# Chinese/taiwanese Rice Wine



## Blackapple

My mother in law is in town at the mo and impressed with my homebrew ( I know....struck gold!)

She has asked if I can brew some rice wine taiwanese style, which I guess is similar to the chinese ones.

Does anyone have a recipe or a link.

Cheers


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## Thirsty Boy

Yeah, ask her what the stuff is like though, there are lots of different versions of rice wine, dozens and dozens even just within china and pretty much every country and every region of every country in asia has its own sort of rice wine.

Here is how a guy from singapore is making red rice wine - Much the same without the red rice yeast would work too.
http://unclephilipsg.blogspot.com/2009/07/...a-ang-chow.html

I just make a basic sweet rice wine. Here's how (pictures are links to bigger more detailed photos on photobucket)

Ingredients from your local asian grocer.
*1kg glutinous rice, you can use normal rice if you really insist - but use glutinous rice.
*1 ball chinese yeast - comes in a pack that looks like this



*Some water
*Thats it

*wash the rice a couple of times till the rinse water is a little less milky
*Soak the rice overnight in cold water



*Drain rice thoroughly in a colander, let it drain for a good 30min at least ans shake it to get excess water out.
*Steam the rice for an hour (yes, you can skip the soaking and steaming and just use a rice cooker, it works but the wine wont be as good)






*Allow the rice to cool to body temperature or less
*Put the rice into a non-reactive (glass, stainless, plastic) container in layers about an inch thick - grind up 1 or 2 balls of the yeast in a blender or motar and pestle and sprinkle a light covering on each layer, leaving more than enough for the top.
*Push a hole down the center of the container and sprinkle the yeast over the top and make sure yuo have enough to sprinkle some down the hole



*Cover the container and walk away leaving it at a moderate room temperature.

You will notice there was no added liquid. You dont need to. The chinese yeast contains starch converting enzymes & bacteria as well as yeast. They will work with the moisture in the steamed rice and will start to pull moisture out of the rice and will eventually liquify and reduce the "dry" mixture to a mush, which will then start to ferment. After a day or two you will notice liquid in the hole, you dont really have to, but when it looks like there is a fair bit of liquid, I like to stir it all up and then stir it every day or two to stop a wine fermentation style cap of dry material being forced to the top by the fermentation gasses. The mush should start to look like porridge, then eventually like soup.




BTW - at any time after the liquid starts to come out, you can scoop out a little bowlfull of the stuff and have it as dessert. It is like a syrupy sweet and slightly boozy rice pudding. Delicious. The longer you leave it the boozier it becomes.

After a few weeks it will stop bubbling and settle down, and its pretty much ready to go. You can drink it with the chunks in, or you can put it in a calico bag (i use an old calico enviro shopping bag) and strain it through. It doesn't go through easily and you will hace to squeeze it through and wring out the booze like you were wringing out the washing. If you have a fruit or wine press, you ciuld put th bag in that, but otherwise you wring it through. What comes through will be a milky liquid whichnis lovely to drink as is, or you can let it stand and rack clear wine off the top of the lees.

This should give you something like 1 - 1.5L of very sweet, around 20% abv wine, less if you only want to drink the clear stuff.

Now, you can get more wine by adding water to the start of the process. Up to a point, this wont even reduce the abv% - it will just make the wine less sweet. The fermentation has an excess of sugar and stops only because the yeast stop working at about 20% abv. Thin the sugars out withnadded water and they still take the whole thing up to 20% - just there is more sugar converted and less left over for sweetness. A liter of extra at the start will still give potent booze and less cloying sweetness - two liters will give you maybe a 16(ish)% drink that is still fairly sweet and with a slight hint of bitterness. I like it either with no water or with around a liter.

Keep it in the fridge or it will start to go sour on you.

Its super easy and tastes really good, i usually have trouble not eating half of it as dessert before I manage to turn it all into booze. The mash/mush tastes bloody fantastic with a bit of custard mixed into it.

There are a million variations of rice wine, all different, but this is the one i make and its good.


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## InCider

Yum! That's looks awesome TB. I love rice wine. There's a Korea BBQ in the Gold Coast that has plastic tallies of the stuff for $5 each. Delicious! I had some in Thailand too...at first it tasted like infected beer (no-one could read the label, including the locals) so I had to guess it was rice wine... packed a punch too.


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## Eggs

Brilliant TB. Id love to have a go. where did you find the yeast balls? Asian grocer?

cheers.


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## pdilley

Thank you for posting the method Dan as I did not know if anyone else was playing with the Chinese yeast balls on AHB.

How is the sake going?


Cheers,
Brewer Pete


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## pdilley

I get my balls from the Asian grocery shops.

I have to find out where they are in Ballarat or finish unpacking my balls from Canberra.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete


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## raven19

Welcome back Brewer Pete! Long time no hear! :icon_cheers: 

Great post there TB.


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## Blackapple

Thanks for the great answer thirsty boy.
Might have a go at that on the weekend.


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## Thirsty Boy

Brewer Pete said:


> Thank you for posting the method Dan as I did not know if anyone else was playing with the Chinese yeast balls on AHB.
> 
> How is the sake going?
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Brewer Pete



Good fun is the chinese rice wine - given the amount of dicking about yu have to do with making Sake, the chinese rice wine is something quick and easy to play with while you wait.

The Sake is going well, really i should have been pressing my latest batch a week ago... But i haven't gotten around to sewing up the filter bags yet and i need my cheese press back from its current loanee (coming on Wed, so this weekend is sake pressing time)

This is my first time with proper sake yeast and a shubo moto - so i am hoping for a cleaner and more subtle sake as a result. I am toying with the idea of sterile filtration instead of pasteurisation too, trying to preserve some of the more fleeting and delicate aromas.

Eggs - Asian grocer for yeast balls. I reckon you'll find them anywhere, but i get mine from Minh Phat on Victoria street Abbotsford. Out in the eastern burbs.. I strongly suspect you'll find a place in Springvale or Box Hill that will have both the glutinous rice and the yeast.


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## Eggs

Thanks Guys. Its one of the reasons this thread grabbed me. I loved petes sake thread, but knew straight away that it was too much work for me at the moment. this looks much easyer,k and i use heaps in the cooking too.


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## pdilley

raven19 said:


> Welcome back Brewer Pete! Long time no hear! :icon_cheers:



Cheers mate, I'm slowly getting back into it. Still a million chores at the new property that need doing to get the place in order yet at the same time torn between wanting to just jump in and start brewing again--though still need to get used fridges so temp control is currently out-of-action for anything I brew.

I've now got a whole whack of bulk grains, and all the specs from caramels to crystals to melanoidin, chocs and blacks... for hops I am now back online with EKG, Bramling Cross, and POR. However I got bit with the only LHBS I had access to while driving to Melbourne to pick up the grain having dry yeast sachets only!  so US05, S04, and S-33 if memory serves me correctly -- I was going for WLP002 or 1968 London Ale ESB or dried Nottingham which also was out of stock.

Maybe I'll whack up one of the Chinese yeast ball rice wines to give me something to do while getting refrigeration and the yeast slants and propagation back up and running again.




*Eggs - * Don't stress it mate, making Sake (Japanese are more like the Germans of the Asian countries - very process/engineering driven) is like making all grain where you are bombarded with lots of terminology and processes unique but once you put one or two down its all rather easy. Chinese rice wines are like doing a beer kit, easy as and you will get a result, so enjoy them as well especially as a stepping stone into a new area of brewing.

With the techniques I am introducing with the sake posts you are really one step away from growing mushrooms, if perhaps after a foray into growing mould on soya beans to make tempeh and other fermented food products of Asia (I have many Japanese Miso old school techniques and recipes I desperately want to get started, if not for time and all the work on the farm that needs doing until I am settled in,) so a few Shiitake or Oyster Mushrooms might be next on your learning and experimenting adventure!



*Thirsty Boy - * Mate, you are going to enjoy it. And you are already there to try a hand at mushrooms if you want some instructions. Just more things to play with like humidity level ramping and air exchanges, though most can get by with not bothering and just using a big plastic container from Bunnings and a garden sprayer of water on mist setting.



Still planned are wood fired Rocket Stove, and a wood fired Rocket Stove powered bread oven, or perhaps start smaller with a clay/cob wood fired pizza oven on the farm 

I have to wait until next swarm season to get the bee hives going again but I am looking forward to a lot more mead on the farm!

Cheers,
Brewer Pete


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## Team_Beer

just put the rice on to soak, very excited to see how this goes!


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## pdilley

I have one going at the moment only because I feel incomplete if I an not brewing or fermenting something. I have a bunch of fresh malt in quantity to start brewing beer again but no free time and no fermenting fridges yet as I keep getting sniped on eBay at the last minute and tradingpost so far only brings up fridges if you live in Melbourne itself. -- I really need a Melbourne buddy to keep fridges in Melbourne at until I can drive down with the trailer and pick them all up to get the brewery set up again 

So old fashioned Chinese Rice Wine it is for now.

I'm currently at the alcoholic rice pudding stage.

If the thread needs comedic input I can always post the warning to always check your bamboo steamers as they come out of your storage boxes for broken bottoms. And Murphy's law with the broken one always ending up being the one at the bottom of your steaming stack and your new pup doing something that requires you to immediately go outside just as the stack of steamers decides to lean and then collapse 

It's all good though, easy enough to recover.

EDIT: Even the TempMates are all packed up, so its hanging over the refrigerator coils for heating for now. I feel so Gheto :icon_drunk: 
Cheers,
Brewer Pete


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## Team_Beer

this is a very similar recipe to the start of a Laos whiskey i saw on Anthony Bourdains no reservations show where they ferment the rice for a couple weeks in easrthenware pots and then distill the mash into LaoLao (spelling) which is a very potent basic style rice whiskey. might be worth a try sometime :icon_drunk:

found the video of it on you tube, starts at the 4:20 mark http://youtu.be/wU6UfGHQedk


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## Blackapple

Finally made some rice wine and bottled it today after about a months ferment. Tastes good, reasonably sweet with a fair whack of alcohol...
I've kept the leftover mush after squeezing the ring out of it, and I got to wondering if this could be used for cooking or the like?
Hard to imagine someone in a village in china not using and reusing everything!
Must be a recipe out there........

Any ideas?

Cheers


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## Thirsty Boy

I'm sure there are rice wine specific things, but have a search for "kasu" recipes. Kasu is the lees of a sake fermentation, its used to cure fish, add flavour to soups, as a marinade.. Lots of different stuff. I'm sure there will be some analagous things for rice wine lees.


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## Tanga

Wow, this is awesome. I got into Chinese rice wine when I was in Japan. Great drunk on ice. So easy too. I will definately be keeping an eye out for the rice balls. How do you add the extra water?


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## Tanga

Wow, this is awesome. I got into Chinese rice wine when I was in Japan. Great drunk on ice. So easy too. I will definately be keeping an eye out for the rice balls. How do you add the extra water?


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## Nick JD

A lot of the Taiwanese stuff is more like light Soju than Mijiu. 

I lived there a while back - nasty stuff!

EDIT: especially when Carrefour supermarkets have 1.75L bottles of Beam for $20.


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## Eggs

ive just dumped my first go at this. It just kept fermenting. It was very low on liquid I added about a liter of water after a week because the rice was totaly dry. the ferment kicked of madly afer that and just kept going!
when i tried to strain it, the slurry was so thick i got about a cup of thick mily liquid and the straining bag stayed full. even with a squeeze. I used jasmin rice, so mabe that made a difference. Im curious if the rice needs so much cooking at the start. ill definately give it more water next time round.


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## Thirsty Boy

how long did you wait for it to ferment out?? This thing takes multiple weeks into months to finish up, its not a beer length proposition. Its starts completely dry and I wouldn't expect it to start to go significantly mushy till something on the order of a week had passed, once liquid starts coming out, it goes pretty quickly after that though. When you start there will be none, zero liquid at all, so very low on liquid is normal. And it will keep right on going till it gets to around 20% abv and the yeast karks it... the more water you add the drier it will taste. The it takes ages to clear up - bentonite and gelatine can speed things up but cost you a little bit of yield in increased trub volume.

You rice should be rubbery and translucent - fully hydrated from its overnight soak, then fully cooked from an hour or even two in the steamer, where it will pick up even more moisture. Steamed rice doesn't really look the same as boiled rice and has less moisture.

straining/squeezing -- yep, you have to squeeze the bejeezus out of it to get liquid to come through and it will be milky and kinda thick, not talking BIAB style squeezing... more running it through a mangle type squeezing and a lot of poking, jiggling, smooshing, redistributing the googe in between the many individual squeezes you will need to give it to get the liquid out. My last sake was pressed in a cheese press with about 50kgs of weight on it and it still left more moisture in the lees than I was happy with.

Have another crack, and I definitely suggest using glutinous rice - even if it had all worked out as planned, the things I have read by people who have used jasmine rice suggest it might have been a bit nasty tasting anyway.


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## Blackapple

Thirsty Boy said:


> I'm sure there are rice wine specific things, but have a search for "kasu" recipes. Kasu is the lees of a sake fermentation, its used to cure fish, add flavour to soups, as a marinade.. Lots of different stuff. I'm sure there will be some analagous things for rice wine lees.


Found a few recipes to try, cheers for the heads up, and went with a marinade for fish which was the lees mixed with ginger and sugar.

Not worth trying..... had to head to oporto after dinner to wash down the taste.

I did however use some of the rice wine in some stir fried veges which was great.

Could be I'm a shitty cook tho........


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## Eggs

hey thirsty.will definately give it another go. i think at least i need better equipment to strain, squeeze and press with. I gave it two months to ferment, and it smelled good, and tasted very wine like.
after just over a week when i started i still had a container of dry rice. no sign of activity at all. possibly jasmine rice cooks differently, but it did seem very dried out after the cooking regime you advised.
when i get some rice ill do it again. its a lot of fun to watch it fermenting. cheers.


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## Thirsty Boy

How dry eggs? Its steamed rice after all, you should be happily able to take a cup of the stuff you plan to ferment and have it with a stir fry.

If in doubt, just rinse it extra well and bung it in the rice cooker like you normally would.

TB


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## Eggs

tirsty, totaly dry. and rubbery. I dont know if youve used the technique. but if you cook rice for fried rice its great to cook it, then bung it in the fridge uncovered over night.
the grains will then seperate easely and wont go gluggy in the wok. thats how the jasmin came out. ill pick up some glutinous rice during the week and give it a go.


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## brettprevans

Hmm about 2L of wine per 1kg rice. That's 9kg of rice to fill one of my kegs.... That's a lot of bloody soaking and steaming.... 
If its refrigerated how long will it keep before going sour? Or has no one been able to keep theirs long enough to find out?
I suppose it would be easy enough to pasteurise it in a keg. Just fill and stand the keg in 80C water for a while. Then the yeast will be dead and won't continue to ferment and sour the wine.


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## brettprevans

citymorgue2 said:


> Hmm about 2L of wine per 1kg rice. That's 9kg of rice to fill one of my kegs.... That's a lot of bloody soaking and steaming....
> If its refrigerated how long will it keep before going sour? Or has no one been able to keep theirs long enough to find out?
> I suppose it would be easy enough to pasteurise it in a keg. Just fill and stand the keg in 80C water for a while. Then the yeast will be dead and won't continue to ferment and sour the wine.


Any bright ideas for steaming that quantity with out doing multiple smalll batches? 
Also any idea about how it will last refrigerated without going sour if I dont pasteurize it?


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## benno1973

CM2 - I use a couple of bamboo steamers stacked on top of each other. Having said that, each steamer holds about 1kg, so even then I only do 2kg at a time, and I swap them over midway through. Stacking 9 steamers on top of each other doesn't seem logical or safe, so I'd imagine that you're going to be doing multiple batches.

I doubt you'd get through a keg before it went sour. The sourness is a gradual process, noticeable after a week or two and quite apparent after a month. I pasteurised my last batch by sitting it in a hot water bath. I'd do the same with a keg. Or I guess you could add campden tablets?

Are you planning on making 19L? It takes me a while to get through 2L, I can't imagine having it on tap!


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## brettprevans

Kaiser Soze said:


> CM2 - I use a couple of bamboo steamers stacked on top of each other. Having said that, each steamer holds about 1kg, so even then I only do 2kg at a time, and I swap them over midway through. Stacking 9 steamers on top of each other doesn't seem logical or safe, so I'd imagine that you're going to be doing multiple batches.I doubt you'd get through a keg before it went sour. The sourness is a gradual process, noticeable after a week or two and quite apparent after a month. I pasteurised my last batch by sitting it in a hot water bath. I'd do the same with a keg. Or I guess you could add campden tablets?Are you planning on making 19L? It takes me a while to get through 2L, I can't imagine having it on tap!


2kg at a time isnt too bad. 4hrs over the course of a day is ok. 

Im going to trial it first and if I like it then do a 19L keg, pasteurise it, then bottle it off. I like to do things in large batches then it can age and I have enough stock. I wasnt planning on having it on tap. Wine on tap would be a bit dangerous lol. 

Cheers


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## MetalDan

I managed to pickup some yeast balls in Marrickville on the wend, and have started up some batches! I thought I'd go with the bamboo steamer but not having steamed rice before the first batch seemed to go very similar to Eggs, dry and rubbery.. Tried some short grain sushi rice and a bit better tonight, hopefully third time lucky!


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## benno1973

Yep, I've had dry and rubbery before. It still seems to work if you add a little liquid to the rice. But I tend to steam for a bit longer these days...


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## philmud

Dragging up an old thread: I might have a ping at this and am keen to use the recipe linked to in the second post with the red rice yeast. Just wondering if anyone has found this at an Asian grocers? A quick google tells me that red rice yeast and red rice yeast extract are an expensive health food product, but I'm sure the one pictured in the blog post is a probably a cheap product from an Asian grocer. I bet I could find it in Footscray, but it might be a matter of knowing what to ask for.
I did find the yeast balls this morning - $2.50 for 8!

One reason I am keen to include the red rice yeast is that I'm fairly sure this is used in Hitachino's Nest red rice ale, I'd like to play with it and use it in a beer at some point.


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## philmud

Well, I got some. It's packaged as "red fermented rice" and cost me $1.80 for 200g. Excited to give this a crack! In keeping with the theme of cheap ingredients, I also bought a 4L glass jar for $5.50 to ferment in.


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## philmud

I thought I'd report back about how this experiment fared. I had two goes at it, the first was fermenting when I went away for a week over Xmas. When we arrived back it had quite a lot of white mould on the surface of the rice. I panicked and ditched it, though in retrospect I'm not sure it was problematic - may have been caused by the ang kak (monascus purpureus). The recipe did say to stir it every few days, and of course that didn't happen while I was away.

The second batch, I added about 500mls of water to the ferment, reasoning that it might keep the rice submerged. It didn't because the rice absorbed it, but I didn't get a repeat of the mould. But, after a week or so I noticed it was developing a nail polish remover scent, so I bottled and refrigerated - kind of pointless because it's sickly sweet (though has a lovely flavour). I assume this happened because the ferment takes off slowly? 

In future, I think an airlocked container would be best for fermentation and possibly sine kind of active starter? The recipe I used ignored many of the fundamental principles of brewing, re sanitisation and maintaining an oxygen free environment. If I do this again I'll adhere to these.


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## Blackened

Prince Imperial said:


> I thought I'd report back about how this experiment fared. I had two goes at it, the first was fermenting when I went away for a week over Xmas. When we arrived back it had quite a lot of white mould on the surface of the rice. I panicked and ditched it, though in retrospect I'm not sure it was problematic - may have been caused by the ang kak (monascus purpureus). The recipe did say to stir it every few days, and of course that didn't happen while I was away.
> 
> The second batch, I added about 500mls of water to the ferment, reasoning that it might keep the rice submerged. It didn't because the rice absorbed it, but I didn't get a repeat of the mould. But, after a week or so I noticed it was developing a nail polish remover scent, so I bottled and refrigerated - kind of pointless because it's sickly sweet (though has a lovely flavour). I assume this happened because the ferment takes off slowly?
> 
> In future, I think an airlocked container would be best for fermentation and possibly sine kind of active starter? The recipe I used ignored many of the fundamental principles of brewing, re sanitisation and maintaining an oxygen free environment. If I do this again I'll adhere to these.


Ok, I know this is a very late reply lol,

The mould is exactly what you are trying to propagate, as it is supplying the amylase. White mould is not the result of monascus purpureus activity (red colouration). Don't airlock it initially either, you'll need oxygen for the biota growth. Once the rice has turned to mush you can airlock it I guess, but I don't bother. I treat rice fermentation a lot like making yogurt. Keep everything clean, sterilise but don't stress, you are deliberately growing bacteria, mould and yeast in quantities that usually exclude/out compete the growth of any nasties.

The red yeast rice is a monoculture though, and I believe (though not 100% on this) that it only converts the starch and will not ferment alcohol. Yeast needs to be added for this purpose.


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## Blackened

I've just finished a batch of rice wine that was fermented using Ragi Tape. It went quite well IMHO and it's got me enthused again. I haven't touched rice fermentation for years.

Anyway, I'm trying some test batches, consisting of:

Ragi Tape 
Dried and ground lees from the first batch
Red yeast rice with bakers yeast
Very small batch for testing, consisting of 500gm dry weight of glutinous rice divided into 3 jars. I've just cooked the rice in a cooker for simplicity. The instructions for the Ragi Tape say 1 tablet per 500gm (3 cups) so I figure that's as good a starting point as any as an estimate for quantities of the other two biota sources. 1 tablet weighs 3gm so I'm using 6gm of the dried lees (not sure it will work at all, hence the extra) and 3gm of the red rice.

Now this is all based on a third of 500gm so I'm overshooting by 3x the suggested rate. I want to compare performance of the 3 fermentation types.

I've tried the red yeast rice previously but without huge success. I've learned a bit since then though, so giving it another shot. I love the aroma and flavour it imparts. Even simply grinding up 3gms in the mortar released a fragrant vinous character. Yum! I believe the red yeast rice is a monoculture that is only capable of producing amylase so I'm adding a splodge of bakers yeast to cover the alcohol production side of things. 

I'm very much hoping that the dried and ground lees work to kick off the mould growth. It won't save much money of course, as 10 tabs are like $1 to $2.50 depending on where you go. But I HATE trying to find a parking spot in Springvale LOL. At some point in the future, assuming the red rice batch goes ok I'll try re-using the lees in the same way and see how that goes too. I don't remember where I read it, but some people suggest re-using the spent lees works if fresh, but not if refrigerated or dried. I figured it was worth a try anyway. The dried and ground lees have an awesome aroma IMHO anyway. There's gotta be some culinary use for it even if it fails to start a new ferment.......

Anyway, I'll probably bore you all further with some results down the track.


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## Blackened

This post is simply a follow-up of the previous post because the missus has absolutely no interest and I feel the need to blab about my results so far lol





Pictured (inoculated with):

Left dried lees
front centre red yeast rice
right ragi tape
rear centre ragi tape (rice cooked with too much water, see note below)
The dried lees is showing almost no sign of activity after 3 days @ 30C, except a small furry patch of mould. It remains to be seen if this mould is desired or a contaminant. In a nutshell, not very promising.

The red yeast rice seems active. Nice fragrant vinous smell and the redness seems to be penetrating and spreading. The rice has begun to taste sour too. However it hasn't begun to liquify. There are some patches of the rice that are more translucent than others, which suggests to me that some starch conversion has begun. But progress seems quite slow. I'm beginning to see the wisdom of using the red yeast rice in conjunction with the ragi tape (or yeast balls).

The ragi tape has taken off. Very wet, nice creamy yellow mould over the surface. No surprises here. But it clearly shows the others are lagging behind greatly. 

The tall contraption in the back inoculated with ragi tape is another experiment. I had trouble with the rice cooker and had to use more water than normal. This resulted is a very wet rice that was almost porridge. I added the ragi tape last night and it was fermenting ok, but I decided to try something different with a view to a more "continuous" style of fermentation. The idea being that the liquid drains into the lower container, allowing better airflow and mould growth in the solids left up the top. Once the solids have settled, I'll try adding freshly steamed rice into the top, hopefully causing more mould growth, draining of liquid, settling of contents, ready for more steamed rice. At some point it would get full and I'd have to empty it at least partially before adding more, but this is all just speculation on my part. Time will tell I guess.

I can't steam huge quantities of rice at once, and I'm trying to work out a way of doing a couple of kilos here and there whenever time permits, then dumping it in, give it a stir, and walk away. Scaled up to a couple of fermenters, one in the incubator (ie dirty old fridge) and one outside, connected from the upper tap, using some sort of false bottom in the solids fermenter, I could also ferment the liquid portion at a lower temperature and reduce some of the yeasty character that has been present in previous batches. It will probably fail though lol.

Apologies for blathering on. More blathering to follow if I get some results from all this.
Cheers


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## evildrakey

Anyone know a source of yeast balls/culture in Brisbane... I've done a fair amount of combing with no success...


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## Airgead

:icon_offtopic: No info on the rice balls but I can't help but notice that you brew from Digby...

Do you use period malts etc or the modern equivalents? I once brewed an as close to authentic 1599 brown ale as I could. Came out pretty well. Had to research the genealogy of hops to get as close as I possibly could to Canterbury Whitebine...

Cheers
Dave


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## philmud

Blackened said:


> Ok, I know this is a very late reply lol,
> 
> The mould is exactly what you are trying to propagate, as it is supplying the amylase. White mould is not the result of monascus purpureus activity (red colouration). Don't airlock it initially either, you'll need oxygen for the biota growth. Once the rice has turned to mush you can airlock it I guess, but I don't bother. I treat rice fermentation a lot like making yogurt. Keep everything clean, sterilise but don't stress, you are deliberately growing bacteria, mould and yeast in quantities that usually exclude/out compete the growth of any nasties.
> 
> The red yeast rice is a monoculture though, and I believe (though not 100% on this) that it only converts the starch and will not ferment alcohol. Yeast needs to be added for this purpose.


Thanks for this. I did have another shot at it and developed what I believe was an acetyl infection, which I believe may have occurred due to exposure to oxygen. You're correct that the red rice yeast is only present to provide enzymes, although the yeast balls contain something similar too, so the red rice is not necessary ('dat colour though! I wonder how it'd go in a rice lager?).


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## philmud

evildrakey said:


> Anyone know a source of yeast balls/culture in Brisbane... I've done a fair amount of combing with no success...


A colleague of mine works in Inala and describes Asian grocers there that sound like those we have in Footscray. Sometimes the tricky part is asking for them without knowing the right word in Vietnamese/Chinese - I have used google image to show photos of products before and gotten around the language barrier this way. If you can't find any, shoot me a PM and I'll post you up a packet.


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## r055c0

Going to have a go at this on the weekend, sounds like fun


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## Novex

evildrakey said:


> Anyone know a source of yeast balls/culture in Brisbane... I've done a fair amount of combing with no success...


If you're still looking, I saw yeast balls at Yuen's Market in Sunnybank Market Square.


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