@@tanizaki Sake has a different fermentation process to wine, it is most similar to that of beer. Like beer, the sugars are lockeds up in starch and require enzyme activity to break it down into fermentable sugars. Considering that there are commercially available beers that rival spirits in stength, the abv argument falls flat.
@@CitySteadingBrews There are commercially available beers up to 60ish%. They may be fortified, they may be distilled, but they are still "beer" by legal definition.
I used your methods to make a batch. WOW! My neighbors, the sake junkies, said its the best they ever tasted. I thought it was great, and have started two more batches.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the possibility of a 25% abv product. Under the right conditions sake can definitely get this high. This is because the colonies of the two main microbes involved, Aspergillus oryzae (Koji-kin) and good ol’ Saccharomyces break down the starch to sugar and ferment it simultaneously. So the koji is effectively ‘step-feeding’ the yeast sugars keeping it super healthy as it slowly ferments. Love your easy and no fuss method, looks rlly effective hope it goes well!
Given that turbo yeast caps out at 20%, I'm pretty sceptical of it going any higher. The fact that those microbes are capable of feeding the yeast well enough to keep it going that far is impressive enough anyway, given all the enzymes and nutrients that the turbo yeasts need to do the same job. Perhaps the stories of 25% have leaked in from the distilled versions of the beverage? Or maybe even a freeze-fractioned version, given we now have high-abv beers such as Snake Venom, that use that process. Perhaps some variety of Hokkaido sake for example? Someone leaves their sake out overnight and finds it part-frozen in the morning, yanks out the ice and discovers that it tastes even better the next cold night. It's just conjecture, but now I'm going to have to research and see if this exists. This feels too plausible of a drink to not exist somewhere!
My wife is from Asia ( Monday Edit : My wife was from Asia ) where every country has a rice alcohol. Definitely no water. Liquid/alcohol will appear . It is slow but fascinating to see the rice break down . It won't break down a lot. You will panic that it will go bad. You will panic if it goes a bit yellow or brown. You will remember someone told you never to reheat rice or eat old rice. It won't go bad or poison you . It will smell lovely. Breath in the fumes. If you have an asian grocery where you can buy 20kg sacks of sticky rice thats great . Tiny bags of rice do imo make it an expensive experiment. With the liquid you have added I have no idea how thats going to turn out. With no liquid and that amount of rice you could have expected an teacup ( after pressing) of something that to my mind is very sherry like. Maybe 20% sweet and very warming. And when you feed the leftover rice to the chickens, ducks, pigs etc they will love you . I think the way to approach it is the same way as making a really blue cheese. Strange things are happening to that rice but it will all turn out great. ps airlocks and suchlike are not used "up country" . If any bacteria in the air tries to compete with the rice yeast ( and I strongly suspect there are other bacteria that break down the starch etc in an asian yeast ball ) the rice yeast will swiftly sumo/kungfu/maithai it. Richard
With all the brewing and fermenting we've done, panic is not something we do easily, lol. I won't feed my chickens alcohol, not really all that good for them. We use airlocks due to having cats, more than anything else with things like this!
The reason they sprinkle the starter is because, ideally the dried koji spores (oryzae) and some other oft added molds (like Rhizopus oligosporus; tempeh mold that adds new flavors to sake) are evenly dispersed. Hence why a lot of "traditional" ways let the rice sit for a day after this step, so the mold can culture, (also because it is more sensitive to water than yeast). Then, 24hrs later adding water and yeast. Thus making the world's only known edible, simultaneous-fermentation ("multiple parallel fermentation,") and is a process that is entirely unique to sake. of two completely different microbes! Note *A lot of industrial sake brewery houses produce sake at 18-20 % and dilute with water to 15 %; which was the more or less average abv of quality rice wine, historically.
There's plenty of sour beers and mixed cultured ferments that are two completely different microbes. Many wines also go through malo-lactic fermentation using lactic acid bacteria alongside the yeast that ferments the sugar to alcohol. Saying it's the only edible co-fermentation is completely off the mark.
@@jukeboxhero91 Its more that theres a direct change in "multiple parallel fermentation" From this point, the koji will convert the starch in the rice into glucose, which the yeast will then use to create alcohol and carbon dioxide. The conversion of starch to sugar and sugar to alcohol takes place in parallel all in the same tank. This is known as "multiple parallel fermentation," and is a process that is entirely unique to sake. Yes, there are other things that have multiple microbes. But sake is the only one using mold and also having 1 complete cycle that converts and not just changing two separate chemicals.
The word "sake" derives from a Korean word that means "aged" or "fermented." Korean people taught Japanese people to ferment things like soy sauce, miso and alcoholic beverages.
@@tivonoston3068 Keeping it fairly rough: If you change "sake" to "rice wine", then yes. Don't forget the other rice wine products of korea, vietnam and china. Sometimes they add a different mold than Koji kin (aspergillus oryzae), like the one in red yeast rice (monascus purpureus) or the one most commonly in chinese yeast balls (rhizopus oryzae). Nevertheless I would still say, that japanese rice wine is the one with the most attention to detail among them :)
Hey guys, this is why you guys are our go to channel. Being new at making any sort of fermented beverage, I researched and watched several video/channels and y’all’s channel is the most complete. Thank you for helping our little homestead. Btw... September 4th will be 2 months since I made my first honey mead and hopefully it’ll be ready to bottle. Video to follow.
In indonesia, we usually let the rice sit in the fermentation vessel for about a month. I used about 3 kilograms of glutinous rice the last time i tried to make it and get about 1,7 L of rice wine.
I’m making Sake and needed to share an interesting event: you need to watch it because of the parallel fermentation and just because you used a blow off tube once doesn’t mean it won’t calm down and then do it again! The process is converting starch to sugar and then fermenting that and it looks like theres a critical concentration for the sugars to convert rapidly so the mash has basically been breathing/expanding in he container and contracting. I had it go down to almost nothing after a vigorous day or two with a blow off tube and a day or two later i walked in on it needing a blow off tube again! You have to stir it every couple of days to burp and remix it and wow it took off again.
I packaged up a few pound of pilsner malt and crushed it. Added a pound or so of flaked corn to it. After that I grabbed some dried rice extract. I'm simply brewing a corona. I'm going to pitch some w34/70 and lager it. I've never brewed with flaked corn so that's a first, but the dried rice extract package I realized is what's going to drive up the gravity in this beer. The grain bill is next to nothing without throwing down on a pound of the rice extract. I enjoy your channel. Thanks.
Thanks Brian and Derica, really interested to see how this turns out! Appreciate all the effort and information that you put forth in making these videos!
@@CitySteadingBrews I am eager to see the result of your rice wine.. i believe you have tasted sake before, so i want to see your taste testing if it is exactly like sake from japan.
Make mine with Jasmine rice and brewers yeast. 15 days Open and stir sealed vessel for 1 minute each day. Don’t make much. What is there is great stuff . The first “ brew” I ever made was this 15 day sake . I’m glad it turned out well because it peaked my Interest and brought me to this most excellent channel. Learning so much here ❗️
I'm on batch 5, I use 2kg Indonesian glutenous rice. the Angel brand rice leaven you used. I get up to 1 gallon on Sake average is 16%. The last 2 batches I bagged and after I see no more activity I squeeze the bejeausus out of it, then rack and let it settle, after about a month total I get about 4-5 750 bottles of nectar. A straw colour Amazing flavour
Bravely done sagely guides! in my everlasting quest to brew using "available" and organic ingredients this has been on my list,. Really dig it when you do these experimental videos.
@@CitySteadingBrews I only started to brew after watching your channel, and the more I brew, the more I enjoy learning new things, and the more enjoyable my brews become.
I've been spending literally hours each night watching your videos. Not even sure how I got recommended your channel, just showed up Klingon Blood Wine. Of course I had to watch that, but then moved on to Mead which I've been planning to make. Now Rice Wines is one of my specialties. Having made 100's of batches for the past 10 or more years. I make both sake and makgeolli (Korean, which you actually get three products out of. To include Soju, Cheongju 'Rice wine' and Makgeolli 'rice beer') Since this is 'Sake' and I'm sure you've probably figured this out by now. Don't need to add water. The amylase (Enzyme that breakdown the starches to sugar) will pull apart the rice leaving you with the water you used to make the rice. I've found adding extra water to make the rice give you a better yield. This also makes the sweet rice very sticky. You can use long grain rice, but you really have to love your brew and stir it 2-3 times a day, and taste every couple of days. If that hint of lemon creeps in, you have to add sugar. If you're lucky and temperature is right, you won't need to add anything. Use short grain (new rice) sweet rice, and you will be perfect. (Though until things break down, keep an eye out for mold, and pull off right away). Stirring daily is soooo important. Eventually everything will liquefy. Also, if you don't add water the 1st sign of liquid that comes out is nigori (Sweet unfiltered sake), that's ready to drink right away. But I prefer to age to about 4-6 months, pouring the top off every month or so. The milk colored sake becomes crystal clear. Okay, back to watching the rest of this series.
I finally made this! I used kome-koji rice instead of the koji-kin starter. It turned out STRONG so I ended up diluting it with water and backsweetening it with 1/4 cup sugar so I could actually enjoy it LOL! (I saw Maangchi do this when she made her magkeolli.) I discovered that when you make it this way and don't over-filter it, it's called doburoku (or farm house sake). Apparantly "real" sake has some extra steps to make it more purified. I think I like the "rice milk" quality to it though. I'm drinking it now as I eat some bean curry and it pairs really well. Oh, btw I decided to leave the fermenter out on my counter so I could stir it every day. I didn't want it to get too much light so I crocheted a jar cozy to darken the jar. It worked great!
mix yeast with hands in to the rice before adding water let sit for 24 hours check must and mix 2 liters of water, let sit for a few more days then drain 2 to 3 times. i was in Japan 10 years ago. Love warm Sake!
Every time I think I have a nice stable of recipes and experiments to try, you all come along, and make me just want to dive into another branch of the home brew tree 🤣. Thank you
This was fascinating to watch. Normally in beer making, you start by malting the grain (wheat, barley, corn, etc) because the grain already contains the enzymes needed to convert the starches to sugars the baby sprout can use. That natural process can't be leveraged to kick off the conversion in rice because the husk is stripped off before the grain is stored. The husk, in the case of rice, contains all those important enzymes, and stripping it is how rice is stabilized for storage. (It's also mostly indigestible and that's why brown rice and whole-grain rice are not healthy alternatives to white rice.) That's why an enzyme has to be added to the rice first; it does the same job as malting. Since the first step to prepping the rice for use is rehydrating it with so much water, you could have gotten away with adding a lot less to the fermentor and probably ended up with higher alcohol content. I've said it before, what you guys do on this channel is like alchemy. I love watching you perform something half-way between science and magic with these brews.
I’m following your exact recipe right now, here in AUStralia. I love your videos; the two you are so personable and present very well. You’ve educated me a lot! Thank you VERY much!
Yes! Thank you for doing this! I just started doing meads this spring with help from your videos and tried some soju at a party last week and love it. just started researching on how to make it, so your rice wine video is very timely. thank you so much for this video.
You can add more rice and yeast to your fermentor even now. Its fine and works well. It takes along time for it to complete but the method you used will work well. Couple tips if you don't add water it helps to soak the rice in water before you steam it for several hours to get as much water into the rice as you can. Also to get the fermentation going faster add the yeast to the rice on the tray and fold it in, that helps make contact of the fungus and yeast with all grains of rice and kickstarts your fermentation. Your way will work fine and it will taste great just be very patient.
I have a whole bunch of "rice balls" for making rice wine and I'd be happy to send you some. Something else you might want to try when making rice wine/sake is red yeast rice. Makes the rice wine red. It's fun to watch rice ferment with the yeast balls as mold grows over and through the rice. The red yeast rice contains monascus mold to help break down the starch in the rice
Weirdly the only active ingredient in the packet they used was the microfungus Rhizopus oryzae (no bacteria or yeast as stated in the video). Guess it gets the job done of both breaking down starches and fermenting the resulting sugars? Modern sake-making methods use a specific mold (Aspergillus oryzae) referred to as "koji" to produce the enzymes necessary to break down the starches. A sake-specific yeast strain is added separately. Additionally, lactic acid plays a part in the process and if not added directly as a lactic acid solution is produced by lactobacillus bacteria which either is added or naturally present. This video had almost nothing to do with either traditional or modern sake making, but perhaps reflected a different tradition of some sort of "rice wine". Not sure...
@@Pontwam8 how is this fungus cultivated. I love the idea of making a rice wine from true scratch. It's apparently a world wide fungus but Google has not been kind to know how it's cultivated.
@@mykulpierce the fungus is Aspergillus oryzae. It's called Koji and names both the growing fungus and the molded grains. The molded grain Koji is used for making both sake and miso paste. Gem Cultures has multiple types of Koji spores for sale. Making koji isn't hard with a bit of right equipment (beer cooler, seedling heating mat and a temperature regulator) and some practice. There's a miso FB group that can give you a wealth of of tips on Koji making.
No need to add yeast! Used this to make rice wine, but was a little unsure about the process. Sake uses steamed rice and a different fungi (A. Oryzae). This product uses cooked rice with (R. Oryzae). Currently, my results are as follows: 1. Cooked rice. I added water which was a bad idea. If you use the cooked rice method, you will make rice wine. Do not add additional water. Cook the rice, let the temperature drop, sprinkle this package, and bottle up. This method gives more of a rice flavored rice wine. 2. Steamed rice. During the bottling process to start converting the starch to sugar and sugar to alcohol, I added a 1:2 water to rice ratio. The fermentation really started to happen faster than the cooked rice (approx. 36 hrs for steamed, 48 for cooked, but this may be due to adding water to the cooked rice. In other words, adding water slows the process.) This steaming method converts more sugar to alcohol. The next time around, I will add even less water during the bottling process. Steam if you have the extra time. Stop the process whenever you have reached your desired sweetness and alcohol level. The longer you let sit, you will get less sweet, less rice flavor, but more alcohol. The less time you let sit; you will get more rice flavor, sweeter, and less alcohol profile. FYI, this particular fungi gives a hint of a pineapple flavor. All in all. Great video. Your video gave me the confidence to try my own batches. Thank you.
I have made delicious rice wine. The method was different, but I don't remember it in detail. The first time, the odor made me think it had gone vinegar. But it hadn't; it came out perfect.
I've always loved how ticky sake can be. Especially how significantly the flavor can change, just from how long it's heated, and the temperature. I did some different tries with sake, and noticed even a few seconds can change it from a sweet to tart flavor. It's like sake is a naturally judgemental and selfish drink. Lol
As an experiment you could probably gently heat the softened rice to 140 degrees F and add the enzyme beta glucoamylase, then after a period raise the temp to 170 degrees F and add alpha glucoamylase... This enzyme works on the starches/long chain polysaccharides and breaks them down into shorter chain polysaccharides and simple fermentable sugars. You need to do this if you want to make Banana wine which has a large component of starch... the resultant Banana wine is then distilled into Banana brandy. But it might also work for rice starch... same polysaccharides so I don't see why not. :)
I tried it with cooked rice. It looked and smelled super funky in 10 days. I literally started a batch today. Added raw rice (500g) and sugar (1kg) to boiling water (3ltr) and then cut the heat, last night. This morning inoculated with yeast and stored it away. Im seeing activity in 12hrs. In secondary I'm gonna try vanilla pod and cinnamon - to get a horchata-esque flavour.
The enzyme is amylase that converts starch to sugar. Naruk is sold in some Asian stores which does the job. Saliva contains amylase and some strains of lactobacillus can do it.
@@jakattah Koji is a fungus (Aspergillus oryzae). Lactobacillus is used to lower the pH, I believe - not necessarily to break down the starches in this process. That's what sets sake apart from beer brewing - it's a parallel fermentation as opposed to the mashing -> fermentation .
@@CitySteadingBrews Well, since @jakattah mentioned saliva...I believe there's a very traditional version (for rituals, etc) where the rice is chewed beforehand and then left to ferment. I trust this is something you are unlikely to try out :D!?
@@CitySteadingBrews yup! Koreans have Makgeolli which is considered a rice beer. Comes in over 12% but they tend to water it down. I was in South Korea last year and tried the local beer. It seemed unhopped and I have no idea how they could enjoy it ;)
6:32 excellent description of the two-step fermentation process. You can also make a "corn wine," or even a "barley wine" or really any type of "grain wine" this way (although a beer made using this method would be undrinkable due to the extracted tannins.. yeah, one time I experimented with a "barley wine" made like this when I had a left over yeast ball and some barley sitting in the brew cabinet.. Don't do it :)
Kool. Interesting engineering tidbit. The pressure inside the vessel can easily be determined by the hydrostatic pressure in the air lock. The "Head" pressure generated is governed by the difference in height between the lower meniscus and the upper meniscus of the fluid in the air lock and the density of the fluid. In this case, lets say water in the air lock and a height difference of 1 inch. So rho X g X h is about .032 psi above atmospheric in the vessel. And yeah, the sudden release of continuous bubbles is caused by the pressure building up in the vessel to push the water up in the air lock and build up the head pressure. The small, twisted path of the air lock with the alternating spheres creates some resistance, which once the pressure is high enough to overcome, is released. Once the first bubble moves through, this "resistance" is less (static vs dynamic resistance) and more bubbles easily pass through. Also, the first bubble passing through kind of helps the ones behind it along. So they pass through more easily. This continues until the pressure in the vessel is reduced enough that the air lock stops the flow. As you mentioned, since the vessel has quite a bit of volume relatively speaking, many bubbles have to pass through to get the pressure down enough to stop the gas flow. Yeah I know, nerdy comment, but hey, I'm an engineer.
9:04 it should come out perfect. you're using the exact method I was taught. It should come out with a sweet and sour rice taste... absolutely delicious.
I live in Korea and I am at the moment making Korean makgeoli 먹걸리 and hit has come out surprisingly sour. I have made beer for more than 12 years and never had a beer sour on me. I though it was the temp, it was fermenting between 24-27C but I am currently making a barley beer using the Korean yeast source nuruk 누룩 but icing it to make sure it never ferments above 21C (72F) but it's still souring. I believe that nuruk누룩 just produces more lactic acid that other types of yeast. I have read a few pieces on nuruk specifically and lactic acid seems to be a main by product rather than a secondary byproduct to alcohol and carbonation like all of the beers I have made before. Kinda frustrating.
I think this is just the nature of using nuruk as a starter. I wonder if you could use a different source of amylase and then just ferment it with yeast?
A little late to the game. However, the trick is to ferment the sugars before the lacto gets to high. Temp control is key. Never let it get above 22C and try to keep around 20. Also, copitch some wine yeast with the nuruk. Bottle and refrigerate before fermentation is complete. This will help you get some fizz, keep some sweetness to counter the sour, and minimize the amount of lactic acid.
I didn' t realize this post had continued to develop into a convo, hadn' t paid attention to it. But thank you everyone for the input. I have come to conclude it waz the 누룩 itself. This parallels what Ken said. I have continued to make 막걸리 and spoken to some older people. 누룩 is used to make 된장 (korea' a version of miso) as well as vinegar and 막걸리. Way back when, when starting with a 누룩 cultivar, the didn' t know if they would get 막걸리 or vinegar. To ensure they got 막걸리 they would use starter from a previous batch. In doing so they were creating a brew strain. This brew strain outpaced the lactobacillus and when alochol was produced this eventually killed the lactobacillus creating a positive feedback loop to produce specifically brew yeast. At least this is how I understand it to be the case. I brew now with basic bread yeast and have no issuss with too much lactic acid since the switch.
Maangchi made makgeolli, which is the same concept but more like an ale than a wine. She dried the rice out until it was crunchy on the outside but still soft on the inside before adding it to the vessel. Makgeolli uses nuruk instead of koji. Nuruk is made on a wheat base, while koji is made on a rice base. I can't figure out if they are interchangeable though. I may sort of merge these two methods and see what happens.
I've noticed that most koji moulds have Aspergillus oryzae mould while Chinese yeast cakes and Korean nuruk has Rhizopus oryzae. I guess these different moulds and the wheat based yeast cake produce different notes, but technically speaking, they're all the same method with minor variations. I'm about to experiment with all three soon to see the difference.
I have been making "Makgeolli" pronounced Ma-cole-lee which is a korean rice wine. Yall can watch a video by the you tube channel "Maangchi" Korean rice liquor, this is where i got my recipe. Done in 9 days!! My mother in law is Korean and says that this is very traditional. Its very simple and delicious!!
YES! I actually combined Maangchi's recipe with B&D's recipe and it turned out fabulous. I can't have the nuruk because it contains wheat. Just substitute kame-koji instead of the nuruk and you get doburoku.
I'm experimenting with rice wine too, so glad you're giving it a try and making videos about it, you've confirmed that I'm on the right track with my experiment, the biggest difference to what you're doing compared to what I'm trying, is the amount of added water, one video I've watched has a rice to water ratio of 1 to 10, i.e. 1kg of rice to 10 litres of water. That video initially adds a similar amount of water as you did in this video, they waited several days, confirming that fermentation has started, then added the remaining water. Owing to the size of vessels, the quantity of rice verses yeast balls etc I'm using, the rice to water ratio is closer to 1 to 5 or 6....seems to be working so far.
@@CitySteadingBrews fare enough, this is my first time trying to brew any form of alcohol. I have been brewing my own probiotics for the last 4-5 months, but that's a whole story of it's own. Back to my rice wine the "extra" water doesn't seemed to have prevented any fermentation, taking your advice from some of your other videos I decided to let it ferment longer than the 4 weeks (because it was still fermenting) suggested by some other people. However, after 6 weeks (last weekend) I decided to strain it through some cheese cloth, put it into a 5 litre Demijohn (I think you Americans call them Carboys?), added more water and about 200 grams of raw sugar (I couldn't help myself) and the fermentation has really taken off, the air lock has been releasing every 3 seconds. In the meantime I've obtained a second 3 litre Kilner fermentation kit, this afternoon with the first 3 litre kit, as a control, I've started another rice wine experiment using the same method as you have used in this video, tomorrow, as a second control, I'll repeat your recipe, with the second 3 litre kit, only I won't add any water at all.
I'm a Taiwanese born guy (Grandparents from China), who moved to the USA at a very young age, and than moving again to Canada and having lived here since then. First fell in love with Japanese Sake even before I was old enough to start drinking. Now learning how to make Asian style rice wine from 2 white people. Nothing but love for you all. =D
"We'll be making our rice wine the traditional way." Then proceeds to show yest and culture packet instead of having a shrine maiden spit into the jar. I have watched too much anime.
@@freedomlover9560 sake is koji rice, which produces A amylyse and yeast and regular rice. its not beer. its certainly considered rice wine. it has a completely different way of fermenting to beer, called a parrallel fermentation where the koji transforms the rice into glucose and the yeast turns the glucose into alcohol
Do you know about the "chicha" a kind of beer made whit fermented corn ? And have your ever think about doing a video on it ? P.s. thanks you for all this good videos !
@@CitySteadingBrews it's actually not as bad as you'd think lol. I got my group of friends at a festival to just chew, spit, and drove it all back home a few years back and was pleasantly surprised. (Naturally, shared with all those who made it lol). Be intrigued to see how you guys go about similer. You've got a new sub from this vid for sure.
I finally started my first mead last night (after many fruit wines and ginger beers). As per me, it wasn't something simple, but a Yule mead, with spices and cake fruit and a whole lot of honey. So basically a Christmassy Sack Mead (1.130 Gravity). Only afterwards did I realise that I channelled my inner Brian by encouraging that first bubble with the exact same words. "Come on, Bubble, you can do it!" As I am typing here, the mead is happily bubbling away under my kitchen table. Going to be a long wait before I can taste it, but "Don't worry, Tessa, you can do it!" Hope Brian's fingers are feeling better by now. See the mummy wraps are off, at least.
Hehe, yeah, good job. My fingers are better, no pain now, not sure if the skin will stay or peel off. Definitely some nerve damage, but I'll be alright, thanks for asking :)
Tribal People in Bengal where I live use Rice to make a sour tasting Beer like drink called Haria, it's ritualistic in their Tribal Culture at every festival & weddings & I was once offered it & that stuff was very nasty but gives a good kick
I really hope your still checking this page. :) I over cooked my rice. It's mostly a oatmeal consistency. I added my yeast ball anyway because the rice wasn't cheap. It is starting to bubble so fermentation is happening. Am I wasting my time because of the over cooking of the rice? I'm sure I'll get some kind of alcohol but I want a nicely flavored rice wine. Anything you can give me on what to expect. Maybe I should just start again? Fermenters and space are a premium so I don't want to waste my time on a sure flop. Thanks for your time.
3:41 An American admitting metric is easier? WOW!! 😲 I've always known it was possible but never dared to think I'd actually witness it someday. 😋🤪 Cheers B&D. Love your vids. 👍
In this case, metric was only easier because of the granularity of the measurement, not the conversion between units. For the reasons it was easier, Fahrenheit would be easier than centigrade.
Metric is sooo much easier. The only thing I'd a problem with is deciding what to wear if I heard the temperature in °C because my whole life I hear °F.
@@mycrazylifewfawnlisette3582 I'd have same issues with Fahrenheit. Centigrade is a actually pretty easy: 20 is room temperature. 30 is hot, 10 is cold. 40 is sauna/fever. 0 is literally freezing. In Fahrenheit I'd have no flaming idea. All I know is 100F = 37C (body temp). And -40F = -40C (coincidence?)
For the record, as an American, I am not given a choice which system my country chooses to use therefore my saying Metric is easier is just my opinion. I use metric for all my cooking videos. Why? It's better. I have no problem admitting that, but me being American has nothing to do with it. I can no easier change my country to metric as you could change yours to Imperial.
It's interesting how you approached this. Clearly you did research. Now, contaminants from the air are definitely a potential problem, but I think the reason why other sake makers are initially putting cheesecloth on top, and leaving out the water, at least initially, is the because the koji culture (Aspergillus oryzae), which is the fungus that breaks down the starches and proteins down in the rice, requires oxygen. (The entire process is aerobic versus the anaerobic process of ethanol production, which explains the negative pressure in your airlock.) Thus, placing the rice initially in an airtight container and adding water may have reduced your sugar yield from the koji. I haven't watched the other parts of this video yet, but I suspect if you broke the pitching of the koji and the pitching of the yeast into separate steps and made sure the koji had enough oxygen, you would improve your ethanol yield. Mushroom growers probably have a better idea of how to keep the koji growth free of contaminants as Aspergillus oryzae is a multicellular fungus and you might look to those techniques for ideas to enhance your sugar production. I think the largest challenge of sake making is learning to handle the cultivation of two different organisms with different requirements in a specific sequence.
I visited a little Japanese sake brewery. They did have a drier step in between when they use another mold or yeast to develop the cooked rice flavours. They mentioned that shelling and polishing off the outside of rice gives different flavours too as you get closer to the central core of the grain (most rice we get is already shelled and given a quick polish). But everywhere had their own technique... Looking forward to the result! :)
Brian and Derica, I started my rice wine with your directions here, i used the sweet rice and the rice levin, Have to say it looks just like yours so far, Have a bit more time before i even get to racking it off, BUT my son thanks you since he enjoys Japanese things greatly. Thanks for all your advice and the beginning of a fun hobby
This may already be in the works but if not id love to see y'all do either a coconut water wine or mead. You two taught me how to brew properly several months ago and ive had much success, this is my next experiment coconut water mead I feel would be and interesting tropical flavored hydromel type of beverage. With some lime peel added for tannins love all the content keep living your dream you two its very inspiring.
Malted barley has most of the starches already covered into simple sugars, because in order to get it, you soak it and let it sprout. When sprouting, barley creates enzymes that split the long chains of starches into simple sugars which the grain uses as its source of energy.
Sort of right. Malting produces the enzymes needed for starch conversion, not the sugars itself. That's why there's a mashing process in beer making. The enzymes need some heat to activate them and do the actual conversion. With rice, it's similar, but a fungus does the conversion rather than amalase.
The key thing you missed is MALTED barley contains.. The malting process activates the enzymes with the barley to start to break down the starches. Then when you mash you are pulling for of the simple sugars because the Enzymes have already started to break the starches down. Sound's like if you added water heated it up to 175 held it here for 35 minutes or more, then spread it out and let it dry more of the starches could be extracted. Provided Rice have the enzymes, they shoudl because those starches and enzymes are trying to give the growing seed the best chance of survival.
Since as you pointed out the "yeast" is a collection of microorganisms, the reason they don't add water is to let the mold that converts the starch grow and convert. Mold doesn't do well underwater and there's more than enough moisture in the cooked rice to sustain it. Moreover, it'll need oxygen throughout the conversion process so keeping it under airlock might keep it from working.
@@CitySteadingBrews you said some used a cloth, which is more breathable, and there was some oxygen in the jar to begin with so it could get started. This might be why it's so painfully slow, though of course it could be something else.
Although sake is a type of rice wine, this is technically not sake, sake is made with a special rice called Sakamai and with koji, nor is it korean Magkeolli that is made with nuruk, the ingredients and process differ quite a bit from basic rice wine. All those variations are pretty interesting to dive into and for home brewers like us it's really interesting!
the reason why you saw so many people not adding any water to the rice is because, the starch in the rice gets broken down into less complex carbohydrates, the sugars that the yeast needs, by an enzyme produced by mold in that yeast mixture, so when the starch gets broken down, the water that was absorbed by the rice gets released Hope this makes sense.
Oh....my...goodness! My new favorite beverage! Well....under 40% abv. Like yourself, I enjoy a quality bourbon on occasion. I mostly followed your recipe. Where I deviated was the rinsing of and quantity of rice. I didn't rinse mine. I rarely do for preparing jasmine for eating either. My thoughts were that if the rice has a small amount of powdery starch coating it, then that would be all the better. More starch to convert to sugar, more sugar to convert to tasty alcohol. Also, I prepared enough rice to fill a 1 gallon wide mouth jar, with an airlock of course. I decided to experiment with the same packet of starter that you used for one batch, and crushed balls for the other. The ball batch fermented twice as fast as the packets. Two packets, two balls. The rice floated and compacted in the top half of each jar leaving clear liquid in the bottom half. When it started turning cloudy at 12 days, I decided to remove the rice. Didn't want the flavor to get too strong. Pear, green apple, and pineapple. Just shy of too sweet (for me). Very strong alcohol balances out the sweetness. Thank you for the inspiration. Gravity reading at the end is 1.050. For what it's worth anyway. Keep up the goodness.
Oh, I have to mention that you also succeeded in inspiring my sanitization protocols. I use Star San in my 15 gallon T.ub O.f Absolute S.anitizatin T.reatment, or T.O.A.S.T.. When completed, my equipment has been TOASTed.
Apologies, I have mixed bipolar disorder and ADHD so, I can get excited and can ramble. That being said, I want to mention, I took the somewhat cheesecloth strained rice and split it between two (TOASTed) 1/2 gallon fermenters with airlocks, as an experiment to see how far it goes without getting too funky. Smells very fruity so, high hopes. Airlocks began bubbling immediately.
2:49 you are 100% correct about that. That's rice flavored sugar wine, and since making homemade rice wine is incredibly messy (which I'm sure you're about to demonstrate), this is how a lot of home brewers make "rice wine." The flavor profile will be off, though.
Ooooh dang. I've never thought I'd be able to teach you guys stuff, since you're the ones who got me into brewing to begin with! But here goes! You're right in that yeast doesn't really like starches. For sake and many Asian wines, we actually have a mix of rice and fungi. For Japan, koji actually contains a kind of fungus which produces amylase, which in turn breaks the the starches into simpler sugars. This is similar to how you have to mash your barley to make molasses for beer. The only difference being that this happens in your fermentation jar with sake rather than before fermentation! I suppose that is why you add the koji to your rice before mixing, and not after: to allow the fungus time to grow first. Alternatively, there's a traditional method where they get young virgin girls to chew the rice before fermenting it (idea being purity? Idk). Amylase found in saliva does the same job too. I'm not sure if that'll fly with you guys, but hey, good to know. I'm aware that some places in the countryside also cultivate rice yeasts by saving and fermenting the water after washing the rice, and using that during fermentation. I'm not sure how successful that is, just heard of such instances. As for when paddling the rice, just wet your paddle and it'll be a lot easier to scoop out and handle. Anyway, thanks for trying this! Love this and you guys got me into brewing (well, kinda. Skyrim got me interested too). Wish you guys well!
5:51 people are notorious for exaggerating the alcohol content of their beverages, especially when the method doesn't allow for hydrometer readings. Your alcohol content can push 20% if you use a Chinese method in which the fermenting rice is lifted up, allowing the liquified results of fermentation (alcohol, water, lactic acid) to drip out. Note that sake also uses a method similar to this. However, using home methods and using the Korean method (which it looks like you're going to use based on the stuff behind you) you'll get 10 to 15% alcohol... similar to a typical wine.
It needs oxygen to convert starch to sugar, while the yeast doesn't like oxygen when it kicks in. So the best way is not to seal it(cover with something like cloth) for the 1st 12-24 hours, then put the airlock on. Yours is also fine because there is so much empty space to provide the oxygen, which is important since your airlock it at the beginning. The "Chinese" way needs to dig a hole in the middle, which also helps on the oxygen surface. The water could be added later.
Hello! Thank you for the video. I’m a very novice mead maker. I live in Japan. I wanted to make two comments just to add my two bits. First is that when I visited sake breweries in Japan they generally call this part where you add the bacteria to the rice “malting the rice.” I’ve been to maybe twenty breweries and it always looks extremely dry at the beginning of the process when the bacteria is first added and then the rice sort of sweats as the starches are converted to sugars. It often looks like a little mushy at the end. Their fermentation areas are usually wood with a lot of humidity control devices. Second is that you said that malted barley had no fermentable sugars. I thought barley had only starch and the malting process is what converted the starches to fermentable sugars. Is that wrong? Thank you for your videos! I hope you can continue to make more!
Great video, great comments section! Maybe someone here can explain why the rice is rinsed? Teres a lot of starch being lost during the process of rinsing, starch that presumably could be converted by the mold into sugars.
Read many of the comments here. Found your channel recently and I'm very inspired in general. Seeing this video really got my attention, as I adore Sake. I never even dreamed of making it. Wow. Im inspired, and you two remind me of my husband and I. Hes going to be very excited when I show him this video. We live on an island in Alaska. He is a burgeoning baker. We are in our early 50's. You are a delight, and so is this video. Not sure when, and we will be trying this one for sure. Do you sell the fermentation bottles? We are cider people in general, and both love Japanese food and culture - so this is great. I love how you cover so many styles. Will be fun to experiment with you and grow together. Blessings my friends.
To understand the process a little bit better, you have to dig into Koji ( a type of mood used to brew and ferment a lot of Asian food like sake, soy sauce and other soju products) koji is doing all the enzymatic work before yeast does the job to transform it into wine
@@DukeTrout I have had $10/bottle and $80/750ml (and many priced inbetween) sake at both cool and warm. I prefer them warm. I will agree the warmth takes a little bit of the bite out of the cheap ones. But all in all the warmth brings out the subtleties in flavor. It's like icing a whiskey (only opposite). Brian, when you taste yours you should do both warm and cool/room temp
Fawn Ricciuti Sure, you can do that. You would probably get some very polite stink-eye if you drink a high quality sake warm in Japan. I’m not just making things up here - my brother-in-law is a sake brewmaster, trained in Japan. He knows what he’s talking about.
I've never made Sake but I have made Korean Makgeolli several dozen times over the last 3 years and it's similar but tastes a lot better to me. Sake always tastes like sherry to me and I start gagging. :) Makgeolli uses Nuruk (amylase inoculated barley and grain cake) to supply the Amylase enzyme to convert the rice starches. Maangchi has a video on how she makes it. It's more of a cross between wine and beer as it is fizzy like a beer and sweet, deceptively strong too. Brews in 7-9 days and to be consumed within 2 weeks. A one kilo bag of rice and 1.5 cups of Nuruk yields 4 liters of Mak and then I dilute it by half to make 8 liters. Good stuff. I think every nation in the region has their own take on it. Chinese Rice Wine is again different and Vietnamese is different still. You could probably have an entire series exploring the nuances
We make this a lot. You never add water when making wine. The liquid will start to appear after a few days. Ifyou plan on distilling and making Baiju Ect, then you add water but not for wine. I've used both the yeast balls as well as the Angel alcohol yeast. You should steam the rice though tradionally without it(the rice) touching the water. The old lady's say it tastes better. Very often here it is made and fermented in little banana leaf rapped envelopes. It becomes a sticky sweet alcoholic treat! Rice wine is never distilled. Wine is wine, beer is beer, distillate is alcohol. Distilling rice wine makes soju, shoju, Baiju ,Vodka Ect. For each kilo of rice, you should yield around one litre of wine after one week to ten days fermentation
Thanks for help me out sir I was look for a mead that use mint to my wife side I need to get a hobby and I wanted to make wine and mead when I got out of the arm force thank you for show me how fun it is
9:38 the water acts as a solvent, helping move the yeast around. don't forget, though, the rice is going to decompose and make its on liquid. This liquid is going to be very high in alcohol and very sour from the lactic fermentation, so by adding water, you're diluting it a bit. that's fine.
While I was making a batch of rice wine, I got curious and wanted to know what wine from regular rice tasted like so in a small bottle i scooped out a little leftover rice and spoon in a small amount of the still fermenting sticky rice as the yeast. A few days later I tried it and it tasted like a really dry wine with barely the alcohol and the total absent of the fruity flavors. So definitely stick to the og way, It's not too bad and i'm glad that i knew but not going to do it again
Hay guys I was watching a Korean make molasses today and out of rice. This is how they made sweeteners before sugar . She put 2 cups of malted barley flour with 6 cups of cooked rice . and then fermented it for i think at 130 degrees for 20+ hours . It barley has and enzyme she said that changes the starch to sugar . ! Bingo thought of you 2 . copied and pasted this Diastatic Malt Flours contain naturally occurring active enzymes that function as natural dough conditioners in yeast fermented dough. It is used for promoting a strong rise, adding a mild natural malt flavor and enhancing appealing crust browning. It is good for Baked Goods, Bagels, Crackers, Pizza Crust, Pretzels. Professional bakers also find it useful for providing uniform and improved fermentation and improving machinability and extensibility. Enzymatic digestion of starch increases fermentation, relaxes the dough, decreases proofing time, increases volume, enhances browning and softens the crumb. Malted barley is a natural humectant that helps extend product shelf life.
Have you guys heard of pulque? It's a beer (or wine?) made from the sweet agave nectar. It's what tequila was originally distilled from. Would be interesting to know if it can be brewed in the US.
I've always argued that Sake is a beer rather than a wine, particularly at customs trying to bring back 16 liters rather than the limit of 4.
Sake has a different fermentation process than beer. The ABV is also higher than you would get with a beer.
@@tanizaki Sake has a different fermentation process to wine, it is most similar to that of beer. Like beer, the sugars are lockeds up in starch and require enzyme activity to break it down into fermentable sugars. Considering that there are commercially available beers that rival spirits in stength, the abv argument falls flat.
You cannot ferment reliably past 20-22%. Spirits usually START at 30-35%.
@@CitySteadingBrews There are commercially available beers up to 60ish%. They may be fortified, they may be distilled, but they are still "beer" by legal definition.
Well sure, you can fortify anything to those levels, and legally they may be beer but we all know that is not really beer anymore.
I used your methods to make a batch. WOW! My neighbors, the sake junkies, said its the best they ever tasted. I thought it was great, and have started two more batches.
Heh, that's awesome.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the possibility of a 25% abv product. Under the right conditions sake can definitely get this high. This is because the colonies of the two main microbes involved, Aspergillus oryzae (Koji-kin) and good ol’ Saccharomyces break down the starch to sugar and ferment it simultaneously. So the koji is effectively ‘step-feeding’ the yeast sugars keeping it super healthy as it slowly ferments. Love your easy and no fuss method, looks rlly effective hope it goes well!
Fair enough... but 25 is still a bit high. I'd go 20 or so.
Their no fuss methods have begun the brewer in me. I would like to try rice wine/sake, I wonder if I'll be able to find that Koji-kin here, though.
Given that turbo yeast caps out at 20%, I'm pretty sceptical of it going any higher. The fact that those microbes are capable of feeding the yeast well enough to keep it going that far is impressive enough anyway, given all the enzymes and nutrients that the turbo yeasts need to do the same job.
Perhaps the stories of 25% have leaked in from the distilled versions of the beverage? Or maybe even a freeze-fractioned version, given we now have high-abv beers such as Snake Venom, that use that process. Perhaps some variety of Hokkaido sake for example? Someone leaves their sake out overnight and finds it part-frozen in the morning, yanks out the ice and discovers that it tastes even better the next cold night.
It's just conjecture, but now I'm going to have to research and see if this exists. This feels too plausible of a drink to not exist somewhere!
My wife is from Asia ( Monday Edit : My wife was from Asia ) where every country has a rice alcohol.
Definitely no water. Liquid/alcohol will appear . It is slow but fascinating to see the rice break down . It won't break down a lot.
You will panic that it will go bad. You will panic if it goes a bit yellow or brown. You will remember someone told you never to reheat rice or eat old rice.
It won't go bad or poison you . It will smell lovely. Breath in the fumes.
If you have an asian grocery where you can buy 20kg sacks of sticky rice thats great . Tiny bags of rice do imo make it an expensive experiment.
With the liquid you have added I have no idea how thats going to turn out.
With no liquid and that amount of rice you could have expected an teacup ( after pressing) of something that to my mind is very sherry like. Maybe 20% sweet and very warming.
And when you feed the leftover rice to the chickens, ducks, pigs etc they will love you .
I think the way to approach it is the same way as making a really blue cheese. Strange things are happening to that rice but it will all turn out great.
ps airlocks and suchlike are not used "up country" . If any bacteria in the air tries to compete with the rice yeast ( and I strongly suspect there are other bacteria that break down the starch etc in an asian yeast ball ) the rice yeast will swiftly sumo/kungfu/maithai it.
Richard
With all the brewing and fermenting we've done, panic is not something we do easily, lol. I won't feed my chickens alcohol, not really all that good for them.
We use airlocks due to having cats, more than anything else with things like this!
Man, if your wife passed away. I am truly sorry man, and thanks for the great information cheers!
Loved this comment. I’m new to sake making at home and looking forward to trying open air as well as air lock methods. Cheers!
You guys always seem to make a video on whatever alcohol I'm planning on making next, it's incredible! And incredibly helpful!
The reason they sprinkle the starter is because, ideally the dried koji spores (oryzae) and some other oft added molds (like Rhizopus oligosporus; tempeh mold that adds new flavors to sake) are evenly dispersed. Hence why a lot of "traditional" ways let the rice sit for a day after this step, so the mold can culture, (also because it is more sensitive to water than yeast). Then, 24hrs later adding water and yeast. Thus making the world's only known edible, simultaneous-fermentation ("multiple parallel fermentation,") and is a process that is entirely unique to sake. of two completely different microbes!
Note *A lot of industrial sake brewery houses produce sake at 18-20 % and dilute with water to 15 %; which was the more or less average abv of quality rice wine, historically.
Yep. "Koji" is the magic word.
There's plenty of sour beers and mixed cultured ferments that are two completely different microbes. Many wines also go through malo-lactic fermentation using lactic acid bacteria alongside the yeast that ferments the sugar to alcohol. Saying it's the only edible co-fermentation is completely off the mark.
@@jukeboxhero91 Its more that theres a direct change in "multiple parallel fermentation" From this point, the koji will convert the starch in the rice into glucose, which the yeast will then use to create alcohol and carbon dioxide. The conversion of starch to sugar and sugar to alcohol takes place in parallel all in the same tank. This is known as "multiple parallel fermentation," and is a process that is entirely unique to sake. Yes, there are other things that have multiple microbes. But sake is the only one using mold and also having 1 complete cycle that converts and not just changing two separate chemicals.
The word "sake" derives from a Korean word that means "aged" or "fermented." Korean people taught Japanese people to ferment things like soy sauce, miso and alcoholic beverages.
@@tivonoston3068 Keeping it fairly rough: If you change "sake" to "rice wine", then yes. Don't forget the other rice wine products of korea, vietnam and china. Sometimes they add a different mold than Koji kin (aspergillus oryzae), like the one in red yeast rice (monascus purpureus) or the one most commonly in chinese yeast balls (rhizopus oryzae). Nevertheless I would still say, that japanese rice wine is the one with the most attention to detail among them :)
Hey guys, this is why you guys are our go to channel. Being new at making any sort of fermented beverage, I researched and watched several video/channels and y’all’s channel is the most complete. Thank you for helping our little homestead. Btw... September 4th will be 2 months since I made my first honey mead and hopefully it’ll be ready to bottle. Video to follow.
Our pleasure!
Can I Use CalRose Japanese Rice & What Was That Special Yeast Called Again?
One of the reasons The Great Wall of China"s mortar hasn't crumbled into dust in roughly 2700 years is because they used sticky rice in the process.
😂
😭
the surviving sections are relatively new, constructed during the Ming Dynasty
@@RichardCockerill RATIOD 😭
The oldest parts are actually out in the desert in the West. There's a really cool documentary about it.
In indonesia, we usually let the rice sit in the fermentation vessel for about a month. I used about 3 kilograms of glutinous rice the last time i tried to make it and get about 1,7 L of rice wine.
Wah gimana caranya kak klo bole tau?
Bagi resep dong kak, aku mau juga
I have been very close to attempting an attempt at making Junmai Daiginjo Sake, you all have just pushed me a bit closer to attempting this!!
I’m making Sake and needed to share an interesting event: you need to watch it because of the parallel fermentation and just because you used a blow off tube once doesn’t mean it won’t calm down and then do it again! The process is converting starch to sugar and then fermenting that and it looks like theres a critical concentration for the sugars to convert rapidly so the mash has basically been breathing/expanding in he container and contracting.
I had it go down to almost nothing after a vigorous day or two with a blow off tube and a day or two later i walked in on it needing a blow off tube again! You have to stir it every couple of days to burp and remix it and wow it took off again.
I packaged up a few pound of pilsner malt and crushed it. Added a pound or so of flaked corn to it. After that I grabbed some dried rice extract.
I'm simply brewing a corona.
I'm going to pitch some w34/70 and lager it.
I've never brewed with flaked corn so that's a first, but the dried rice extract package I realized is what's going to drive up the gravity in this beer. The grain bill is next to nothing without throwing down on a pound of the rice extract.
I enjoy your channel. Thanks.
Thanks Brian and Derica, really interested to see how this turns out! Appreciate all the effort and information that you put forth in making these videos!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
@@CitySteadingBrews
I am eager to see the result of your rice wine.. i believe you have tasted sake before, so i want to see your taste testing if it is exactly like sake from japan.
Amazing. Was watching a Korean show and they were discussing rice wine. I thought hey, I want to make this....so here we are. Thank you for the video.
“I wonder if CS has a sake video.” Of course they do!
Make mine with Jasmine rice and brewers yeast.
15 days
Open and stir sealed vessel for 1 minute each day.
Don’t make much.
What is there is great stuff .
The first “ brew” I ever made was this 15 day sake . I’m glad it turned out well because it peaked my Interest and brought me to this most excellent channel.
Learning so much here ❗️
But... you have nothing to convert the starches to sugars.
@@CitySteadingBrews I'm thinking wild bacteria might have gotten in, such is the magic of fermentation.
I love sake! Excited to find out how this turns out.
I'm on batch 5, I use 2kg Indonesian glutenous rice. the Angel brand rice leaven you used. I get up to 1 gallon on Sake average is 16%. The last 2 batches I bagged and after I see no more activity I squeeze the bejeausus out of it, then rack and let it settle, after about a month total I get about 4-5 750 bottles of nectar. A straw colour Amazing flavour
Bravely done sagely guides! in my everlasting quest to brew using "available" and organic ingredients this has been on my list,. Really dig it when you do these experimental videos.
Glad it was helpful!
@@CitySteadingBrews I only started to brew after watching your channel, and the more I brew, the more I enjoy learning new things, and the more enjoyable my brews become.
I've been spending literally hours each night watching your videos. Not even sure how I got recommended your channel, just showed up Klingon Blood Wine. Of course I had to watch that, but then moved on to Mead which I've been planning to make. Now Rice Wines is one of my specialties. Having made 100's of batches for the past 10 or more years. I make both sake and makgeolli (Korean, which you actually get three products out of. To include Soju, Cheongju 'Rice wine' and Makgeolli 'rice beer')
Since this is 'Sake' and I'm sure you've probably figured this out by now. Don't need to add water. The amylase (Enzyme that breakdown the starches to sugar) will pull apart the rice leaving you with the water you used to make the rice. I've found adding extra water to make the rice give you a better yield. This also makes the sweet rice very sticky. You can use long grain rice, but you really have to love your brew and stir it 2-3 times a day, and taste every couple of days. If that hint of lemon creeps in, you have to add sugar. If you're lucky and temperature is right, you won't need to add anything. Use short grain (new rice) sweet rice, and you will be perfect. (Though until things break down, keep an eye out for mold, and pull off right away).
Stirring daily is soooo important. Eventually everything will liquefy. Also, if you don't add water the 1st sign of liquid that comes out is nigori (Sweet unfiltered sake), that's ready to drink right away. But I prefer to age to about 4-6 months, pouring the top off every month or so. The milk colored sake becomes crystal clear.
Okay, back to watching the rest of this series.
Been saying I wanna start this for a while now but haven't made sence of how yet.....u guys come through in the clench again
I finally made this! I used kome-koji rice instead of the koji-kin starter. It turned out STRONG so I ended up diluting it with water and backsweetening it with 1/4 cup sugar so I could actually enjoy it LOL! (I saw Maangchi do this when she made her magkeolli.) I discovered that when you make it this way and don't over-filter it, it's called doburoku (or farm house sake). Apparantly "real" sake has some extra steps to make it more purified. I think I like the "rice milk" quality to it though. I'm drinking it now as I eat some bean curry and it pairs really well. Oh, btw I decided to leave the fermenter out on my counter so I could stir it every day. I didn't want it to get too much light so I crocheted a jar cozy to darken the jar. It worked great!
mix yeast with hands in to the rice before adding water let sit for 24 hours check must and mix 2 liters of water, let sit for a few more days then drain 2 to 3 times. i was in Japan 10 years ago. Love warm Sake!
Every time I think I have a nice stable of recipes and experiments to try, you all come along, and make me just want to dive into another branch of the home brew tree 🤣. Thank you
This was fascinating to watch. Normally in beer making, you start by malting the grain (wheat, barley, corn, etc) because the grain already contains the enzymes needed to convert the starches to sugars the baby sprout can use. That natural process can't be leveraged to kick off the conversion in rice because the husk is stripped off before the grain is stored. The husk, in the case of rice, contains all those important enzymes, and stripping it is how rice is stabilized for storage. (It's also mostly indigestible and that's why brown rice and whole-grain rice are not healthy alternatives to white rice.) That's why an enzyme has to be added to the rice first; it does the same job as malting.
Since the first step to prepping the rice for use is rehydrating it with so much water, you could have gotten away with adding a lot less to the fermentor and probably ended up with higher alcohol content.
I've said it before, what you guys do on this channel is like alchemy. I love watching you perform something half-way between science and magic with these brews.
I’m following your exact recipe right now, here in AUStralia. I love your videos; the two you are so personable and present very well. You’ve educated me a lot! Thank you VERY much!
I to am from Aus!! Were did you find/buy your Koji-kin from, within Aus.
@@roguishowl3915 I bought it on eBay….
Yes! Thank you for doing this! I just started doing meads this spring with help from your videos and tried some soju at a party last week and love it. just started researching on how to make it, so your rice wine video is very timely. thank you so much for this video.
Wonderful!
You can add more rice and yeast to your fermentor even now. Its fine and works well. It takes along time for it to complete but the method you used will work well. Couple tips if you don't add water it helps to soak the rice in water before you steam it for several hours to get as much water into the rice as you can. Also to get the fermentation going faster add the yeast to the rice on the tray and fold it in, that helps make contact of the fungus and yeast with all grains of rice and kickstarts your fermentation. Your way will work fine and it will taste great just be very patient.
Thank you. We're exploring options going forward with this series and that is one. :)
This has been on my to-do list for EVER! Intrigued to see how it turns out
I have a whole bunch of "rice balls" for making rice wine and I'd be happy to send you some.
Something else you might want to try when making rice wine/sake is red yeast rice. Makes the rice wine red.
It's fun to watch rice ferment with the yeast balls as mold grows over and through the rice. The red yeast rice contains monascus mold to help break down the starch in the rice
What we used is essentially the same as the rice balls just already crushed up :)
@@CitySteadingBrews have you tried red yeast rice?
it isn't just yeast, it's also an enzyme producing fungi
Weirdly the only active ingredient in the packet they used was the microfungus Rhizopus oryzae (no bacteria or yeast as stated in the video). Guess it gets the job done of both breaking down starches and fermenting the resulting sugars?
Modern sake-making methods use a specific mold (Aspergillus oryzae) referred to as "koji" to produce the enzymes necessary to break down the starches.
A sake-specific yeast strain is added separately. Additionally, lactic acid plays a part in the process and if not added directly as a lactic acid solution is produced by lactobacillus bacteria which either is added or naturally present.
This video had almost nothing to do with either traditional or modern sake making, but perhaps reflected a different tradition of some sort of "rice wine". Not sure...
@@Pontwam8 how is this fungus cultivated. I love the idea of making a rice wine from true scratch. It's apparently a world wide fungus but Google has not been kind to know how it's cultivated.
@@mykulpierce the fungus is Aspergillus oryzae. It's called Koji and names both the growing fungus and the molded grains. The molded grain Koji is used for making both sake and miso paste. Gem Cultures has multiple types of Koji spores for sale. Making koji isn't hard with a bit of right equipment (beer cooler, seedling heating mat and a temperature regulator) and some practice. There's a miso FB group that can give you a wealth of of tips on Koji making.
@@ryckbirch8089 thanks I'll check it out!
No need to add yeast!
Used this to make rice wine, but was a little unsure about the process. Sake uses steamed rice and a different fungi (A. Oryzae). This product uses cooked rice with (R. Oryzae). Currently, my results are as follows:
1. Cooked rice. I added water which was a bad idea. If you use the cooked rice method, you will make rice wine. Do not add additional water. Cook the rice, let the temperature drop, sprinkle this package, and bottle up. This method gives more of a rice flavored rice wine.
2. Steamed rice. During the bottling process to start converting the starch to sugar and sugar to alcohol, I added a 1:2 water to rice ratio. The fermentation really started to happen faster than the cooked rice (approx. 36 hrs for steamed, 48 for cooked, but this may be due to adding water to the cooked rice. In other words, adding water slows the process.) This steaming method converts more sugar to alcohol. The next time around, I will add even less water during the bottling process.
Steam if you have the extra time. Stop the process whenever you have reached your desired sweetness and alcohol level. The longer you let sit, you will get less sweet, less rice flavor, but more alcohol. The less time you let sit; you will get more rice flavor, sweeter, and less alcohol profile.
FYI, this particular fungi gives a hint of a pineapple flavor.
All in all. Great video. Your video gave me the confidence to try my own batches. Thank you.
We didn’t add yeast.
If you add yeast, you get incredibly fruity notes in your rice wine.
Sticky rice tastes amazing , hold with fingers and dip in your favorite sauces or soupes
I have made delicious rice wine. The method was different, but I don't remember it in detail. The first time, the odor made me think it had gone vinegar. But it hadn't; it came out perfect.
I've always loved how ticky sake can be. Especially how significantly the flavor can change, just from how long it's heated, and the temperature. I did some different tries with sake, and noticed even a few seconds can change it from a sweet to tart flavor. It's like sake is a naturally judgemental and selfish drink. Lol
As everything japanese . It frowns upon anything less than efficiency.
As an experiment you could probably gently heat the softened rice to 140 degrees F and add the enzyme beta glucoamylase, then after a period raise the temp to 170 degrees F and add alpha glucoamylase... This enzyme works on the starches/long chain polysaccharides and breaks them down into shorter chain polysaccharides and simple fermentable sugars. You need to do this if you want to make Banana wine which has a large component of starch... the resultant Banana wine is then distilled into Banana brandy. But it might also work for rice starch... same polysaccharides so I don't see why not. :)
Or just use the rice leaven with the fungus since it does all that plus it's traditional plus it adds some of the flavors associated with rice wine.
I tried it with cooked rice. It looked and smelled super funky in 10 days.
I literally started a batch today. Added raw rice (500g) and sugar (1kg) to boiling water (3ltr) and then cut the heat, last night. This morning inoculated with yeast and stored it away. Im seeing activity in 12hrs.
In secondary I'm gonna try vanilla pod and cinnamon - to get a horchata-esque flavour.
If you didn't use the rice leaven type yeast or Chinese yeast balls, it's not going to ferment that rice, just the sugar, like I said in th evideo.
The enzyme is amylase that converts starch to sugar. Naruk is sold in some Asian stores which does the job. Saliva contains amylase and some strains of lactobacillus can do it.
Koji is the Japanese equivalent. Homebrew stores sell amylase as well.
@@jakattah Koji is a fungus (Aspergillus oryzae). Lactobacillus is used to lower the pH, I believe - not necessarily to break down the starches in this process. That's what sets sake apart from beer brewing - it's a parallel fermentation as opposed to the mashing -> fermentation .
Thus I said more like beer, though it's not the same exactly.
@@CitySteadingBrews Well, since @jakattah mentioned saliva...I believe there's a very traditional version (for rituals, etc) where the rice is chewed beforehand and then left to ferment. I trust this is something you are unlikely to try out :D!?
@@CitySteadingBrews yup! Koreans have Makgeolli which is considered a rice beer. Comes in over 12% but they tend to water it down. I was in South Korea last year and tried the local beer. It seemed unhopped and I have no idea how they could enjoy it ;)
6:32 excellent description of the two-step fermentation process. You can also make a "corn wine," or even a "barley wine" or really any type of "grain wine" this way (although a beer made using this method would be undrinkable due to the extracted tannins.. yeah, one time I experimented with a "barley wine" made like this when I had a left over yeast ball and some barley sitting in the brew cabinet.. Don't do it :)
How did corn wine taste?
Kool. Interesting engineering tidbit. The pressure inside the vessel can easily be determined by the hydrostatic pressure in the air lock. The "Head" pressure generated is governed by the difference in height between the lower meniscus and the upper meniscus of the fluid in the air lock and the density of the fluid. In this case, lets say water in the air lock and a height difference of 1 inch. So rho X g X h is about .032 psi above atmospheric in the vessel. And yeah, the sudden release of continuous bubbles is caused by the pressure building up in the vessel to push the water up in the air lock and build up the head pressure. The small, twisted path of the air lock with the alternating spheres creates some resistance, which once the pressure is high enough to overcome, is released. Once the first bubble moves through, this "resistance" is less (static vs dynamic resistance) and more bubbles easily pass through. Also, the first bubble passing through kind of helps the ones behind it along. So they pass through more easily. This continues until the pressure in the vessel is reduced enough that the air lock stops the flow. As you mentioned, since the vessel has quite a bit of volume relatively speaking, many bubbles have to pass through to get the pressure down enough to stop the gas flow. Yeah I know, nerdy comment, but hey, I'm an engineer.
9:04 it should come out perfect. you're using the exact method I was taught. It should come out with a sweet and sour rice taste... absolutely delicious.
Brian has the perfect presentation skills... As a Non English speaker it's very easy to understand, not hill Billy at all very nice
Wow, thanks.
I live in Korea and I am at the moment making Korean makgeoli 먹걸리 and hit has come out surprisingly sour. I have made beer for more than 12 years and never had a beer sour on me. I though it was the temp, it was fermenting between 24-27C but I am currently making a barley beer using the Korean yeast source nuruk 누룩 but icing it to make sure it never ferments above 21C (72F) but it's still souring. I believe that nuruk누룩 just produces more lactic acid that other types of yeast. I have read a few pieces on nuruk specifically and lactic acid seems to be a main by product rather than a secondary byproduct to alcohol and carbonation like all of the beers I have made before. Kinda frustrating.
I love makgeolli how did you go did you get it right?
I think this is just the nature of using nuruk as a starter. I wonder if you could use a different source of amylase and then just ferment it with yeast?
A little late to the game. However, the trick is to ferment the sugars before the lacto gets to high. Temp control is key. Never let it get above 22C and try to keep around 20. Also, copitch some wine yeast with the nuruk. Bottle and refrigerate before fermentation is complete. This will help you get some fizz, keep some sweetness to counter the sour, and minimize the amount of lactic acid.
I didn' t realize this post had continued to develop into a convo, hadn' t paid attention to it. But thank you everyone for the input. I have come to conclude it waz the 누룩 itself. This parallels what Ken said. I have continued to make 막걸리 and spoken to some older people. 누룩 is used to make 된장 (korea' a version of miso) as well as vinegar and 막걸리. Way back when, when starting with a 누룩 cultivar, the didn' t know if they would get 막걸리 or vinegar. To ensure they got 막걸리 they would use starter from a previous batch. In doing so they were creating a brew strain. This brew strain outpaced the lactobacillus and when alochol was produced this eventually killed the lactobacillus creating a positive feedback loop to produce specifically brew yeast. At least this is how I understand it to be the case. I brew now with basic bread yeast and have no issuss with too much lactic acid since the switch.
Maangchi made makgeolli, which is the same concept but more like an ale than a wine. She dried the rice out until it was crunchy on the outside but still soft on the inside before adding it to the vessel. Makgeolli uses nuruk instead of koji. Nuruk is made on a wheat base, while koji is made on a rice base. I can't figure out if they are interchangeable though. I may sort of merge these two methods and see what happens.
I've noticed that most koji moulds have Aspergillus oryzae mould while Chinese yeast cakes and Korean nuruk has Rhizopus oryzae. I guess these different moulds and the wheat based yeast cake produce different notes, but technically speaking, they're all the same method with minor variations. I'm about to experiment with all three soon to see the difference.
I have been making "Makgeolli" pronounced Ma-cole-lee which is a korean rice wine. Yall can watch a video by the you tube channel "Maangchi" Korean rice liquor, this is where i got my recipe. Done in 9 days!! My mother in law is Korean and says that this is very traditional. Its very simple and delicious!!
YES! I actually combined Maangchi's recipe with B&D's recipe and it turned out fabulous. I can't have the nuruk because it contains wheat. Just substitute kame-koji instead of the nuruk and you get doburoku.
@@amykitchens10 super awesome, definitely gonna check that out!! Thank you
I'm experimenting with rice wine too, so glad you're giving it a try and making videos about it, you've confirmed that I'm on the right track with my experiment, the biggest difference to what you're doing compared to what I'm trying, is the amount of added water, one video I've watched has a rice to water ratio of 1 to 10, i.e. 1kg of rice to 10 litres of water. That video initially adds a similar amount of water as you did in this video, they waited several days, confirming that fermentation has started, then added the remaining water. Owing to the size of vessels, the quantity of rice verses yeast balls etc I'm using, the rice to water ratio is closer to 1 to 5 or 6....seems to be working so far.
I've been told that water is bad for the young fermentation.
@@CitySteadingBrews please explain
ASTO Crabman it’s essentially a mold so they don’t like to be underwater.
@@CitySteadingBrews fare enough, this is my first time trying to brew any form of alcohol. I have been brewing my own probiotics for the last 4-5 months, but that's a whole story of it's own. Back to my rice wine the "extra" water doesn't seemed to have prevented any fermentation, taking your advice from some of your other videos I decided to let it ferment longer than the 4 weeks (because it was still fermenting) suggested by some other people. However, after 6 weeks (last weekend) I decided to strain it through some cheese cloth, put it into a 5 litre Demijohn (I think you Americans call them Carboys?), added more water and about 200 grams of raw sugar (I couldn't help myself) and the fermentation has really taken off, the air lock has been releasing every 3 seconds. In the meantime I've obtained a second 3 litre Kilner fermentation kit, this afternoon with the first 3 litre kit, as a control, I've started another rice wine experiment using the same method as you have used in this video, tomorrow, as a second control, I'll repeat your recipe, with the second 3 litre kit, only I won't add any water at all.
Wish you guys could've seen my excitement when I saw this notification. Awesome awesome post, guys!
Our pleasure!
I'm a Taiwanese born guy (Grandparents from China), who moved to the USA at a very young age, and than moving again to Canada and having lived here since then.
First fell in love with Japanese Sake even before I was old enough to start drinking.
Now learning how to make Asian style rice wine from 2 white people.
Nothing but love for you all. =D
Lol
"We'll be making our rice wine the traditional way." Then proceeds to show yest and culture packet instead of having a shrine maiden spit into the jar.
I have watched too much anime.
your are mixing two different drinks. Sake and Kuchikamizake
Sake isn't rice wine, it's beer.
@@gliderspace super interesting reading up on it. Thanks for pointing it out :)
@@freedomlover9560 sake is koji rice, which produces A amylyse and yeast and regular rice. its not beer. its certainly considered rice wine. it has a completely different way of fermenting to beer, called a parrallel fermentation where the koji transforms the rice into glucose and the yeast turns the glucose into alcohol
actually saliva has the same enzymes that break down the rice, you do see this method in asia especially in poor communities
I've been wanting to learn how to do this so I am definitely following this one
Do you know about the "chicha" a kind of beer made whit fermented corn ? And have your ever think about doing a video on it ?
P.s. thanks you for all this good videos !
We're not chewing corn and spitting it out, no.... but a chicha like product is something we're working on.
@@CitySteadingBrews it's actually not as bad as you'd think lol. I got my group of friends at a festival to just chew, spit, and drove it all back home a few years back and was pleasantly surprised. (Naturally, shared with all those who made it lol). Be intrigued to see how you guys go about similer. You've got a new sub from this vid for sure.
I finally started my first mead last night (after many fruit wines and ginger beers). As per me, it wasn't something simple, but a Yule mead, with spices and cake fruit and a whole lot of honey. So basically a Christmassy Sack Mead (1.130 Gravity). Only afterwards did I realise that I channelled my inner Brian by encouraging that first bubble with the exact same words. "Come on, Bubble, you can do it!" As I am typing here, the mead is happily bubbling away under my kitchen table. Going to be a long wait before I can taste it, but "Don't worry, Tessa, you can do it!"
Hope Brian's fingers are feeling better by now. See the mummy wraps are off, at least.
Hehe, yeah, good job.
My fingers are better, no pain now, not sure if the skin will stay or peel off. Definitely some nerve damage, but I'll be alright, thanks for asking :)
Liking this video before even watching it 😂
Took me the same
A lot of studying and tinkering to get it the way I liked it. Cheers y'all
Parchment paper lined sheet trays may be a good idea.
This is what I use.
Tribal People in Bengal where I live use Rice to make a sour tasting Beer like drink called Haria, it's ritualistic in their Tribal Culture at every festival & weddings & I was once offered it & that stuff was very nasty but gives a good kick
You guys are literally awesome, you explain everything so perfectly
Thank you. We work really hard to do so!
You can get this yeast on ebay 3-4 euro a pack of 5.
I really hope your still checking this page. :) I over cooked my rice. It's mostly a oatmeal consistency. I added my yeast ball anyway because the rice wasn't cheap. It is starting to bubble so fermentation is happening. Am I wasting my time because of the over cooking of the rice? I'm sure I'll get some kind of alcohol but I want a nicely flavored rice wine. Anything you can give me on what to expect. Maybe I should just start again? Fermenters and space are a premium so I don't want to waste my time on a sure flop. Thanks for your time.
I'm not a rice wine expert, but I don't think it should affect it.
3:41 An American admitting metric is easier? WOW!! 😲 I've always known it was possible but never dared to think I'd actually witness it someday. 😋🤪
Cheers B&D. Love your vids. 👍
I agree metric would be much easier than imperial but there is hardly anything that uses it here in the states
In this case, metric was only easier because of the granularity of the measurement, not the conversion between units. For the reasons it was easier, Fahrenheit would be easier than centigrade.
Metric is sooo much easier. The only thing I'd a problem with is deciding what to wear if I heard the temperature in °C because my whole life I hear °F.
@@mycrazylifewfawnlisette3582 I'd have same issues with Fahrenheit. Centigrade is a actually pretty easy: 20 is room temperature. 30 is hot, 10 is cold. 40 is sauna/fever. 0 is literally freezing. In Fahrenheit I'd have no flaming idea.
All I know is 100F = 37C (body temp). And -40F = -40C (coincidence?)
For the record, as an American, I am not given a choice which system my country chooses to use therefore my saying Metric is easier is just my opinion. I use metric for all my cooking videos. Why? It's better. I have no problem admitting that, but me being American has nothing to do with it. I can no easier change my country to metric as you could change yours to Imperial.
It's interesting how you approached this. Clearly you did research. Now, contaminants from the air are definitely a potential problem, but I think the reason why other sake makers are initially putting cheesecloth on top, and leaving out the water, at least initially, is the because the koji culture (Aspergillus oryzae), which is the fungus that breaks down the starches and proteins down in the rice, requires oxygen. (The entire process is aerobic versus the anaerobic process of ethanol production, which explains the negative pressure in your airlock.) Thus, placing the rice initially in an airtight container and adding water may have reduced your sugar yield from the koji. I haven't watched the other parts of this video yet, but I suspect if you broke the pitching of the koji and the pitching of the yeast into separate steps and made sure the koji had enough oxygen, you would improve your ethanol yield. Mushroom growers probably have a better idea of how to keep the koji growth free of contaminants as Aspergillus oryzae is a multicellular fungus and you might look to those techniques for ideas to enhance your sugar production. I think the largest challenge of sake making is learning to handle the cultivation of two different organisms with different requirements in a specific sequence.
Rice yeast doesn't like water at the start to much will kill off the yeast all together but a small amount or none is best
Interesting.... didn't see that in any of my research.
@@CitySteadingBrews Did they say anything about hulling the rice?
Nope.
@@CitySteadingBrews I knew a guy who made his own when I lived in Japan. I wasn't curious enough to ask when I was that young.
I visited a little Japanese sake brewery. They did have a drier step in between when they use another mold or yeast to develop the cooked rice flavours. They mentioned that shelling and polishing off the outside of rice gives different flavours too as you get closer to the central core of the grain (most rice we get is already shelled and given a quick polish). But everywhere had their own technique... Looking forward to the result! :)
Thanks for the videos, I have a brew in using your technique. 1 week in currently bubbling it's happy little self. See what we have in a month or so
Curious to find out as the starch breaks down how much of the solids just...vanish
I was wondering about that too.
It does break down to mush.
Koji!
I think that's where some of the resulting water comes back from
@@generrosity definitely the water the dried rice soaked up to become moist and sticky.
I did this about two years ago.found it really easy
It is easy, just a very different method to most brews.
Brian and Derica, I started my rice wine with your directions here, i used the sweet rice and the rice levin, Have to say it looks just like yours so far, Have a bit more time before i even get to racking it off, BUT my son thanks you since he enjoys Japanese things greatly. Thanks for all your advice and the beginning of a fun hobby
This may already be in the works but if not id love to see y'all do either a coconut water wine or mead. You two taught me how to brew properly several months ago and ive had much success, this is my next experiment coconut water mead I feel would be and interesting tropical flavored hydromel type of beverage. With some lime peel added for tannins love all the content keep living your dream you two its very inspiring.
Saludos desde Perú .perfecta tu explicación muy clara.
Greetings from Perú ....a pretty Nice and clear explanation....You boths ate increíble.....
Malted barley has most of the starches already covered into simple sugars, because in order to get it, you soak it and let it sprout. When sprouting, barley creates enzymes that split the long chains of starches into simple sugars which the grain uses as its source of energy.
Sort of right. Malting produces the enzymes needed for starch conversion, not the sugars itself. That's why there's a mashing process in beer making. The enzymes need some heat to activate them and do the actual conversion. With rice, it's similar, but a fungus does the conversion rather than amalase.
Great to see a new type of brew and method. Very informative, look forward to seeing how it turns out.
I didn't even think about making my own sake! Looks like I got some rice to buy
I was just thinking about how to make Sake a few days ago..perfect timing!
The key thing you missed is MALTED barley contains.. The malting process activates the enzymes with the barley to start to break down the starches. Then when you mash you are pulling for of the simple sugars because the Enzymes have already started to break the starches down. Sound's like if you added water heated it up to 175 held it here for 35 minutes or more, then spread it out and let it dry more of the starches could be extracted. Provided Rice have the enzymes, they shoudl because those starches and enzymes are trying to give the growing seed the best chance of survival.
That’s not how this works. Malted barley contains the enzymes already but rice doesn’t. The yeast mix has a fungus that does the conversion.
Since as you pointed out the "yeast" is a collection of microorganisms, the reason they don't add water is to let the mold that converts the starch grow and convert. Mold doesn't do well underwater and there's more than enough moisture in the cooked rice to sustain it.
Moreover, it'll need oxygen throughout the conversion process so keeping it under airlock might keep it from working.
Well, everyone used closed containers that I saw from start to finish. The water thing makes sense though. But... it's fermenting, so it is working.
@@CitySteadingBrews you said some used a cloth, which is more breathable, and there was some oxygen in the jar to begin with so it could get started. This might be why it's so painfully slow, though of course it could be something else.
Although sake is a type of rice wine, this is technically not sake, sake is made with a special rice called Sakamai and with koji, nor is it korean Magkeolli that is made with nuruk, the ingredients and process differ quite a bit from basic rice wine. All those variations are pretty interesting to dive into and for home brewers like us it's really interesting!
The research I did said the names are interchangeable. Sake is simply Japanese rice wine, and there are a thousand ways to make that too.
Awesome work guys! thank you so much for your info and the links! I will be trying this very soon!
Have fun!
the reason why you saw so many people not adding any water to the rice is because, the starch in the rice gets broken down into less complex carbohydrates, the sugars that the yeast needs, by an enzyme produced by mold in that yeast mixture, so when the starch gets broken down, the water that was absorbed by the rice gets released
Hope this makes sense.
Oh....my...goodness! My new favorite beverage! Well....under 40% abv. Like yourself, I enjoy a quality bourbon on occasion. I mostly followed your recipe. Where I deviated was the rinsing of and quantity of rice. I didn't rinse mine. I rarely do for preparing jasmine for eating either. My thoughts were that if the rice has a small amount of powdery starch coating it, then that would be all the better. More starch to convert to sugar, more sugar to convert to tasty alcohol. Also, I prepared enough rice to fill a 1 gallon wide mouth jar, with an airlock of course. I decided to experiment with the same packet of starter that you used for one batch, and crushed balls for the other. The ball batch fermented twice as fast as the packets. Two packets, two balls. The rice floated and compacted in the top half of each jar leaving clear liquid in the bottom half. When it started turning cloudy at 12 days, I decided to remove the rice. Didn't want the flavor to get too strong. Pear, green apple, and pineapple. Just shy of too sweet (for me). Very strong alcohol balances out the sweetness. Thank you for the inspiration. Gravity reading at the end is 1.050. For what it's worth anyway. Keep up the goodness.
Oh, I have to mention that you also succeeded in inspiring my sanitization protocols. I use Star San in my 15 gallon T.ub O.f Absolute S.anitizatin T.reatment, or T.O.A.S.T.. When completed, my equipment has been TOASTed.
Apologies, I have mixed bipolar disorder and ADHD so, I can get excited and can ramble. That being said, I want to mention, I took the somewhat cheesecloth strained rice and split it between two (TOASTed) 1/2 gallon fermenters with airlocks, as an experiment to see how far it goes without getting too funky. Smells very fruity so, high hopes. Airlocks began bubbling immediately.
TOASTed. I love it! Thanks for watching!
2:49 you are 100% correct about that. That's rice flavored sugar wine, and since making homemade rice wine is incredibly messy (which I'm sure you're about to demonstrate), this is how a lot of home brewers make "rice wine." The flavor profile will be off, though.
Ooooh dang. I've never thought I'd be able to teach you guys stuff, since you're the ones who got me into brewing to begin with! But here goes!
You're right in that yeast doesn't really like starches. For sake and many Asian wines, we actually have a mix of rice and fungi. For Japan, koji actually contains a kind of fungus which produces amylase, which in turn breaks the the starches into simpler sugars. This is similar to how you have to mash your barley to make molasses for beer. The only difference being that this happens in your fermentation jar with sake rather than before fermentation! I suppose that is why you add the koji to your rice before mixing, and not after: to allow the fungus time to grow first.
Alternatively, there's a traditional method where they get young virgin girls to chew the rice before fermenting it (idea being purity? Idk). Amylase found in saliva does the same job too. I'm not sure if that'll fly with you guys, but hey, good to know. I'm aware that some places in the countryside also cultivate rice yeasts by saving and fermenting the water after washing the rice, and using that during fermentation. I'm not sure how successful that is, just heard of such instances.
As for when paddling the rice, just wet your paddle and it'll be a lot easier to scoop out and handle.
Anyway, thanks for trying this! Love this and you guys got me into brewing (well, kinda. Skyrim got me interested too). Wish you guys well!
5:51 people are notorious for exaggerating the alcohol content of their beverages, especially when the method doesn't allow for hydrometer readings. Your alcohol content can push 20% if you use a Chinese method in which the fermenting rice is lifted up, allowing the liquified results of fermentation (alcohol, water, lactic acid) to drip out. Note that sake also uses a method similar to this. However, using home methods and using the Korean method (which it looks like you're going to use based on the stuff behind you) you'll get 10 to 15% alcohol... similar to a typical wine.
It needs oxygen to convert starch to sugar, while the yeast doesn't like oxygen when it kicks in. So the best way is not to seal it(cover with something like cloth) for the 1st 12-24 hours, then put the airlock on. Yours is also fine because there is so much empty space to provide the oxygen, which is important since your airlock it at the beginning. The "Chinese" way needs to dig a hole in the middle, which also helps on the oxygen surface. The water could be added later.
Hello! Thank you for the video. I’m a very novice mead maker. I live in Japan. I wanted to make two comments just to add my two bits. First is that when I visited sake breweries in Japan they generally call this part where you add the bacteria to the rice “malting the rice.” I’ve been to maybe twenty breweries and it always looks extremely dry at the beginning of the process when the bacteria is first added and then the rice sort of sweats as the starches are converted to sugars. It often looks like a little mushy at the end. Their fermentation areas are usually wood with a lot of humidity control devices. Second is that you said that malted barley had no fermentable sugars. I thought barley had only starch and the malting process is what converted the starches to fermentable sugars. Is that wrong? Thank you for your videos! I hope you can continue to make more!
Barley has starches, malted barley contains the enzyme to convert the starches ti sugar but it has to be activated.
Great video, great comments section!
Maybe someone here can explain why the rice is rinsed?
Teres a lot of starch being lost during the process of rinsing, starch that presumably could be converted by the mold into sugars.
Lots of dust being lost too!
I did have the same thought though, lol
Yes it's the rice making pockets of gas as she said. I used to ferment with a lot of fruit pulp in the carboy and it works that way.
Read many of the comments here. Found your channel recently and I'm very inspired in general. Seeing this video really got my attention, as I adore Sake. I never even dreamed of making it. Wow. Im inspired, and you two remind me of my husband and I. Hes going to be very excited when I show him this video. We live on an island in Alaska. He is a burgeoning baker. We are in our early 50's. You are a delight, and so is this video. Not sure when, and we will be trying this one for sure. Do you sell the fermentation bottles?
We are cider people in general, and both love Japanese food and culture - so this is great. I love how you cover so many styles. Will be fun to experiment with you and grow together. Blessings my friends.
its good to see your hand is doing better Brian. i wish this project all the luck.
Thanks 👍
that liquor is named "suje " in Deori tribe and we make the yeast on our own with local herbs.
Great video, it's going to be interesting form what I can remember the enzyme that converts the starches to sugars can look like mould.
To understand the process a little bit better, you have to dig into Koji ( a type of mood used to brew and ferment a lot of Asian food like sake, soy sauce and other soju products) koji is doing all the enzymatic work before yeast does the job to transform it into wine
I was in Japan in the early eighties . They serve it warm . Really couldn't get into that . Good video !!
Love it warm! Brings out more flavors!
Warm sake is typically for the lower grade sakes. High-end sakes are usually drank room temperature or chilled. FYI.
This is a myth actually. Sometimes it's more or less true, but not really.
@@DukeTrout I have had $10/bottle and $80/750ml (and many priced inbetween) sake at both cool and warm. I prefer them warm. I will agree the warmth takes a little bit of the bite out of the cheap ones. But all in all the warmth brings out the subtleties in flavor. It's like icing a whiskey (only opposite).
Brian, when you taste yours you should do both warm and cool/room temp
Fawn Ricciuti Sure, you can do that. You would probably get some very polite stink-eye if you drink a high quality sake warm in Japan. I’m not just making things up here - my brother-in-law is a sake brewmaster, trained in Japan. He knows what he’s talking about.
It's also really nice to use for cooking.
Good idea, I might just make a mash out of it, use purified alpha-amylase to break the starch down, boil the liquid coming out of it and fermenting.
I've never made Sake but I have made Korean Makgeolli several dozen times over the last 3 years and it's similar but tastes a lot better to me. Sake always tastes like sherry to me and I start gagging. :) Makgeolli uses Nuruk (amylase inoculated barley and grain cake) to supply the Amylase enzyme to convert the rice starches. Maangchi has a video on how she makes it. It's more of a cross between wine and beer as it is fizzy like a beer and sweet, deceptively strong too. Brews in 7-9 days and to be consumed within 2 weeks. A one kilo bag of rice and 1.5 cups of Nuruk yields 4 liters of Mak and then I dilute it by half to make 8 liters. Good stuff. I think every nation in the region has their own take on it. Chinese Rice Wine is again different and Vietnamese is different still. You could probably have an entire series exploring the nuances
That is very true, there are so many, and it's fascinating to see the differences. Thanks for the information.
We make this a lot. You never add water when making wine. The liquid will start to appear after a few days. Ifyou plan on distilling and making Baiju Ect, then you add water but not for wine. I've used both the yeast balls as well as the Angel alcohol yeast. You should steam the rice though tradionally without it(the rice) touching the water. The old lady's say it tastes better. Very often here it is made and fermented in little banana leaf rapped envelopes. It becomes a sticky sweet alcoholic treat! Rice wine is never distilled. Wine is wine, beer is beer, distillate is alcohol. Distilling rice wine makes soju, shoju, Baiju ,Vodka Ect.
For each kilo of rice, you should yield around one litre of wine after one week to ten days fermentation
Ooo this is exciting. I am looking forward to seeing the whole process
Thanks for help me out sir I was look for a mead that use mint to my wife side I need to get a hobby and I wanted to make wine and mead when I got out of the arm force thank you for show me how fun it is
9:38 the water acts as a solvent, helping move the yeast around. don't forget, though, the rice is going to decompose and make its on liquid. This liquid is going to be very high in alcohol and very sour from the lactic fermentation, so by adding water, you're diluting it a bit. that's fine.
While I was making a batch of rice wine, I got curious and wanted to know what wine from regular rice tasted like so in a small bottle i scooped out a little leftover rice and spoon in a small amount of the still fermenting sticky rice as the yeast. A few days later I tried it and it tasted like a really dry wine with barely the alcohol and the total absent of the fruity flavors. So definitely stick to the og way, It's not too bad and i'm glad that i knew but not going to do it again
Hay guys I was watching a Korean make molasses today and out of rice. This is how they made sweeteners before sugar . She put 2 cups of malted barley flour with 6 cups of cooked rice . and then fermented it for i think at 130 degrees for 20+ hours . It barley has and enzyme she said that changes the starch to sugar . ! Bingo thought of you 2 . copied and pasted this Diastatic Malt Flours contain naturally occurring active enzymes that function as natural dough conditioners in yeast fermented dough. It is used for promoting a strong rise, adding a mild natural malt flavor and enhancing appealing crust browning. It is good for Baked Goods, Bagels, Crackers, Pizza Crust, Pretzels.
Professional bakers also find it useful for providing uniform and improved fermentation and improving machinability and extensibility. Enzymatic digestion of starch increases fermentation, relaxes the dough, decreases proofing time, increases volume, enhances browning and softens the crumb. Malted barley is a natural humectant that helps extend product shelf life.
Have you guys heard of pulque? It's a beer (or wine?) made from the sweet agave nectar. It's what tequila was originally distilled from. Would be interesting to know if it can be brewed in the US.
We are working on some alternative fermentables, yep.