The above title spells jiāng mǐ jiǔ, which means glutenous rice wine. Unlike Western wine, which is of course made by fermentation of the sugars in grapes (and other fruits), rice wine is the result of fermenting rice starch that has been converted to sugars. You can't just use any rice, but should go for glutenous rice (also known as sticky or sweet rice) such as Thai Jasmine, Sushi or Calrose, although I've also read about obtaining great results from Arborio rice. Aside from the rice, you need one special ingredient: Jiuqu or liquor ferment, sometimes called rice cakes.
The Jiuqu is actually a complex mixture of various molds, yeasts, and bacteria. They are often sold as yeast balls or dried grains (aka Red Yeast Rice). I've ordered some of the yeast balls and I should get them August 24th (via snail mail).
The process to create rice wine is fairly simple (most suggest to start with Thai Jasmine rice):
- Rinse the rice until the runoff is (almost) clear; this could be as many as 30 times.
- Soak the rice for about 1.5 hours or until it increases around 1/3 in volume.
- Strain and rinse rice until the water runs clear again.
- Cook or steam the rice until done. If you cook the rice and have previously soaked it, it's best to use a ratio of 1 cup of water per 1 cup of dry rice. To cook the rice:
- Place the necessary amount of water in a heavy bottomed sauce pan. Choose a pan which allows at least 1" of dry rice to fill the bottom of the pan.
- Bring the water to a boil, add soaked/rinsed rice and stir once with a fork. Reduce the heat to a low simmer and cover the pan with lid.
- Leave at a low simmer for 25 minutes and do not remove the lid or stir.
- Remove from the heat source and allow to stand, covered, for another 10 - 15 minutes.
- Spread out the rice to cool on some sheet pans (probably best to sanitize the sheet pan at this point). The external grain should be soft, with a still somewhat firm center.
- While the rice is cooling, clean and sanitize a glass jar big enough to hold all the rice (canning jars work well).
- Next, crush as much of the ball yeast as necessary. In general they recommend 2-10 g per 2.2 lbs of rice.
- Once the rice has cooled to room temperature, mix the powder obtained in step 11 in with the rice and put it all in the glass jar.
- Use an airlock if you can or simply sanitize some cheesecloth, wrap that over the jar opening and then screw the lid on. This should leave enough space for the CO2 to escape.
- And now the hardest part: let it sit for 21-24 days in a dark space, somewhere between 70-80 degrees F.
I'm just reporting what I've seen from pictures and posts on the forum, but what follows is a description of what happens. There's a lot of variability here, and all of it comes from being sanitary, the type of rice you use and how much water you used to cook/steam the rice. One thing I've learned is that you shouldn't use too much water as that seems to result in unpleasant wine. As the Jiuqu (yeast balls) contain mold to help break down the rice, don't be alarmed to see mold develop on the rice. I suggest you go through the thread here if you want to learn more about that, but just a warning: there are a LOT of posts!
After 1 or maybe a couple of days, you'll start to see liquid gathering at the bottom of the jar. In about 2 weeks there will be rice floating on top of the liquid, you'll probably see more white mold spores (and that's a good sign). After about 3 weeks to 24 days, the liquid should be ready for harvesting. Strain or sieve it, but it's absolutely normal for the collected wine to be cloudy (I've seen pictures where it looks milk white). Bottle the wine in flip tops and to stop the fermentation entirely, pasteurize it as I've described in the previous, root beer post. The end result should be a sweet to tangy, sake like alcohol. The ABV can apparently easily run up to 20%, so drink responsibly, but do enjoy it!
I'll follow up on this once I have all the ingredients:
- Yeast balls arrive next week
- We're going to get some Thai Jasmine rice
- I need to buy a 1-gallon jar or otherwise we'll stick with a few more half-gallon canning jars.