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I'd use a pot still you want the flavor. A valved reflux would work okay too if you used little or no reflux. The hearts portion of my run came off 76-80 % AV.

just ran my rice vodka though the still yesterday. Man is that good. It has a mild flavor all its own. thanks for this receipe.

What kind of rice is being used? White? Brown? Long or short grain? sticky?

I used cheap generic brand white long grain rice.

UR, did you ever get around to making a wash without the added sugar?

No never did. This was the first and to date the only rice vodka I made. Have not been distilling anything lately, been a busy summer/fall. Winter is coming soon, I'm definitely going to give the purist route a go. I will post a report when I do.

Uncle Remus wrote:You need something to convert the starch to sugars. For traditional saki koji is used, which is some kinda fungus or mold culture. I used enzymes rather than malt because I want to see what kinda flavor you get from rice, enzymes will add no flavors.

BTW it's fermenting like crazy right now.

I've made sake a few times from koji, but it was difficult for me to keep it from getting infected. I thought it was pretty good, but my brother and his Japanese wife weren't very eager to endorse it. I also used various yeast strains, included distiller's yeast. Since the koji continuously converts the starch during the ferment, the distiller's yeast went way above 15% abv, but had no way to verify that except by taste ( and I've tasted a lot !) I also did a lacto-bacillus starter from yogurt and it did not lead to infection but "softened" the taste.

Shochu, as you know, distilled sake, has been discussed a couple of times on this forum.
I was in Japan for 3 weeks in April, and sampled as many different kinds of shochu as i could. It is made from just about anything they can lay there hands on, but the famous one from the south of the island is made from sweet yams. It had a slight burnt rubber taste to me.
The best that I tasted was made from buckwheat : "mugi shochu". It was dang difficult to figure out what was in the bottles as they were almost all in Japanese and often the help in the store couldn't speak english (or didn't want to). It was originally used as an anticeptic but at some point they decided it was more efficacious to administer it internally. I saw a picture of some traditional stills made from fired glazed clay and the design reminded me of the Kentucky pot still head.

Anyway, one thing I did discern is that with all shochu the grain or vegetable is converted with Koji, almost always with the traditional kome koji starter that contains the aspergillus, sacharomycces and lacto-bacillus at the same time. To my knowledge, synthetic enzymes or malted grains were not used for starch conversion, neither was chaptalization with sugar employed (but shochu has gotten popular lately so maybe they use non-traditional ways to boost the production).

There. That's about all I know. I would like to play with it again, but it is a lot of work, and it pays to be meticulously clean.

OOOPPPS! I'm so rude - It's great to hear from you again, UR, and look forward to reading about your future projects!

i never got around to a rice only ferment either...i tryed several times but i just had such good luck with UR'S rice vodka that i just could not exempt the sugar when i was setting it up....i know.. chicken shit, but hey it just worked up so dern good. this is my favorite ferment up to date with ujssm in second place. the rice is just so mild and the yeild is to good. but the more i read i know DWWG and winos sugar wash is next.

Hi

Been to several brew shops in uk and can't get alpha amylase OR gluco amylase shop owners have'nt a clue "But being in uk only beer & wine Allowed"
Met an old chap in one brew shop he had a look at Uncle Remus Reciepe which i print out and suggest i use AMYLASE as substitute.
Can anyone help !
Can i use this AMYLASE in this receipe ?
Is there alternatives i can use if the plain amylase is no good for this receipe?


On Bottle Ingredients = dextrose Amylase
bottle instructions-: use one teaspoon per 4.5 litres to remove starch haze.Add to the bulk.Rack off when the wine is clear.

To me sounds like a clearing agent but i'm novice at this .Done the turbo yeast,Got high alcohol content but smell and taste not what i prefer.

thanks For Your Time
Martyn

Martyn this is where I buy my enzymes http://www.milehidistilling.com/additives_s/26.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow They are about $15 per pound. A pound of each will last a long time, make sure you keep it in the fridge.

I'm interested in these "Yeast balls" and if they are actually the same thing as using Koji Rice to make Sake. I was able to get Koji Rice a couple years back and ended up making a few batches of some killer sake. At the end of the fermentation I would add an additional round of more cooked rice and a bit more Koji Rice. This would restart the ferment and get the Sake up around 18-19% or so. If the Yeast balls will do the same thing I might just use them for Rice Vodka, and of course holding back 2-3 liters of Sake each batch.

MaltyRod wrote:I'm interested in these "Yeast balls" and if they are actually the same thing as using Koji Rice to make Sake.

Back up & do some reading here, check out some of the other threads, like Pugi-rum. There's a couple of active threads on rice vodka / sake and quite a few older one. I'm pretty sure you'll find answers to most of your questions.

i'm gonna do a all grain no sugar ferment soon. i have 10 pounds of rice ground to meal and, have another 10 to grind yet, i think that a ground rice grain will convert out better than just mashing the rice. in the past the rice never did cook out to a gel a good bit was still grain like.i wonder if grinding before mashing will be better for the enzymes to work..any thoughts? i will keep a record on this one and post some results.

i got 10 pounds in the doble boiler with +_ 5gal water put a teaspoon of enzymes and heated up slowly its near boil point and is thick as cream of wheat. gonna hold it here for a while then let cool and pitch the real enzymes...this is the ground rice
edit..i converted the whole grain rice yesterday and took winos advice from other threads and, pitched plenty of yeast
i have both in the fermenters 6gal each, they are bubbling away and, i am very courious to see what i get from 20#s of rice because it is sooo cheap, one note is rice is a sticky glue like substance..lol.. it takes racking and filtering to clean up for the charge...pian in the ass but the results are great

the 20#s of rice made 3-1/2 liters of 55% drinkable single run vodka.

big worm wrote:the 20#s of rice made 3-1/2 liters of 55% drinkable single run vodka.

Not bad... Not bad at all... Always wanted to try rice but have been hesitant to do so...

wife shops in a salvage bargan type place. theres a fair amount of latino folks in the area so the salvage store keeps large bags of rice fairly cheap, beans as well..can dry beans be fermented? prob not. i think each 10# was like $3-4 they also sell grain and animal feeds in 50# bags. cracked corn was $8-9 it went up then down again. mixed scrach grains about the same....ya got me thinking here, i was surprised by how much grain they had in stock i bet they have oats and wheat too..gonna look


rad, be prepaird to work with a thin paste think warm milkshake PITA but good results

Yeah, I know it's one of those SMOP type recipes, big worm...

Rice averages 50 cents per pound in this area...

well its 1:33AM new years day

my first rice run

just finished boiling up 5Kg rice, 5Kg sugar, 55Lt water
and will add the yeast and Koji starter when it's temp drops to 30c (its 28c in my house at the moment DAM HOT)

do you think i should ad some more sugar? i carnt tell what the sg is because it just dont seem to read right because of the glueness of it

its reading a sg of 1045 and the temp is about 40c

hmm just thought i still have all the starch that the Koji will convert

Adverse Effects wrote:well its 1:33AM new years day

my first rice run

just finished boiling up 5Kg rice, 5Kg sugar, 55Lt water
and will add the yeast and Koji starter when it's temp drops to 30c (its 28c in my house at the moment DAM HOT)

do you think i should ad some more sugar? i carnt tell what the sg is because it just dont seem to read right because of the glueness of it

its reading a sg of 1045 and the temp is about 40c

hmm just thought i still have all the starch that the Koji will convert

I'd let it go as is... The SG is probably not accurate, like you stated... Worst case scenario is that you'll end up with less than optimal amount of final product, but that's better than a stuck ferment of rice SMOP...

Smells heavenly!

I followed the recipe exactly and I can't imagine mine finishing in one week at this rate (already been 10 days) I understand that the glucoamylase continues to convert starch to glucose while the yeast are consuming the glucose - this is known in the sake world as "parallel fermentation", I think. Do we really expect all the conversion to happen before fermentation?

Don't know what the variable is here, maybe temp. Mid 60's in my case. Uncle Remus, do you recall what temp you fermented at?

Also noticed that the hydrometer reading seems questionable due to the amount of goo (for lack of a better word) in solution.

Sure looking forward to some tasty rice wine!

patiently,
Shaggy

Everything I ferment is in a controlled cabinet set at 20-22 C. If it is still fermenting then let it run it's coarse. I just told the story about what happened the first time. The last time I did it I got a stuck fermentation and have no idea why. I ran it anyway and got less yield but still a great product. I saved the back set since it had sugar left in it and used it in a corn wash which fermented completely. Give it some time if it stops fermenting run it anyway.

I thought this recipe was bulletproof till the last time I made it. It sounds like most who have tried it had good luck. I'll see what happens the next time....maybe I need to make some kind of sacrifice to the fermentation gods

mine stopped after about a week. i added nutrients and enzymes and she took off. took a month to ferment out but had a great yield and fantastic taste. gman

Has anybody tried or considered boiling 4 or 5 ounces of wheat germ and adding for nutrients? Just wondering what would happen.. Will try it myself as soon as temps cool down a bit here, garage is over 88 degrees now, so I am done for a while.

About to try this, just picked up 30lb of sugar 6lb of jasmine rice and 5lb white rice. gonna run the rice through the blender to break it up abit before cooking and add some beano, I guess... Our temps are pretty hot here too but I have some frozen water bottles that I drop in periodicly and have a green wool blanket to insulate my fermenter. The first time I used the frozen water bottles my temp was 85F and my ferment had pretty much stalled, when I dropped in the bottle it looked like it was going to boil over. It dropped the temp to 78f and took off like a bat out of hell.

DBDub, are you aiming to get fermentable sugars from the rice? If so you, you will need the alpha/gluco enzymes to convert the long/short chain sugars to fermentable sugars. Beano alone wont cut it it, as i understand it. But, I may be wrong in my limited use of enzymes, I usually use malted grain myself. But you may want to check it out...

beano is a enzyme (alpha galactosidase) that brakes down complex sugars ( polysaccharides/oligosaharidi)

Had a free day today so I started a rice wine just for kicks.

5lbs rice, crushed
1 lb 6 row malt, crushed
3 lbs sugar
4 tbls wheat germ
5 gallon wash
Chaimpaign yeast

Boiled the wheat germ in water for about 30 minutes, added more water and let come to boil. Added a couple handfulls of crushed malt, stirred a bit and added rice. Cooked for 20 minutes then turned off heat. Had to add water a couple more times as mash got real thick on me.. When cooled down, I added the rest of my malt slowly, stirring between scoops of malt. The mash thinned right out and got nice and watery. I let this sit for 2.5 hours, then inverted my suger and added. Waiting on my wash to cool so I can add my starter and plug with airlock. I dropped my beer hydro, so I am gonna wing this one. Looks right, maybe a tad thin, I may add a little more sugar in a few days. Just wanted to try out the wheat germ and see if it gave the rice more nutrients. If it doesnt have the taste I want, Ill just toss it in the still. But so far smells and tastes good. We shall see in a week or so...

Rice wine is chugging right along, a little fast for my taste, a double bubble every 2 second or so, but its staying consitant. Thi may be done sooner than I thought. I think the wheat germ made a differance.. I hope it doesnt change the taste much, as I really liked URRV recipe. I made a batch to run through pot still, ended up drinking most of it as wine..

I did a batch of this last winter that I froze/concentrated before distilling. came through with some very nice flavour.
did a batch this spring without the freeze/concentration step and wasn't any where near as nice.