Uncle Remus Rice Vodka

[DAD300]

My hope would be that is the perfect nutes. Being nature's.

I also hoped it would be cheaper if it wasn't polished. Silly me...it's still the cheapest rice I've found.

[shaner]

I can't wait to hear how it goes. The general knowledge seems to be stolen from sake methods and follow the "more polished is better" doctrine. One reason I believe is there is more amylopectin maybe? Dunno.

But our fermentation process differs from sake making considerably so...

I'm really glad you are giving it a shot.

[S-Cackalacky]

Notes for Uncle Remus Rice Vodka Recipe:

It was fairly difficult to get the unit conversions done and figure the per gallon amounts for this recipe. I fudged slightly on some of the amounts to make them simpler to deal with.

This is my ingredients list for a 16 gallon batch broken down into four 5 gallon buckets:
(These are per bucket amounts.)

• 4 gallons boiling water
  6.25 lbs. long grain rice (25 lb bag of rice divided by 4 – about 1.25 lbs more than needed.)
  3 lbs. Sugar (rounded up slightly from the original)
  3.5 mL SEBstar HTL (This is more than twice the amount needed.)
  3.5 mL SEBamyl GL (ditto)
  Citric Acid for PH adjustment
  2 packets of EC-1118 yeast
  ½ prenatal vitamin tablet for yeast health

I milled 25 lbs of rice. I steep cooked each bucket of rice starting with boiling water which dropped to 190 dF after adding it to the grain. I added SEBstar HTL while stirring. Covered with lids and wrapped with towels. Stirred it every 30 minutes, or so. At 150 dF, checked PH and adjusted to 5.0. Added sugar and SEBamyl GL and stirred. Covered with lids, wrapped with towels and let cool overnight. Checked OG, added prenatal vitamins and aerated. At 80 dF, or less, pitched yeast on surface.

The OGs of each bucket were as follows:

• Bucket-----OG
  1------------1.053
  2------------1.060
  3------------1.052
  4------------1.056

I expected a little higher OG for some of these – around 1.060 to 1.065. Could be some of them didn't cook as well as others, or maybe my enzymes are losing their potency. Bucket 2 was only stirred once during about a 3 hour cook. Maybe next time I'll just leave the buckets covered after the intial stir.

This is pretty close to the original Uncle Remus recipe with the exception of using the SEB enzymes and a little extra rice.

After the ferment is complete, I'll strain the wash using a butt press and let it settle for a day or two before distilling. I'll do probably 3 stripping runs in my 5 gallon still with the thumper attached and a single spirit run with the thumper attached. I collect in 8 oz jars for cuts. I usually do strips without the thumper, but will use it in this case for the extra filtering.

[S-Cackalacky]

It's been about 10 days now and the ferment is probably stronger now than it was during the first few days. This looks like it's going to be a fairly long ferment.

[S-Cackalacky]

After 14 days, 3 of the 4 buckets appear to be finished. The gravity readings are as follows:

• Bucket------OG------FG
  1------------1.053---0.990
  2------------1.060---1.004
  3------------1.052---0.996
  4------------1.056---0.990

I'll give it another day and ass press it on Friday. Plan to let the pressed wash clear over the weekend and hopefully do the strip runs on Monday or Tuesday.

[S-Cackalacky]

Well, I jumped the gun. I went ahead and ass pressed today (Thursday). Got about 14.5 gallons from a 16 gallon ferment. Not nearly as messy to work with as I first thought. Nice clean smelling wash. Will let it clear for a few days and hopefully do the stripping runs early next week.

[Swedish Pride]

This is a fantastic neutral, I'm surprised it does not have more of a following.
Really fine stuff indeed.

My thread on my AG approach to it http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 9#p7331899

[TarponTim]

Hello all,
It has been a while since being on board. I finally finished my contract in the wonderful world of a alcohol free or should I say illegal to posses and or drink alcohol country. Can I sum it up and say sidiki ? That being said, can you make a rice vodka without cooking the rice and just mill, soak and add enzymes and not deal with the mush of cooked rice ? And would it work the same with under cooked potatoes using enzymes ? And do I really need to add sugar to kick start the fermentation until I get the starch conversion. I will be using amylase enzyme.
Thanks to all !

[Swedish Pride]

yep, no need to boil, just throw boiling water on it, add enzymes at whatever temp it says on the pack. works a treat.
I had a vary lazy approach and got a 80% conversion and a great end product.
Not sure about spuds, MCH is proffesor spuds here, find his post and see if it says there

[midlife-u-turn]

I just got this fired up in my mash tun and the high temp enzymes doing their thing. Is there any tricks to keeping the rice from clumping up and being a P.I.T.A?

[yakattack]

The enzimes should thin it right out. Make sure you have the high temp enzimes or you'll denature them at about 158 degrees. Other than that less lbs per gallon. As rice absorbs more than any grain I know of, and a drill mixer.

Yak

[S-Cackalacky]

I used the no boil steeping method and the high temp enzymes. Using a 5 gallon bucket, I dumped 4 gallons of boiling water into a bucket containing 6.25 lbs of Blue Ribbon long grain white rice and the temp immediately dropped to about 190 dF. I stirred in the SEBstar HTL, put on a lid, and wrapped the bucket with towels. It took 2+ hours for the temp to drop to 150 dF and I then added the SEBamyl GL and left it to do it's thing overnight. I was a little surprised to find that the rice wasn't at all gummy or gooey, as others doing this recipe seem to experience. I fermented on-the-grain and had no problems pressing the grains with an ass press. The grains of rice seemed no different than milled corn or barley as far as texture goes. The rice I used was processed through a roller mill.

Maybe it was the brand of rice - IDK. Maybe the way it was cooked - IDK. But, I was happy with the ease of making this recipe.

[midlife-u-turn]

When I checked on it this morning the rice was nicely broken up. The temp in the cooler Tun was still around 160f so I had to cool it down a little before adding the SEBamyl GL at 150. I also used the no boil method and when I added the boiling water to the rice it caked up pretty bad. The high temp enzymes did their thing overnight and made it a nice runny soup. I used 20 lbs of a fancy sushi rice that is a med grain as somewhere in this process I read that the shorter grains provide better access to the starches. I ran the grains through my barley roller anyway so next batch I think I'll go with any old long grain. We'll see how it goes.

[S-Cackalacky]

I finished up my stripping runs today. I did two yesterday and the third and final one today. From about 14.5 gallons of wash, I got about 2.5 gallons of low wines. I'm stashing it away to do the spirit run in another week or two. I have a small experimental ferment going that will be a single pass run. So, I plan to do the URRV spirit run on the same day as the experimental run.

I'll post up again after the spirit run, but probably won't do much tasting until after it rests for awhile. If it turns out good, I also plan to do an Odin's easy gin with half of it.

[DAD300]

I've finished the first run of brown rice. But with a twist...

Wife cooked the rice and I wasn't ready. So we froze it!

I remembered how fruit guys freeze a batch of fruit to break the cell structure. Hmmm

So when I did mash it, the grains seemed to fall apart better than every. No grinding, I had milk with some rice hulls.

Enzyme Mash went like every other, conversion was complete/good. Dropped EC-1118 on it and it finished in five days. No other nutes added. Not bad, so I say the Brown Rice added enough nutes to get a decent ferment time.

The rice hulls definitely made the separation easier. I stripped half and added the low wines to next pot still run. For a 1.5 pot still run, very acceptable diluted to 40%.

[chil]

Gentlemen,
Just joined tonight. I have been applying the craft for 4 years now and put up some "bourbon" that will rival any Kentucky or Tennesee beverages. Even Pappy Vanwinkle. This Christmas will have some in the wood for 3 years. I was happy until I started reading about rice vodka. I have researched for months and made my first batch of rice "vinegar". Most vile stuff ever smelled. So why can't you just use gelatinized rice, bring it up to mashing temperature then add enzymes as appropriate with yeast a few days later allowing for conversion. I think it was the rice hulls that added wild yeast and baceteria as I followed strict sterilization proceedures. Thoughts? Thanks

[ElJuez]

Hey Uncle Remus,

I was doing some research on alpha and gluco amylase and was curious about your choice of temperature for gluco-amylase addition. Everything I've found suggests around 50°C as the optimum temperature for gluco-amylase enzyme activity, and alpha-amylase seems to be around there as well. They also work best together and start to break down after about an hour, so it seems like adding both at once around the 50°C mark and keeping the mix heated and agitated at that temperature for an hour would result in the largest simple sugar yield.

I'm very new to this and your recipe sounded perfect for my first mash, but I was curious about your reasoning behind adding the alpha-amylase at 66°C and gluco-amylase at 34°C. Otherwise this looks great and I'm excited to get started once my supplies get here!

[S-Cackalacky]

I did my spirit run on 2.5 gallons of low wines on Tuesday, put it to air yesterday (Wednesday), and did the cuts today (Thursday). I ran with my thumper attached and did the same with the stripping runs, so I guess it could be called a 3X distillation. It was a nice product yield. I had just under a gallon after blending the cuts. The blend was about 75.5% ABV. I plan to let it rest for a couple of months before any real tasting, but the few finger tastes I did during the cuts was very nice - very neutral and clean.

[Stillernz]

Has anyone tried grinding up the rice into like a powder in this recipe

[Swedish Pride]

I was going to grind it, not to a powder but to crack it to 3-4 pieces per rice grain but didn't as my drill needed charging and I wanted to mash right away.
Grinding it up should give you better conversion, not sure if powder is the way to go though.
Other have had issues with running flour mashes, hard to get it to settle.

If you try it let us know how you get on, it should give you some fine neutral in a pot

[LBHD]

I cracked mine into grits-sized pieces, and ended up with close to 36 ppg with careful enzyme mashing (1 lb in 1 gal = 1.036)

[DAD300]

I've done two batches with rice ground to a rough flour...advantage it settled out perfectly and I racked off the top leaving two inches of rice and yeast poop in the bottom of the fermentor. It cleared far better than any previous.

[shaner]

@DAD300- Are you still using the brown rice?

[DAD300]

Grinding to rough flour is still a winner. Now, if I could buy it that way...

Yes still using brown rice, but didn't see any real advantage or disadvantage, except in bulk it is cheaper. It may have better nutrient qualities, but nothing dramatic.

I had a batch get a very strong lacto infection form leaving it set to long after ferment ended. It may have been because of the brown unprocessed rice. The result was unique. Pot stilled 2x it has a strong sour flavor that people either love or hate. I love it, spouse not so much...

[fqu8847]

I had read somewhere that there is an enzyme you just add and forget. If I can find it I will post it for the inspection of wiser individuals here.

[Monkeyman88]

Koji??

[Wooday]

Koji??

Not koji. That little mold takes a lot of pampering to keep going.

[yakattack]

It would be Koji balls. It's yeast and enzimes. I don't remember off hand which kinds but they are bred to chew through rice. They do not work well on grain (at least on my experiments. ) Cook your rice (I'd grind it to a rough flour myself too) and then when at pitching temp sprinkle the Koji on top. Keep warm. Ferment and allow to settle as dad300 described.

Yak

[MichiganCornhusker]

I'm jumping in on this thread to share my AG rice run.
I was inspired to do this a while back when S-Cack & Swedish Pride were doing rice. It sounded so good that I put it on my to-do list and here we are.

Here's my version:

64# long grain white rice
24 gallons water for cooking and mashing
66# ice (about 9 gallons water) to cool the wort for pitching yeast
SebStar & SebAmyl liquid enzymes.

I ran all the rice through my Corona mill twice. This stuff is tough, hardest thing I've ever run through my mill.
It's like trying to grind up pea gravel, but I did get it ground up pretty fine though.

I added the boiling water to it and mixed it up. It became a fairly thick porridge consistency. I added the SebStar, and that helped loosen it up some, but it was still thick like a thin milkshake.

I let that set insulated overnight. Next morning it was about 140F.
I mixed it up again, added a little over a cup of my citrus acid mix to get the pH down to a happy place for the enzymes, and added the SebAmyl.
I heated it back up to 148F and put it back in the insulated boxes for several hours. SG after that was 1.085.

I mixed in the ice to cool it down to 80F and pitched EC1118.

This is a beautiful delicious mash, I could eat/drink this right out of the fermenter. It's just like having 30 gallon of horchata in the shed.

My plan is to run some of this through my pot still, keeping a few bottles as on-run-and-done, and then run the rest through my keg/thumper setup, and then through my 2 plate flute to see if I can make my first potstiller's version of a rice "vodka".

This one smells and tastes so good right now, I'm really looking forward to how this will turn out.

[jedneck]

o got 10 or so lbs of brown and white rice here. gonna do the same thing.

last time i mashed rice i used white wheat malt for conversion. the mash tasted like fresh ginger snap cookies. best tastin mash ever