Chinese/taiwanese Rice Wine

[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.

 

[Blackapple]

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 ****** cook tho........

 

[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.

 

[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

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

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?

 

[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!

 

[brettprevans]

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

 

[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!

 

[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...

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[Blackened]

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.

 

[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.

 

[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

 

[evildrakey]

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

 

[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

 

[philmud]

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?).