Getting "Rice Beer" Started

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Getting "Rice Beer" Started

Postby boschmas on Sun Jan 06, 2013 1:15 pm

I'm attempting the Rice Beer recipe on p. 262 of The Art of Fermentation. I'm a longstanding home brewer, so I wanted to run some of my methods and procedures by the group for comment.

Recipe:
4.5 C (2#) white rice
10 C (5#) water
Cook
Let it cool. Took two or three hours to come down to what felt like a workable temp, and might still have been too hot in spots.

Work crushed yeast ball into rice substrate with clean hands.

Press into 1 Gallon glass vessel. Form "well" in the center of rice. Cap with airlock.

For the first 24 hours, I kept it in a room where I'm finishing a beer in the upper 70-degrees. So let's say it was at 80 for the first 24 hours.

Nothing much appeared to be happening, so I brought it to the kitchen (~60 degrees) and considered adding another yeast ball. I removed the lid and the aroma in the vessel was incredible - sweet, rich, earthy, much like an oyster mushroom bed if you've ever grown those at home. That was totally unexpected and completely wonderful.

I left the container at the 60-degree range for 18 hours. This morning, there was visible positive pressure in the airlock. Returned the vessel to the 80 degree room, where a slow bubbling in the airlock continues.

Questions:

Does this fermentation require more oxygen than I'm giving it access to? Should I have a towel over the top instead of a sealed environment?

How long does it generally take for the microbes to produce noticeable quantities of free liquid in the mix? With beer, if there isn't significant activity at 24 hours, I pitch more yeast. This is a much more solid and dry environment for the organisms to colonize, but I do worry about contamination as starches sit for long periods.

Should I stir the mixture before there's noticeable liquifaction?

Does the fermentation proceed more quickly if additional water is added after the rice cools?

Thanks for any insights the group may have. I love the idea of being able to have a crock I can feed rice into at intervals and siphon off a grain alcohol as part of my household rhythm, so that's what I'm hoping to end up with.
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Re: Getting "Rice Beer" Started

Postby boschmas on Tue Jan 08, 2013 9:52 am

To follow up on this, I mixed another yeast ball in at around 48 hours, by which point there was sustained airlock activity, but also obvious yellowing and a few sporulating mold patches that concerned me. (In fairness, both features may have been organisms from the yeast ball.)

By 72 hours, the "well" I had created in the center of the rice had collapsed entirely as liquifaction reduced the structure. The vessel looked like a big batch of sourdough starter, with air pockets visible throughout.

This morning (~85 hours) it looks more like porridge. There's a thin layer of liquid on top. I think this is the part of the process where I start stirring a few times a day to keep everything mixed and submerged.

The aroma is beautiful. I'm hoping this is drinkable (and sharable) at a gathering I'm going to on Friday.
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Re: Getting "Rice Beer" Started

Postby Tim Hall on Tue Jan 08, 2013 10:28 am

Boschmas, thanks for sharing. I've never made this before and have only seen those 'yeast balls' used once before for more of a quick tonic-type beverage. You may be the only one on this forum for quite a while who will have any real experience with this.

Any advice I would give only be based on speculation. Oxygen requirements are really hard to say, because I have no idea what kinda cultures get mixed into those balls. That you're getting a mushroomy smell indicates a fungus that'll definitely require oxygen...but most brewing yeasts only need oxygen for an initial period of growth.

I have a feeling (specultation) that mushroomy aspect is causing saccharification of the rice, making it more liquid. Higher temperatures will make those enzymes work faster, but otherwise you'll probably just have to wait and see what happens...and tell us what you've learned.
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Re: Getting "Rice Beer" Started

Postby boschmas on Sun Jan 13, 2013 12:42 pm

I strained this out on Friday and took two quarts of a very milky, sour beverage to a party. I came home with one quart, and while I don't think anyone fell in love with it, it provoked lots of interesting and funny conversations with smart people. Hard to beat that.

I've written up the full process with pictures at my blog. Hopefully it's not link trolling put the link here, but maybe it can serve a resource for others. http://homebrew.stacieboschma.com/traditional-rice-beer/

I've started a five gallon batch using brown rice at ambient temperatures. And if you make this, don't forget that the mash makes really good food. Fermentation definitely counts as something fun you can do with rice.
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Re: Getting "Rice Beer" Started

Postby Wissahickon on Mon Mar 18, 2013 7:51 am

I first brewed rice beer, or rice wine, in the 1980s, using a recipe from a cookbook by Florence Lin. The book was called "Florence Lin's Complete Book of Chinese Noodles, Dumplings, and Breads", published in 1986. Her recipe for "wine rice" appears on p. 264. I made the wine successfully at that time, but did not make it for drinking. I made it to use in cooking; it adds wonderful flavor to Chinese foods.

I made another batch recently, using a slightly different method, though when I inspected the result, there was a spot of mold on top of the ferment. I scraped the mold off, and refrigerated the wine rice. But I haven't yet used it in cooking (I'm not sure whether the batch is contaminated or not).

Anyway, adding briefly to this story, Florence Lin notes that the "wine rice" can be adapted as a dessert, by adding fresh fruit or other flavorings. Which puts me in mind of a dessert I had in a Korean restaurant in Northern Virginia a decade or so ago, which was rice-based, slightly viscous, and felt mildly tonic when I drank it. It was truly wonderful. Anyway, I've often wondered what it was, and have asked others about it since then, with no result.

I'd forgotten Lin's dessert suggestion, however, until I re-read her entry and recipe again just now. And I wonder whether what I had in NOVA wasn't some sort of "wine rice" presented as a simple but luscious dessert.

But my overall point is that rice wine or rice beer of the sort we seem to be referring to in these posts is mainly for cooking or eating as food, not for drinking. Or so it seems to me. On the other hand, there must be some way to produce ample amounts of drinkable beverage from this process. Perhaps by adjusting the proportions and then upping the scale of ingredients used. But the brewmasters among us would know more about that than I would.

BTW if anyone has any comments or suggestions about the mold on my recent rice wine ferment, please let me know. My guess is that it's okay to consume it, but I'm not entirely sure. As a casual or some-time fermenter who's still experimenting though I've been doing so over a period of many years, mold still tends to be a worrisome rather than a routine result for me.
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Re: Getting "Rice Beer" Started

Postby 10kFerment on Tue Apr 16, 2013 5:35 pm

I wouldn't worry about the mold. Give the mash a shot. :)

In my experience, small amounts of mold are more apt to off-flavor any ferment than to make it 'bad'.

Lots of mold? Usually taints the flavor enough that I wouldn't want to eat it anyway, unsure of the health aspects.

Peace
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