Rice wine with red yeast rice
Rice wine with red yeast rice
Hey all. I live near Boston, so we have a banging Chinatown. I went there to try and find some Koji rice or Koji-kin... I was going to make Sake. Here's where my adventure begins... Wandering through aisle after aisle of things, no English, even the workers can't understand you... But you know...
So a while ago I stumbled upon some red yeast rice at my local asian store and fell down a rabbit hole started by the linked post (there is another - 159 page - post on those forums dedicated to rice wine - enter at your own peril).
I've managed to create about 2 very small batches of rice wine.
For the first batch I used red yeast rice for saccharification and some brewer's yeast for fermentation - results were good, out of about 3.5 kg cooked rice I got maybe 1 L of wine, slightly cloudy.
Second time I got the same quantities roughly but used red yeast rice for saccharification plus chinese yeast balls for saccharification plus fermentation. Wine was a bit tastier this time and I think the aspect was a bit better - clearer.
For both batches I filled a Kilner jar (3L) fitted with an airlock on a silicone cap and topped up with rice as it liquified (couldn't get the whole amount in there to start with). Mostly eyeballed the quantities. Straining out the solids proved to be very difficult as it turns into a slurry - think stuck mash, but worse.
Finished them off by pasteurizing - I stored them in roughly 300 mL jars - in a pot of water and heating to 70 C. I did notice that the liquid becomes a bit clearer after pasteurization (possibly residual enzymatic activity?).
Overall the drink was very pleasant, slightly fruity but also bread-crust-y. The process however, especially the straining, is very labor intensive and I would love to hear some ideas on improvement.
I've made rice wine with the yeast balls a couple times, it was sweet and very cloudy. I should try it again but in a much bigger batch to help get more liquids to separate out. I also experienced the sticky gross mush that wasn't really pleasant to play with. I wrapped all the rice in cheese cloth in order to be able to squeeze out more liquids from the mush which did help, I always thought a juice press would be really useful at that stage.