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What is Rice Wine?
I was recently traveling in SE Asia and met a guy from SF who was making some killer absinthe on a small island. He bought rice wine from the locals which came in at over 20%abv and distilled it into a base spirit then infused some of his botanicals and finished through a small finsihing still with a gin basket for another layer of botanicals then did a final infusion for the coloring and the last bit of flavor. It was awesome.
Has anyone ever tried fermenting and or distilling rice? I have some friends who have a farm on a river and there is a nice piece of land in the flood plane that they cant do much with cause it floods almost every year. Rice gives crazy good yeilds though (like 5 tons an acre!!) Im trying to convince them to try to grow some rice next season (as well as a concoction of herbs/botanicals to use) and do an all local rice based gin/absinthe. Thing is I need to figure out if I can actually make something good before they go building dikes and buying rice seeds.
Ive heard/read that rice needs a particular type of yeast (or at least saki is traditionally made with a particular yeast?). Ive also gotten different estimates on what kind of abv to expect.
Does anyone have any experience that they would like to share on working with Rice? Which varieties? Mash protocols? Milling? Yeast types? PH issues? Fermentation temp? Fermentation time? anything else Im not thinking of?
I tend to just dive into these things then get stuck and go back later and realize I could have avoided problems by just asking first, so here is me trying to reform my ways. Probably picked a bad one to start with =)
cheers
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10 Replies
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I have done rice with Koji, Chinese Yeast Balls (a mixture of Aspergillus oryzae and yeast) and with enzymes (Aspergillus niger) and yeast, EC-1118. You can even malt brown rice.
It all works. The traditional Koji takes a long time to ferment. The enzymes are the fastest. Either way it tastes great.
Look to the Saki forums for instructions.
Oh…it is a mess to separate mash for stilling! Hope you have a Ban Marie still…
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I’m traveling in Cambodia myself at the moment. Rice wine is very popular out in the country.
Sometimes it’s actual wine and sometimes it’s slightly distilled by some methods low budget moonshiners would laugh at (hey, you gotta make due with what you have). The term “wine” is thrown around quite loosely in this region for any alcohol other than beer.
My mother in-law used to help her mother make rice “wine” (she describes using bamboo to cool the steam–so, distilling) back in the 60s and 70s–she says they just used bread and/or regular bread yeast. Clearly though, this is just the way it was done in a poor corner of SE Asia many years ago and may not be the same as what is done now in 2015.
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I just bought a bottle of rice “wine”. It states multiple times that it is wine, yet it is 35% alcohol. Clearly a distilled spirit.
(No reviews on it yet as I’m taking it back to the states)
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I can’t talk about things technical – Flying Red Pig seems to have the handle on that – but I can say that rice wine is beer under US standards. It is not a malt beverage because it is not brewed with the minimum mlt content, so FDA labeling rules apply, not TTB’s. But a person who produces “rice wine” is a brewer and pays taxes as a brewer. Not all beers that contain rice are “rice wines,” not by a long shot. Many are malt beverages.
To a brewer in the US, rice is an adjunct. The term “adjunct” includes any grain other than malt. Talking about SE Asia gives rice wine an exotic air, but rice is the second most used adjunct in US brewing. According to the Beer Institute, “The basic ingredients in beer are barley, the hops, water and yeast. Varieties of beer use rice, corn, wheat, sorghum, and other grains. Every year, U.S. brewers purchase:
4.8 billion pounds of barley malt grown or processed in California, Colorado, the Dakotas, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming1.8 billion pounds of rice, corn and other grains from Arkansas, California, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas15 million pounds of hops from Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
You find rice in Budweiser, which some craft brewers use as a convenient foil to tout their character. Kind of takes the exotic out of it, right?
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Rice is an excellent starch for distilling. In fact, I’m rather surprised that no one in the USA has taken that route towards their spirit.
Mastering the use of koji takes some training…temperatures are important. I used to work at a Japanese sake producer, and the road to good sake is a long one. But merely producing alcohol for distilling is not so difficult. As Flying Red Pig mentioned, yeast balls are another way to go, but I have found my results are not consistent, probably because the quality of the yeast balls vary. Enzyme conversion is very easy, but makes a spirit with a very different character, since the fatty acid reactions that produce esters go down a different set of chemical pathways.
It all depends on what your actual goals are.
A gentleman who works for a VERY large bottler of pre-mixed cocktails once told me that over 75% of their product was rice-based. Food (haha) for thought.
Dan
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Rice is an excellent starch for distilling. In fact, I’m rather surprised that no one in the USA has taken that route towards their spirit.
No one? Ahem.
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HA…good one. I like your website also. I’m in Mobile, AL for now and hope to get your way soon.
I love the flavor/notes of distilled rice. But without an indirect fired still I cuss the process!
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Weve experimented with making a Rice spirit and the results were pretty good. If you’re in a rice producing area and can lay your hands on it cheap, it’s an interesting thing.
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I am currently in the building phase of my operations, and will be doing a strictly rice spirit for all clear offerings, (even flavored). Alternatively our bourbon and whiskey grain bills both contain an impressive percentage of rice as well. Can’t wait to get it out into the hands of customers!
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Might be useful for some – WSET Level III in SakeÂ
http://napavalleywineacademy.com/wset-level-3-award-in-sake/
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