Easy Rice Wine (No Straining)
Yield: Approximately 3+ gallons
Time: 10 to 14 days for excellent strength and flavor (or up to 1 month or longer for additional strength and clarity)
Note
I read several hundred comments on this thread before starting my own attempt at home brewing rice wine. Thank you all for sharing your experiences. They really helped me.
My very first brew was successful but it was also messy (all that straining) and time consuming (30 days to potability!). I loved the wine but not the process and the time it took so I tried to simplify the procedure and to make it quicker.
The key, I found, was to first place the cooked rice inside a mesh wort bag, and to then place this bag inside a brewing bucket. By doing so, the wine is filtered while it ferments. The sweet liquid drains through the mesh into the bucket, leaving the dregs behind. This eliminates almost all straining.
The steps below will deliver 3+ gallons of strong, tasty, and fairly clear rice wine within 14 days. If you're willing to wait another 2 weeks, your wine will be even clearer and more potent. This procedure has worked for me several times. I hope it will work for you.
Ingredients
Jasmine Rice 20 cups (or 10 pounds raw rice estimated @ 2 cups/pound)
Chinese Yeast Balls 6 each (generally 2 small packets)
Glutinous Rice Flour* 6 tablespoons
Tap Water 40 cups (2 cups water per cup of raw rice)
Distilled Water 1/2 Gallon (or boiled water at room temperature)
Utensils
1 Large Pot with Lid (5+ gallons)
2 Potholders (make sure they're dry)
1 Wood or Steel Spoon (Strong)
1 Nylon Mesh Wort Bag (Large)
1 12-inch length of butcher's twine (for tying off the wort bag)
1 6-gallon Bucket with Spigot Hole
1 Spigot
1 Bucket Lid with Grommet Hole
1 Airlock
1 Sterilizer (Star-san or bleach)
1 Coffee/Spice Grinder*
1 Rubber Mallet (or rolling pin, etc.)
1 Heavy-duty Plastic Bag
16 22-ounce Beer Bottles, with tops*
1 Rubber Gloves*
* - Optional
Directions
Day 1
1. Remove the oven racks, leaving one at the lower-most position. Make sure your large (5+ gallon) pot will fit in the oven. Otherwise, chose a smaller pot.
2. Pre-heat oven to 300º F.
3. Bring 40 cups of tap water to boil on the stove in the large pot. Rinse the rice under cold running water and allow it to drain. Note: I use jasmine rice since it is cheap. Glutinous (sweet) rice will probably work as well but I can't vouch for it.
4. When the water reaches a rolling boil, add the rice a couple cupfuls at a time. Stir with the spoon, so that the grains don't stick to the bottom of the pot, until all the rice is used up. Adding the rice will lower the temperature of the water below a boil but don't worry. This is OK.
5. Once all the rice is in the pot, turn off the heat. Cover the pot with the lid. Place the pot in the oven. Let it cook for 20 minutes. Then turn off the oven but don't take the rice out for another 30 minutes. It will finish cooking in retained heat.
Note 1: This procedure is an almost foolproof method to prevent scorching the rice.
Note 2: With such a large quantity of rice, some grains will be perfect and some (in the center) will be mushy. It doesn't matter. What's important is that every grain is cooked through without being burnt.
6. Let the rice cool in the covered pot to room temperature overnight. If you're in a hurry, you could scoop out the hot rice and let it cool on trays, but this is painful, messy work. Take it easy. Wait.
Day 2
1. When you're ready to brew, sterilize your equipment, including the wort bag and the butcher's twine. Bleach is probably fine, but I worry about what it might do to the Nylon wort bag, so I use Star-san.
2. Chinese yeast balls (which are sold as “rice cake” at my local Asian market, and which are really a mixture of yeast, mold, and rice) come 3 to a packet, about 10 packets per $5 bag. They are as hard as rock and must be pulverized since the balls are too tough for a grinder to handle whole. To do this, I take 6 balls and place them in a heavy-duty plastic bag (which prevents the bits from flying everywhere). I then crack them carefully (not too hard) with a rubber mallet into smaller pieces. Then I place the smaller pieces in the grinder and grind them into powder. You could just keep pounding them with the mallet but this, too, is hard and messy work. Use the grinder. Most likely you will have to do this in two batches.
3. Optional: Mix the pulverized yeast with the glutinous rice flour. Probably any flour (rice or wheat) would do, but I've only used glutinous rice flour, so that's all I can vouch for. Supposedly, the flour “super-charges” the yeast. Seems to work.
4. Screw the spigot into the hole in the bucket. Place the wort bag in the bucket, stretching the opening around the mouth of the bucket.
5. A handful at a time, scoop the rice into the wort bag. I use rubber surgical gloves but I suspect you could do this without gloves if you washed your hands well. When you realize the Chinese have been brewing rice wine at home for 3,000 years, under less than antiseptic conditions, you have to assume the procedure is essentially idiot-proof.
6. After a couple inches of rice cover the bottom of the bag, sprinkle on a pinch of the yeast/flour powder. Then add another couple inches of rice and then more yeast. Repeat until all the rice and yeast are in the bag.
7. By now the weight of the rice will be pulling the mouth of the wort bag away from the rim of the bucket. Carefully lift the mouth of the bag away from the rim, making sure that no rice spills out. Then draw the mouth closed, and tie it tight with a couple loops of butcher's twine. This will prevent any rice from escaping later on, when you agitate the bucket.
8. Pour a half gallon of room-temperature distilled or boiled water over the rice in the wort bag.
9. Put the lid on the bucket. I pound it tight with the rubber mallet.
10. I use a three-piece airlock since it is easy to clean but I suppose a serpentine airlock would do just as well. I fill mine with vodka and stick it into the grommet in the lid.
11. Put the bucket in an out of the way spot. The temperature should range between 65º and 75º F, although mine has brewed fine at as low as 60º F and as high as 80º F. The rule of thumb seems to be: The higher the temperature, the faster the fermentation. Note: Lighting doesn't seem to matter since my bucket is fairly opaque but to be safe you might want to keep yours in the dark.
Days 3 - 5
1. Forget about your brew for 3 days. Do nothing. The fermentation will begin without help. After the 2nd day, or the 3rd, you should see bubbles forming in the airlock.
Days 6 - 8
1. Help the fermentation along by agitating the bucket once a day. This allows oxygen to get into the rice/yeast/water inside the wort bag (I think! Maybe it's to break up the starch trapping C02 among the rice grains. But gently! agitating the mixture seems integral to the process.) Be gentle because you don't want the rice to come out of the bag. You don't have to open the bucket, either. Leave the lid on. What I do is first remove the airlock so the vodka doesn't spill from it. Next I tilt the bucket back and forth a couple times until I can hear the liquid sloshing inside. Then I replace the airlock and leave the brew alone for another day. During this time the bubbling should increase to about 15 bubbles/minute.
Day 9
1. Open the spigot and pour yourself a taste. Since the rice was trapped inside the wort bag, which automatically filtered the liquid, your wine should be clear and just a little milky. It should also be sweet and have a low alcohol content, about that of weak beer. It will be so delicious that you will want to drink it all but restrain yourself. If you wish, decant a bottle and place it in the refrigerator to drink for dessert that night. Do not cap the bottle. This brew is still very active.
Days 10 - 14
1. It is no longer necessary to agitate the wine. Bubbling in the airlock should peak at about 30 bubbles/minute and then die back to 2 or 4 per minute.
2. Taste the wine. Every day it will get drier and stronger. When it's to your taste, simply decant into bottles, chill, drink, and enjoy.
Note: I cap my bottles and store them in the fridge until I drink them. However, since the wine is still live, to prevent any explosions due to C02 build-up, I poke a hole in each cap with the tap of an awl. Thus, the bottles will remain essentially free from contamination and yet still be inert and not explode.
Note: Do not open the bucket after you've drained off the liquid. There's still more wine trapped inside the wort bag. Let it sit for another couple days. Then try tapping it again. You should get several more bottles of wine. Finally, take the bag out of the bucket and squeeze it gently by hand to wring out the last of the liquid. Then dispose of the rice husks, maybe 10% by volume of the rice that you originally put into the bag.
Days 15 - 28 (Optional)
1. For really strong, really dry, and really clear wine, instead of decanting the liquid into bottles, decant it into another sterilized bucket with a spigot. Cover the new bucket, put an airlock in the lid, and wait 2 weeks. The resulting brew will be so strong you might have to dilute it with water. You shouldn't worry about capping it, either, since no sugar will be left to generate C02.
