General Rice discussion

All about grains. Malting, smoking, grinding and other preparations.
Which grains are hot, which are not.

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thecontrolguy
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by thecontrolguy »

Special thanks to Aircarbonarc for some good wisdom. I'll post my learning when it comes down the pike for me. 20 l pails. Easy Rice living, hopefully.
Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
thecontrolguy
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by thecontrolguy »

Details on the first all Rice brew attempt to date;

I started with a 16lbs bag of white rice (cheap, available) divided equally into two batches. I fully cooked the rice until it was soft in two batches in a 16 qt stock pot that BARELY fit 8 lbs rice and all the water needed to keep it from sticking to the bottom. Some of it may have been eaten...

Once cooked soft, I spooned it out into one 5 gallon pail and made up with boiled water to about 3 inches from the top of the pail. I then immersion blended the rice into a liquid slurry much like cream of wheat. This was repeated for another pail.

Once the average temperature neared 155F I added (1)tbsp of Endo-Alpha Amylase to each pail and stirred it in. The pails were wrapped in old farm jackets and left all day. Evening I adjusted the PH to 6.0, 6.5 with baking soda and eggshells, and added the Exo-Alpha Amylase AMG300L and re-wrapped the pails. The temperatures and PH's were as indicated on the suppliers' bottles.

The next morning the pails were just slightly warm to touch so I pitched 15g each pail of EC1115 with 4 tbsp crushed eggshell, four tsp of (yeast and DAP-based) nutrient. No lees from previous brews. Spent a couple minutes gently stirring. Ph hanging at approx 6.0. Lids on and air-locked. Within 45 minutes the air locks were hammering nicely. I eventually had to remove the lids and let the foam dissipate a couple days as the foam was starting out the airlocks. Two days later the PH was starting down below 5.5 so I added another 2-3 tbsp crushed eggshells each pail.

Lids back on and airlocks back to 2-3 beats per second. More to come...
Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
aircarbonarc
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by aircarbonarc »

Good idea with the egg shells, rice seems to ferment out very acidic.
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thecontrolguy
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by thecontrolguy »

Update - four days later. The buckets were starting to settle and separate so in the spirit of experimentation I decided to stir it all up and immersion blend it again. PH was 5.5 so I added a few more tbsp's of eggshell and blended it all together. There were some identifiable rice grains in it but not anymore. A couple hours later the first bucket popped the lid off with a thick crausen and what looks like very active yeast .. odd. Thick white heavy foam. I have never done this with any previous washes of non-rice recipes. Crazy! The S.G was just about 1.02 but hard to tell as it was very thick in the bottom half. Now I am starting to think about how to separate and squeeze the sloppy bottoms to get enough clear liquid to distill. Lots of ideas here to review and select .. but any experience would be appreciated. More to come, I guess..
Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
aircarbonarc
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by aircarbonarc »

Nylon Brew bag and and a press or wring it out using a mop bucket.
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thecontrolguy
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by thecontrolguy »

Air, sure I was reading on that. For the faux rye I usually make, settling in the cold (outside or the basement freezer) works but I am concerned about exposing the wash to the plastic in the mop bucket. Anyone with thoughts on this? My pails are “food safe” but no such rating for the mop press can be found.
Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
aircarbonarc
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by aircarbonarc »

You can always make a grain press with a couple pieces of thick plywood and some clamp.
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Yummyrum
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by Yummyrum »

Do you have a Thumper ?
For my last Rice mash , I wizzed it up with a paint stirrer in a drill basically buttng it into a sloppy suspention and poured it into my 80 liter keg as a Thumper and steam stripped it by using my 50 liter keg full of water as the steam generator boiler .... worked well and the waste rice slops poured out easily .
thecontrolguy wrote: I am concerned about exposing the wash to the plastic in the mop bucket. Anyone with thoughts on this? My pails are “food safe” but no such rating for the mop press can be found.
Wash id pretty much low ABV and highly unlikely to be an issue with plastics . Since you will be distilling pretty much staight away should be minimal chanceof infection
thecontrolguy
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by thecontrolguy »

Hey Yummy; thanks for the thoughts. I do not have a thumper as I never thought to use it that way. Pretty innovative that, steam distilling. One could do botanicals and infusions easily. Anyway, this rice wash will be run in fractionating mode for a neutral. I was thinking the same about the wringer in that the exposure was not long and I *could* wash it in vinegar or bleach in the dishwasher at low temperature to get mill oils and such out of it.

Is the side-squeeze wringer better or the top down press style? Any experiences in this anyone? Thanks again for all the info, much appreciated.
Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
thecontrolguy
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by thecontrolguy »

Final return on the efforts is about 30 to 32 litres of light yellow translucent fluid at just about 8.5%. Wish that was a result of good project planning.. anyway it all is going into the reflux column this weekend. I ended up pouring the full bucket into a spare bucket through a nylon wine filter bag, then wrapped the mushy solids and squeezed it while wrapping tighter. Then put the bag, tightly wrapped into a big colander, suspended over the bucket and pressed it with a gallon jug (weight) overnight. Solids left in the bag were very dry cake, easily wrinsed from the bag. Can’t wait to sample the results this weekend!
Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
thecontrolguy
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by thecontrolguy »

Okay, final results are in. After a long day with the reflux column, airing out over night and then tasting dilute / samples today, I am very pleased! Total production was approx 7 litres of 40% bottle-strength clear, subtle, ever-so slightly floral flavor. Perhaps that is my well water or my imagination but there were subtle differences amongst the cuts, announcing the hearts as very smooth, hinting at the slightest sweetness, but barely discernible. Without knowing this was made from rice, I’d be wanting to argue it was a grain-based “ever clear” .

The still was run at 1700 watts, after a warm up and equalize at 1000watts for 1 hour until the insulated column and boiler were ready. Approx 250mL of heads pulled, 20 mins for re-equalize and then 12 small jars at a fast drip / intermittent stream. Typically over 90% for the majority of the run as indicated at the parrot. Tails came with a more pronounced ‘grain’ smell and then the output stopped.

I am unsure of the efficiency / conversion of the rice as compared to a full grain bill or corn-flakes but it was an interesting experiment. Mouth feel is not as smooth as an aged flakes faux-rye but that is to be expected. If memory serves me correctly, the birdwatchers was not nearly as smooth as the rice is, with the rice still having a better mouth feel.

Two 4-litre jugs are airing on the counter and the wife is eyeing them with a smile!
Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
Scorpster
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by Scorpster »

First AG rice ferment is just finishing up, so thought I'd share my experience and ask a couple questions that arose.
First off I soaked 8Kg med grain white rice overnight, strained, added to 8g boiling water, and got a whack of cooked, slightly over moist rice, added another 2 gal to try and loosen it up but still had stiff peaks...now here is where reality set in, this big glop just would not cool, mainly because it was too thick to stir. I happened to have a small pack of high temp AA on hand so I waited until the top layer had cooled and stirred the pack in gently, well it worked great on the top layer and after a while I kept working it down lower into the goop as temps dropped, once low enough I added regular AA and some Beano for good measure. Was broken down very well by the next morning so right before I pitched I took a brix reading of about 15.8, which equates to 1.065, which was better than I expected. Since there is little muck left, and I left my false bottom in, I am just going to attach my still head and distill on grain as I have recently done with AG barley ferments. I bought 2x8Kg bags so going to simply strip, then combine for a second distillation.
A question that arose was if the same phenomenon that other people see with false iodine tests would affect the brix reading?
After further reading I think I will also add some oyster shell, even though I did add a couple tsp of gypsum to the first batch, the ferment time seems a bit slower than the AG barley runs done recently.
ElCubanazo
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by ElCubanazo »

I've already done 4-5 distillations of what I'm calling Malt Rice Whiskey. I'm a bit of a novice distiller (only 2 years experience mostly with molasses) so open to suggestions.

Now I know a lot of y'all are thinking "Rice can't be whiskey". Hear me out:

The technical definition of whiskey is that it's made of cereal grain, right? Rice is a cereal grain, right? (I know some of y'all think this is blasphemy but whatever)

Okay so here's what I've been doing, I'd love any input/ corrections:

-------------------
Malting:

First off, I use regular old brown rice from WebstaurantStore because it's cheap. Can't use white rice cause it has the germ removed. Can't sprout with no germ. I've found some pre-malted sources here in the States (properly malted in the hulls) but they ain't cheap. I malt my rice in metal trays with holes poked in em. Double lined so I can soak like a lot of folks do.

- I give it 12-24 hours to soak.
- drain
- Place mason jar lids between the two trays for draining
- turn and spray regularly to keep moist
- I've done up to 7 days of malting before drying/kilning in the past but the longer they're in there the more likely they get bacterial or some mold growing. Going forward gonna cut the days to like 4-5 cause the rice DP is shit anyway and I add enzymes anyway. I'm just malting for flavor
- air dry (like super super dry)
- store dry

I'm a real novice on the malting part I'm open to suggestions on how to prevent mold. I've gotten advice of adding Hydrogen Peroxide into spraying water and I haven't tried that but I will.

-------------------

My whiskey mashbill is 1/3 unmalted corn the rest malted rice. Right now using powder enzyme that's okay but gonna switch to liquid soon.

The product is *real* flavorful. There's a little bit of the bacterial malt funk coming through too unfortunately, I need to get better about keeping bacteria and whatnot from getting at it (might be too wet plus I'll try spraying water + Hydro Peroxide). Overall tho I'm satisfied and will continue this whiskey.

I may start buying pre-malted rice in the hulls from these vendors since it would be closer to the "real thing" and save me the hassle of malting the rice.
-El Cubanazo

¡Viva Cuba Libre!
Scorpster
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by Scorpster »

Sorry El Cuban, I have no input for you except why go to all the trouble to malt the rice and still use enzymes?
As an update on my rice whiskey, my strip run had quite a low yield but I think I got good conversion, so I tested my ph and it was about 3.3, so I figured the ferment just didn't finish up. So I decided to add sugar to the leftover mash, with some gypsum, eggshells, and half an oyster shell to keep the ph up this time, see if I can recover those unfermented sugars and get something like an Uncle Remus Rice product, or at least have a good neutral base. Did love the taste of what I did get though.
ElCubanazo
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by ElCubanazo »

Scorpster wrote:Sorry El Cuban, I have no input for you except why go to all the trouble to malt the rice and still use enzymes?
Malting completely changes the flavor of the grain. I've scoured through threads here and elsewhere about malted vs unmalted flavor and the consensus seems to be that malting can change the flavor profile of a grain tremendously. Jury's still out on whether it's because of the actual germination of the grain or the toasting or both, but I'm doing both just in case.

The resulting beer from rice malt smells and tastes nothing like sake. Could be cause it's Brown rice and not white rice. Could be the malting. I'm just assuming the malting changes it a lot for now till I'm proven wrong.
-El Cubanazo

¡Viva Cuba Libre!
Scorpster
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by Scorpster »

I've also been thinking about trying to catch the nutty flavour of torrified rice like in 'gen mai cha'. Could be that your toasting is bringing out those flavours. While doing my rice run on the weekend I got impatient and turned my internal element on 1/4 power, think it started to scorch due to cavitation (element under false bottom), but the distillate that came out right afterwards sure had a different but yummy flavour leaning towards that nuttiness. Guess I'm going to have to get some brown rice, pop it, and give that a go.
ElCubanazo
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Re: General Rice discussion

Post by ElCubanazo »

Scorpster wrote:I've also been thinking about trying to catch the nutty flavour of torrified rice like in 'gen mai cha'. Could be that your toasting is bringing out those flavours. While doing my rice run on the weekend I got impatient and turned my internal element on 1/4 power, think it started to scorch due to cavitation (element under false bottom), but the distillate that came out right afterwards sure had a different but yummy flavour leaning towards that nuttiness. Guess I'm going to have to get some brown rice, pop it, and give that a go.
Yeah let me know the flavor you get from unmalted brown. I'd love to compare!
-El Cubanazo

¡Viva Cuba Libre!
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