chinese yeast balls? for something other than rice wine/saki

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midwest shinner
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chinese yeast balls? for something other than rice wine/saki

Post by midwest shinner »

So I've got a bag of chinese rice balls from my local asian market along with some red rice yeast which i bought to use in a traditional rice wine recipe,which was really cool btw and can be found on homebrewtalk.com,if anyone is interested and can't find that recipe ill try to get the url posted, but ultimately I'm just wondering if anyone has tried these with grains or fruit or anything? The yeast balls are actually a combo of yeast and enzymes to convert your starches to sugars(similar to amylase)and i forget but believe the red rice yeast also has similar enzymes... so with the combo of yeast and enzymes, I'm sure you can see why id be interested in experimenting. Any ones experience with these outside of use in rice wine i would love to hear about, honestly I'm surprised i haven't heard this mentioned before
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Re: chinese yeast balls? for something other than rice wine/

Post by Jimbo »

Hey Mike, its been covered here. In most asian alcoholic beverages, like Sake, the enzyme used to convert the rice into a fermentable sugar is actually a special mold known as koji.
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midwest shinner
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Re: chinese yeast balls? for something other than rice wine/

Post by midwest shinner »

I've read a bunch about koji mold and growing your own i just haven't heard of anyone using the rice balls with grain or anything... that's mostly what i was getting at
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Re: chinese yeast balls? for something other than rice wine/

Post by sweeps »

I believe they are commonly used to ferment millet, although I've not tried it myself.
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