dozen Chinese cooking wines to choose from. Except, not all of them are labeled "cooking" wine. Not all of them say "salt content X.X%." And among those that don't say these things, most importantly they tend to carry a surgeon general's warning about pregnant women not drinking alcohol and such. I don't know how many of these there are - at least a few Shaoxing wines. One of which I'm pretty sure is the red-labeled 花雕 huadiao jiu you see in the picture on Wikipedia's main page for huangjiu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huangjiu

I'm curious if these are in fact meant to be sold for drinking, but are just shipped in from elsewhere in the country and sold as cooking wine since they didn't get them from their wine reps? I don't know. I'm probably not going to buy one to test, but I am a little curious.

Anyway, I also scored some dried sweet potato. I mean, that's besides the point....they just taste awesome

 

[Tsuyako]

Broken jasmine rice works very well, I've done lots of batches with it

Oh good! I was a little worried it would compact to much.

 

[atsen]

So I started a batch the other day. Seems to be working along just fine.

I was curious and wanted to taste it sooner, but with it only being day two and no liquid yet, that's impossible.

I decided to drop the two bucks or whatever to buy a jar of fermented glutinous rice for eating at the Chinese market. It says "may contain up to 3.3% Alcohol" and "keep refrigerated or frozen." It hissed when I opened it, and it tastes a bit more than their estimated ~3% to me, but what do I know. I do know that the jar is about half liquid, and the liquid is bubbling. I loosened the cap (it was just screw on, not vacuum sealed - a good sign) and put it in a closet. I'll probably try it Friday evening or so. It's obviously a live jar, and there's no salt but a little sugar does appear in the ingredients. Still, it's working away, and I figure it will keep fermenting but it has a major head start on my personal batch.

I bet pouring this over cooled cooked rice would also probably work as a starter culture for those who have Asian markets but can't find the wine cakes.

Anyway, it smells nice and looks good.

 

[MasterCrook]

So I started a batch the other day. Seems to be working along just fine.

I was curious and wanted to taste it sooner, but with it only being day two and no liquid yet, that's impossible.

I decided to drop the two bucks or whatever to buy a jar of fermented glutinous rice for eating at the Chinese market. It says "may contain up to 3.3% Alcohol" and "keep refrigerated or frozen." It hissed when I opened it, and it tastes a bit more than their estimated ~3% to me, but what do I know. I do know that the jar is about half liquid, and the liquid is bubbling. I loosened the cap (it was just screw on, not vacuum sealed - a good sign) and put it in a closet. I'll probably try it Friday evening or so. It's obviously a live jar, and there's no salt but a little sugar does appear in the ingredients. Still, it's working away, and I figure it will keep fermenting but it has a major head start on my personal batch.

I bet pouring this over cooled cooked rice would also probably work as a starter culture for those who have Asian markets but can't find the wine cakes.

Anyway, it smells nice and looks good.

Interesting, do you have any pictures?

 

[atsen]

Sorry about the lameness of two very similar posts in quick succession. I posted one, but a few hours later it didn't show up, so I redid it - only to notice after hitting the post button or whatever it's called I was directed to a message for just a second or two saying that it wouldn't be posted until reviewed and approved by a moderator/admin whatever they're called here. Anyway, yeah, I have a few pictures of the jarred product.

Looking good, no? I think probably it will be okay. It sure smells like wine.

Fun fact: as we all have noticed with the wine cakes, sometimes items made for a Chinese speaking demographic are not exactly translated properly on the packaging. They may not be wrong as descriptions of the product, but they aren't translations of the Chinese on the packaging and sometimes might not tell the whole story, as it were.

So, fun fact: the term "fermented sweet rice sauce" isn't wrong, because that's one way of describing what is in the jar. However, the first character 甜 means "sweet," the second 酒 obviously means wine/alcohol, and the third 酿 (exceptions made for difference between traditional and simplified characters) means "ferment."

In fairness, 酒酿 itself refers to fermented glutinous rice; to use 酿 as the verb to make wine it would be 酿酒。 As a learner I notice some things like this that are confusing, for instance 犯罪 is to commit a crime, 罪犯 is a criminal. So, really, I guess if we're treating 酒酿 as one word rather than two, it IS a fair translation. Except, one of the more reliable online resources for a Chinese-English dictionary and translator of short phrases and sentences does translate 甜酒酿 all together as Chinese Rice Wine. But it's an example of one of their misses, I think, because an image search of the same term on their site brings up the food, not the wine. Still, I think it's interesting that at least one name for this food is "sweet wine ferment." Lets you know what it's capable of, I guess.

Anyway, on this jar I think the liquid level is a little beneath the shoulder. Since I have no idea how long this fermentation has been going, and since I'm not really a brewer or a drinker (I got interested in this more because I know little about Chinese alcohol and wanted to learn how this differs from sake, which I used to drink a lot when I was younger and drank often) I don't properly know how to tell when to "harvest" it. I have finally worked through the whole thread, though I skimmed some large portions, and I can see everyone has gotten different results. Some people are saying their batches sometimes finish up with a lot of rice still looking pretty in tact but the wine being robust and complete, other times the rice almost entirely disintegrates as I gather. Maybe this would, maybe it wouldn't. No reason to sweat it as far as I'm concerned though.

 

[brooklynkayak]

I bet pouring this over cooled cooked rice would also probably work as a starter culture for those who have Asian markets but can't find the wine cakes.

I'd guess that there wouldn't be enough of the enzymes to convert a lot of starch to sugar.
I'm assuming they only use enough for that particular batch of fermented rice.

The yeast would multiply, but it can't ferment the starch unless it's converted to sugar.

I have never seen an Asian market that didn't sell yeast balls. They sometimes get hidden in the strangest places.

I have seen them in the candy section and behind the counter in some places.

Ask the people who stock the shelves.