Koji and Rice

brantoken

Hi guys,

I have been working on this for a while here in the states. Here is what I have learned so for;

1) steam or boiling either will work , what your after is a rubbery constancy.
all the way through the grain, It needs to get hot enough to gelatinize the starch and get some moisture into the center of the grain this give water and enzyme access. Keep it at 100 C for about 10 -20 minutes depending on how much moisture was in the grain to start with. Goop is not necessary when starting out. Boiled and steamed rice, for a while now trying to understand this. Cook it till it looses the brittle part in the center and gets a bit rubbery , steer away from goop. The goop in the mash will not let the yeast penetrate the mass it will only ferment on the surface of the blob.It will find you later though, a different kind of goop.

2) Batsmatti rice is not very good, In fact it was foul tasting the one time I tried it. Korean sweet short grain are the best I have found so far.

3) Enzymes work just as easy as koji, when the rice is prepared. alpha amylase and gluco amylase work just fine. In fact, industrial gluco amylase is made from a type of koji.

4) You can run from the goop but you can't hide, you will get a lot of goop in the bottom of your fer-mentor. I put it in a cloth bag and strain it by hand or hang it over a bucket to get the liquid out. The japanese use presses for sake or shochu, some of the more expensive Brand still bag hang .

5) Watch the ph . It will stall on larger grain bills. Koji is also used to make citric acid....

I wish I could watch the ladies I am sure I could pick up a trick or two....

Also isn't it funny how much good taste is determine on what we are used to, I think a lot of people drink really bad liquor because of that( and still swear that it is really good). Open pallet open mind now.....

Law_Of_Ohms

The Russian thread is about no-cook koji, maybe Lloyd can ask Tan to try and find these enzymes/koji for us... hint hint...

Lloyd

Thanks guys for so much encouragement, gems of wisdom and reading material.
The super thick goo is now a much thinner white soup. I stir to aerate it daily.
A special thanks to @Law_Of_Ohms without whom I'd have given up and simply sat the fermenters on the curb thinking they were forever ruined.
At this rate I feel cetain that the rice wine will be ready to distill before the next olympic games, if not then surely by the next.

Its been almost a week and by now the old ladies have probably turned their fermenters twice. There is something evil about them. They make it look too fast and too easy.

punkin

Sounds like it's cheaper to buy than make anyway mate.

cooperville

How are we looking on this experiment Lloyd is it roadside or going in the boiler ? I have been looking for yeast balls :P

Lloyd

It is SLOWLY creeping along. Super slow ferment.

(Oh, sorry, fell asleep while thinking about the rice ferment)

I won't toss it because I figure I'm about 1/6th the way into it.
Will let you know in the spring if its good or not, might be ready to run by then.

Rice ferments suck. An UJ, TPW or any of a dozen other concoctions would have been ready to distill by now.

Smaug

March down there and scream at those old ladies for canoodling you into this.

Lloyd

I have convinced myself the old broads did not cook the rice.

And the tops of their fermentation vessels were a magnitude larger than mine; thinking that has something to do with it. Also some form of witchcraft is involved.

MOD2

Two off-topic comments deleted - REASON: Offensive language and cultural bashing.

Please keep in mind that we are an open minded community, but it is in our best interest to not have bad language or otherwise offensive content poison our forum.

Tomer1

Oops. didnt mean to make it sound like that. I do hold my opinion on several ways to make wine. only one of them yeild a great outcome with complex nose and elegance. the other is... acquired taste :)