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From my experience you cannot rely on the staff at these stores to know if they carry any of this stuff or where it would be. I went to one of the local Asian grocery stores here and asked multiple people, only one kinda new what I was talking about but said they didn't sell yeast balls. While still in the store I googled it and found someones blog who made this stuff. I learned from that blog that this store did sell them and what aisle to find them in.
 
From my experience you cannot rely on the staff at these stores to know if they carry any of this stuff or where it would be. I went to one of the local Asian grocery stores here and asked multiple people, only one kinda new what I was talking about but said they didn't sell yeast balls. While still in the store I googled it and found someones blog who made this stuff. I learned from that blog that this store did sell them and what aisle to find them in.

I had a similar experience trying to find the yeast balls. At the third Asian market I went to in the San Fernando Valley I ask several store clerks for help finding them and it still seemed a bit uncertain. I decided to take the chance with what I was directed to and went to the checker with the yeast balls. She immediately asked if I was making traditional rice wine. Go figure.
 
Anyone have any colored molds on top? the rice wine smells fantastic.. But the fuzz on top is taking on a dark appearance
 
I started a big batch with sweet rice a little under three weeks ago, Shanghai yeast balls and RYR. Harvested today. Still very sweet, but boozy. Wondering if I harvested too soon? Well liquified, but the yeast hasn't kept up with the converted starch. Maybe too much alcohol to keep going?

Put in a gallon jug with some Lalvin 1122 and yeast energizer. Hoping another week will dry it out some.
 
I would have used K1V-1116. Leave at room temps for a day and then put it in a much cooler spot to finish. Its the "killer" yeast and tolerates cold temps and higher ABV fairly well.
 
I started a big batch with sweet rice a little under three weeks ago, Shanghai yeast balls and RYR. Harvested today. Still very sweet, but boozy. Wondering if I harvested too soon? Well liquified, but the yeast hasn't kept up with the converted starch. Maybe too much alcohol to keep going?

Put in a gallon jug with some Lalvin 1122 and yeast energizer. Hoping another week will dry it out some.

That has happened to me before also. I was never able to get it restarted using champagne yeast. I suspect it may have worked if I had added additional water to water it down some since it was so absurdly sweet. It smelled boozy, but after drinking it, it was clearly very low ABV.
 
I may regret doing this but I added a couple of cups of water, since I figured the ABV was going to be too high to restart a fermentation with the added yeast. Here's what it looks like now.

IMG_20171020_173853.jpg
 
I started a big batch with sweet rice a little under three weeks ago, Shanghai yeast balls and RYR. Harvested today. Still very sweet, but boozy. Wondering if I harvested too soon? Well liquified, but the yeast hasn't kept up with the converted starch. Maybe too much alcohol to keep going?

Put in a gallon jug with some Lalvin 1122 and yeast energizer. Hoping another week will dry it out some.

Try another batch and wait 6 weeks with the yeast balls instead and compare the outcomes. It ends sweet, but 3 weeks is generally too early for fermentation to have finished. You will also have carbonated wine if you seal it up after just 3 weeks unless you pasteurize it.
 
Ive used both EC1118 and K1V1116 to dry out sweet rice wine.....They both got quite dry.
 
Try another batch and wait 6 weeks with the yeast balls instead and compare the outcomes. It ends sweet, but 3 weeks is generally too early for fermentation to have finished. You will also have carbonated wine if you seal it up after just 3 weeks unless you pasteurize it.

So you haven't had problems with acetobacter? One of the other threads said harvest in three weeks.
 
So you haven't had problems with acetobacter? One of the other threads said harvest in three weeks.

I have never had a batch sour, in over 2 dozen.
Clean your equipment as with brewing beer, keep sealed up but not airtight without an airlock or with one, use Shanghai style yeast balls, and you shouldn't have any problems.
 
Just tasted after another weeks ferm, this time w/o the rice lees. I didn't notice any obvious effect ferm from adding EC-1122 (and some water), but it is less sweet now, with a nice warm nose like a sherry. The pink from the RYR looks more amber in the glass. Tastes like a cross between a sake and and sweetish sherry, too. Stills tastes like ABV is > 10%, but I wouldn't care to guess with any more precision.
 
I have made a few batches of this rice wine with great results, but I have some questions regarding my most recent.

I made 4 one gallon jars full and well, I forgot all about them. I think I made them back in February or March. Probably February. Long story short, I began a nine month deployment back in May. All the containers are still in their original jars with only a paper towel "airlock" sitting in the back of my closet back home. I wont be home until March.

Does anyone have any idea what I can expect after letting this stuff go for a year? My gut tells me disaster, but my heart remains hopeful that I will have inadvertently made something special.
 
I separated the wine from the rice mash after fermenting for 4 weeks. I did not taste it yet but it is quite aromatic and smells of alcohol. The mash remnants taste ok, somewhat tangy but nothing that suggests an infection. What is the typical aging time for this product? Should I rack it off the lees that have settled out of solution?
 
Mine was too sweet after 4 weeks. I had decanted it, so I left it to continue fermentation. This weekend will be 6 weeks. I think I'll be done, even if it isn't.
 
So I stumbled across this thread, and figured it sounds like something to try.
I found my supplies at the Dragon Star Supermarket, in Brooklyn Park, MN.

I started my first batch last night. I went with ~3 cups of glutonous sweet rice, weighed out at 1.5 pounds. Rinsed the rice with cold water until it was running clear, about 3 minutes. Then put the strainer in a bowl and filled it with cold water to soak the rice for 30 minutes. Rinsed the rice again, and let it drain for 5 minutes before placing into my steamer bowl. You can see the Oster steamer I have in the background. I put 3 cups water on the rice and filled the steam chamber with water also. I turned the steamer on and steamed for 30 minutes. It was cooked well. Still a bit firm in the center.
Took a large cookie sheet and put a big piece of aluminum foil on the cookie sheet, and sprayed it with starsan. I dumped the rice onto the foil and spread it out in an even layer. Covered it with a sheet of muslin that was soaked, and wrung out, of starsan. It covered it perfectly. I then put it on a bakers cooling rack, in the garage. December, Minnesota, 20 degrees outside, perfect.
I let it cool for 30 minutes and prepared 3 yeast balls in my spice coffee ginder. I sprinkled the yeast over the top of the rice. Put on nitrile gloves and sprayed my hands with starsan and grabbed handfuls of the rice and placed it in my glass cookie jar. Then covered the opening with the sanitized muslin cloth and put the lid on the jar. I tucked it into my closet, which is 68 - 70 degrees, and covered it with a black cloth.
Here is what it looked like ......
Rice Wine.jpg
 

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So I stumbled across this thread, and figured it sounds like something to try.
I found my supplies at the Dragon Star Supermarket, in Brooklyn Park, MN.

I started my first batch last night. I went with ~3 cups of glutonous sweet rice, weighed out at 1.5 pounds. Rinsed the rice with cold water until it was running clear, about 3 minutes. Then put the strainer in a bowl and filled it with cold water to soak the rice for 30 minutes. Rinsed the rice again, and let it drain for 5 minutes before placing into my steamer bowl. You can see the Oster steamer I have in the background. I put 3 cups water on the rice and filled the steam chamber with water also. I turned the steamer on and steamed for 30 minutes. It was cooked well. Still a bit firm in the center.
Took a large cookie sheet and put a big piece of aluminum foil on the cookie sheet, and sprayed it with starsan. I dumped the rice onto the foil and spread it out in an even layer. Covered it with a sheet of muslin that was soaked, and wrung out, of starsan. It covered it perfectly. I then put it on a bakers cooling rack, in the garage. December, Minnesota, 20 degrees outside, perfect.
I let it cool for 30 minutes and prepared 3 yeast balls in my spice coffee ginder. I sprinkled the yeast over the top of the rice. Put on nitrile gloves and sprayed my hands with starsan and grabbed handfuls of the rice and placed it in my glass cookie jar. Then covered the opening with the sanitized muslin cloth and put the lid on the jar. I tucked it into my closet, which is 68 - 70 degrees, and covered it with a black cloth.
Here is what it looked like ......
View attachment 549745
Sounds like you did everything perfectly. And, it looks great. Please let us know how it turns out.
 
I am trying to get through all the posts in this and just thought of something. My steamer has a solid basket in which the water stays in with the rice. I can barely do 3 cups dry rice at one time. I was thinking about using it like the bamboo steamers. Line the largest bowl with a sheet of muslin, then steam the rice.
Here is where my thoughts went sideways. There is no way to keep the water with the rice. So, soak the rice until it expands by 1/3, like Sara stated back in the early days of this thread. Then steam it until it is fully cooked.
I need some suggestions on this.
Thanks

BTW .... I am doing a new batch, tonight, with Thai Jasmine Rice. Damn !!!! This stuff expanded like crazy. Ir was almost 1/2 inch above the top edge of the steamer bowl. Gonna put the yeast balls into it while it is a little warmer than the last batch. I pulled out the infrared thermometer to keep a better "eye" on the temp. Nothing special, yet. Just the base recipe for rice wine.
 
Keep reading the thread. You can also just cook the rice in a rice cooker and end up with good rice wine with much less work. You'll see more posts of mine that advocate simplicity.
My current process- cook 8 rice cooker cups of rice without rinsing in rice cooker with appropriate amount of water to cover. Cool over about 8 hours per batch in the rice cooker pot. When cool, turn upside down and dump into 5 gallon plastic bucket with at least 2 crushed yeast balls per batch. Usually 5-6 batches of rice per 5 gallon bucket batch. After about 1 week I sometimes mix the entire mixture up to ensure more uniformity and to avoid big rice-pot shaped chunks of rice. Ferment 6 weeks with lid sitting on top of bucket. Then, pour into paint strainer bag lined colander over a 2-4 gallon pot and allow to gravity drain a day before squeezing out. Over the next 1-2 weeks I let it settle in 2 liter plastic pop bottles before pouring off of the cloudy/solids and drinking.
Ghetto, but it works well and is easy.
 
This might be a dumb question, but I'm very new to homebrewing. Can the moldy rice from a finished batch be used as a starter for a fresh batch of rice?
 
I just harvested my second ever batch, and it's not sour!

My first batch was a split batch into 5 mason jars. After reading that no additional water creates a very sweet wine (because the yeast are only so alcohol tolerant), I decided so see what different ratios of additional water would do. I added 1/2 cup cooked japanese short grain rice (cooked 1:1 water by volume) to five jars. A few days later, once fermentation kicked off, I added 0, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, and 1 cup water to each of the respective jars. 3 weeks later, I tasted to see which ratio I preferred, trying to find the point where the wine was just a little sweet but not tasting watered down. Unfortunately, this batch soured, but the tasting still gave me some good results. From this I decided that somewhere between 1/4 cup and 1/2 cup water was the best balance. No water was too sweet, 3/4 and 1 cup were too dry. And especially with the sourness they tasted more like a white wine, which I wasn't crazy about. It would be interesting to try to get a non sour batch with 3/4 cup added to see how it turns out.

Flash forward several months, this time I cooked short grain sweet rice in a rice cooker, which did an excellent job. The grains were still pretty separate but tender, and it saved me the trouble of steaming. I cooked a double batch of 4.5 cups (about 1 kg of dry rice + 1.2 kg water, total) following the rice cooker instructions. I threw the rice into a Mr. Beer fermenter, waited for it to cool, and pitched 3 ground up yeast balls (my rice balls come 3 to a pack). 3 days later I added an additional 1.5 cups water once I smelled some CO2 happening. 7 days after pitching I added another 1.5 cups water. The idea was to keep the sugar level consistent and not dilute it all at once. The fermentor was in my garage, which cycles from 50 at night to 70 in the morning. 2 weeks into fermentation I pulled it inside because the temp dropped to the mid 30s. Today I harvested, just short of 3 weeks, and man this stuff is great! Much, much better than the soured batch, I'm glad I gave it another try. Finishes with the pleasant sake flavor I was looking for. The yield was about 80 oz. Next time I may try a little more water, because it's still slightly sweet, but otherwise everything went great. Thanks everyone for knowledge in this thread!
 
I don't trust the mold that grew on top of my rice. It's white and fuzzy with a lot of green spots. Can anybody tell me if this is anything like what grows on the rice in these kinds of wine?
 

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I was just checking out what Amazon might have for supplies to make rice wine with. I have been unable to find red rice yeast or ARL in the Minneapolis area.
Has anyone used any of the Koji Rice, or sake Koji starter ?
 
Update on my rice wine so far .....
Here is my sweet rice at one week.
Sweet Rice 1 week.jpg
Here is the mold growing on top.
One week mold.jpg
Here is that same sweet rice at 2 weeks. I wasn't thinking and shook it up before the picture.
Sweet Rice 2 weeks.jpg

I found several different yeast balls around the area. So I am doing the next two batches with the small
Vietnamese balls in the blue package. Here is 4 cups dry sweet rice.
Sweet Rice -VN yeast.jpg
I also started a glutinous Thai rice batch with the VN blue yeast balls.
Looking for any taste differences between the different rices and different yeasts.
Once I receive the ARL and RYR, I will try some more batches. Time to hit Costco for a large bag of rice.
 
Hi guys I m new here I m from near China boundaries but in india. Thing is that we too make rice ale, wine or whatever it is. I just wanna suggest you not to throw away the left fermented rice u can make vodka like thing
 
So I bottled my first two batches of rice wine. The first was glutinous sweet rice with Chinese yeast balls. I let it go for 27 days, as it was fermented about 65 - 68 degrees. It smelled wonderful. Straining / filtering is not fun. I initially separated the rice must out with a piece of voile. I tried filtering the wine with a piece of muslin cloth. Nope, not good. It is pretty much like using a coffee filter. So I cleaned and sanitized the voile and folded the sheet so it was about 9 layers and put it in a funnel. This worked pretty good. I will have to get another piece and get it folded into more layers.

The second batch was Thai Jasmine rice and the same Chinese yeast balls as batch #1. I started with about 3 cups dry rice, in each batch, and steamed it with a 1:1 water ratio. This was just a bit low, as the rice didn't all completely cook. But not bad for the first try. I ended up with a little more than 750ml of rice wine in each batch. I actually got more from the Jasmine rice.

The sweet rice wine had a different taste to it, and it is kind of hard to describe. Lots of alcohol, but not a flavor I prefer. The Jasmine rice wine is wonderful. Slightly sweet and a pineappley fruitiness in the flavor. I forgot to take a picture of the bottles, but I will see what they look like after a day in the fridge.
 
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