Home Distiller

Rice alcohol in Asia has many names Soju, shochu , Baiju, Kaoliang ect
It's not a complicated process but does require a few steps
. I've been making Asian rice wine for awhile and after discovering this wonderful site, Home Distiller and with all the helpful advice I learned how to distill the rice wine I had been making into alcohol
I guess the reason why I'm sharing this in the Recipe Development section and not My First is that I'm trying different variations (different kinds of rice, left over rice with sugar or with out) and so far the simplest way tastes best
It's pretty straightforward.
For each kilo of rice, for simplicity I just do 4 separate 1kilo batches in 4 small 8 litre containers but you can easily do larger batches if you want.
For each kilo of sweet sticky gluttonous rice
Wash clean, and soak in warm water min of 1hr
Steam the rice for about 45 min or until it's soft and sticky. It must be soft and sticky but not mushy
Why steam? Well all the IBU old ladies tell me it's about flavor, and it is, if you use a rice cooker or boil the rice the wine is not as flavorful, and I have tried both rice cooker Vs steamer and can tell you they were right, the steamed rice wins
Remove from steamer and spread out rice on a tray or whatever to cool .
For each kilo crush 2-3 yeast balls depending on size,
and mix into the rice with your hands. If you don't have Asian yeast balls I guess you could try something else but I don't know .i just use yeast balls
Put this rice mixture into a container and put a lid on it but not to tight so it can vent the pressure out. After about 4 days the rice should start to have a build up of sweet rice wine. 1 kilo of rice should yield a litre or more of sweet rice wine. After 4 days To a week depending the rice wine will be very sweet and ready to drink.
At this point there are two things you can do(one variation)
You can draw out that wine to drink and add water and sugar or the original best tasting IMHO
Just add water
For each kilo of rice ,I add 3 litre of water
If you take out the wine add 4 litre water and 1/2 kilo or so of sugar
But..
it's better alcohol if you leave the rice wine in there and just add water
After you have added water stir the mixture and leave it be for about another week or so depending. The liquid in the mixture will separate and color turn yellow like pee
You willbsee the fermenting action stopping too and
it will / should taste sour ..if it's sweet it ain't neat keep waiting..
The whole process takes anywhere from 10-15 days, depending,
But basically it's like this
Steam rice, ferment rice, wait a few days, add water, wait a week or so longer.
Then
Drain, strain, press and squeeze as much liquid from that rice until that fermented rice is as dry as possible
Put all that wine in to a container to let settle until it's clear yellow again, that takes about a day.
And set a little extra aside to mix with your low wine for spirit run
Next day you can distill it or keep it in the fridge until you are ready

Remember to
Throw out double the amount of fores from your strip runs
Keep all your low wine together
And run it again with equal ratio of wine to run at 30% diluted for your stronger spirit .
Each kilo of rice should yield around 500-750ml low wine
So a 4kilo batch should give you ,give or take, 3litres@50-60% low wine

Second run comes off @80% heads with 60% hearts
4kilo rice will produce about a little more than litre + of good sweet rice spirit alcohol


This is the standard simple Asian process

It's just rice yeast and water


Easy way to get all the wine from the rice is to use a pot of water to press the rice to strain the liquid

I use the big pot to strip the low wine and the small pot for the spirit

Here's the process

First soak the rice in hot water for a few hours

Remove and steam

After cooling add yeast and transfer to bucket after about one week add 3 litre of water per kilo of rice and let ferment until finished about 2weeks

I use a water bottle pump and we'll strainer inside a noodle basket to draw out as much wine afterwards use a net to squeeze out the rest dry

From 4kilo rice and 12 litre water I got roughly 16-18 litres of wine ,it measured out to about 10%

Hello,
I am in Korea now a days and tried this recipe once inspired from famous Andong soju but, due to my mistakes and over experimenting with herbs taste is horrible. Next time i will try your way again and see what will happen this time.
Thanks for sharing this recipe!
Guys if any one from South Korea here. Pls let me know where i can buy grains(corm and wheat) here.i am having hard time finding grains here))
Thanks in advance!

cheers
ravi

Nice write up! Bookmarked for when I find these yeast balls.

I got about 4 litre total running all the way down to 10% kept 1.5 litre heart all the rest will rerun with extra wine
So from 4 kilo rice and 12litre water

Corsaire wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 9:25 pm Nice write up! Bookmarked for when I find these yeast balls.

I'm not sure what will happen but I want to try doing one the same process but substitute a different yeast. I have some EC 1118 I wonder if just sprinkling some of it on the rice then let it set for a week before adding water. I would like to see if it brings up abv

ravi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 6:57 pm Hello,
I am in Korea now a days and tried this recipe once inspired from famous Andong soju but, due to my mistakes and over experimenting with herbs taste is horrible. Next time i will try your way again and see what will happen this time.
Thanks for sharing this recipe!
Guys if any one from South Korea here. Pls let me know where i can buy grains(corm and wheat) here.i am having hard time finding grains here))
Thanks in advance!

cheers
ravi

My advice is to not flavor it. Follow the process above and you can't go wrong

I don't think ec1118 will work, those yeast balls have enzymes that convert rice starch to fermentable sugars.
Angel yeast has yeast with added enzymes, that would be the better choice. Unfortunately I still haven't tried that one, I'm still waiting on delivery...

SGB wrote: ↑Thu Jun 04, 2020 12:45 am

ravi wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 6:57 pm Hello,
I am in Korea now a days and tried this recipe once inspired from famous Andong soju but, due to my mistakes and over experimenting with herbs taste is horrible. Next time i will try your way again and see what will happen this time.
Thanks for sharing this recipe!
Guys if any one from South Korea here. Pls let me know where i can buy grains(corm and wheat) here.i am having hard time finding grains here))
Thanks in advance!

cheers
ravi

My advice is to not flavor it. Follow the process above and you can't go wrong

sure)))))

thanks

Flavor spectrum from this past run is spectacular. The hearts are very smooth, sweet almost syrup like, and full of rice flavor. This is not a neutral or a vodka type of alcohol. It tastes very much like what you'd expect from a good regionally made rice alcohol in Asia /SE Asia. I wouldn't try to flavor it . it's flavor can't be masked. In other words.. If you don't like rice alcohol ,you won't like this. The flavor is unique to the rice. Glutinous rice produces a more sweet drink and regular left over rice just makes harsh street Soju/Baiju IMHO..

Doing another one this week. My friends say the Baiju is spot on. I feel it is as well having drunk so much of it in the past.
Going to rob out the wine this time though and add sugar and water. I know it's cheating but it will all come out OK in the wash

Thank you for putting this up my friend.

I just got some yeast balls on a whim...waiting for my Angel starter to arrive and war gaming some little jars of different grain.

I did a few cups of rice in the cooker and pitched the rhizo balls. Gotta say it went pretty nuclear and it is super boozy after adding some water about 3 days in. I was thinkingabout keeping a young batch in the fridge for breakfast too, as it was very nice and sweet before the sour/boozy thing took over.

I’ll try your full production method to fill a 10lt demijohn soon.

I steamed 2kilo of of sticky rice and added a few crushed rice yeast balls as per tradional standard. After one week I strained 2full litres of wine and bottled it. I then put the strained rice trub back into the bucket and added 18liters of water and 3kilo of sugar and 20gram of Angel alcohol yeast stired and less than an hour later it was bubbling away. I'll distill it next week
Normally I wouldn't do it this way for making Baiju. But we wanted some sweet wine as well.
Also I just got the Angel alcohol yeast and this is my first time using it. I haven't tried making wine with it yet and because we wanted some standard sweet wine that we are used to I didn't feel like experimenting. Next time i will try using the angel alcohol yeast from the very start.
The method calls for dusting and folding the yeast onto the cooled steam rice and letting it ferment without adding water for at least 5-7days . As I am not yet familiar with the Angel yeast I will have to learn the ratio of changing from the yeast balls to the other yeast. ,

OK so two weeks later (after add-in sugar, water and Angel yeast) the SG read about 990+ and it started clearing up

I pumped it out using the double strainer let it clear for a couple days more
From the stripping run I got a little over 3litres .i kept a litre of the hearts which had good flavor. ,not the best Baiju as it was made with rice and added sugar instead of just only rice and water, but still was passable. The rest I re-ran a third time and it came out more like a rice vodka

My take from this
The angel yeast really created a lot of activity.
I got 2 litres of traditional wine( I took out to keep and drink later, before adding the extra water)
I got 1liter of Baiju hearts
I got two litres of rice vodka
So 3 litres of drinkable liquor after cuts and blending.
Plus 2 litres of wine.

On a side note, if you don't want the rice wine, you don't need to add any sugar. By removing the rice wine, the sugars that are produced by the rice are also removed so if you take out the sweet wine you need to add sugar.

It is true that the Baiju made by not removing the wine and not adding sugar is different and more flavorful. However slightly and a matter of opinion.

By taking out the wine and adding sugar you actually get two products in one. You can have your Sake and Shoju too so to speak .

Making another batch today for my Chinese friend, she wants to give it to her father for Christmas.
Incidently, the last batch I made, I took out the wine and added sugar with an extra litre of water. Now while it was rice vodka, it was not Baiju. And my friend requested Baiju made the original traditional way, without any added sugar.
That being said, I'm doing 4 kilos of sticky gluttonous rice. 24 grams of angel yeast. I will let it sit covered a few days before adding 3litres water per kilo rice. Then let it ferment until done, usually about two weeks.

Here is a video from YouTube showing a similar process from Thailand

OK I finished this run. From 4kilo rice with 12litre added well water my low wine was 4+litres @40%+- I diluted it down and ran the spirit run slow as it was only about 6litres of liquid in a 30litre pot. From that I discarded
into the feints bucket about a litre off the front of fore with heads kept a little more than a litre of hearts and everything from 50% downward just went also into the feint bucket

My take, 1litre of smooth Baiju from 4kilo rice

Nicely done, been making rice wine for drinking and distilling for many years, recently started adding black (forbidden) rice into my ferment. Using one third black rice and two thirds Thai jasmine rice, adds a nice floral note to the wine, but haven't made enough to distill just yet.

Black rice? Nice! International markets around here have a very nice selection of rices including red rice as well.

Are you stripping on-grain?

Cheers!
Jonny

jonnys_spirit wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 10:17 pm
Are you stripping on-grain?

Cheers!
Jonny

Nah, not set up for that. yet...

I line my stainless three gallon fruit press with jersey material, pour it through that and wrap up what's left and press it dry. Everything from that goes into carboys to clarify before stripping/spirit runs, mostly using Chinese yeast balls now, but gearing up to try my hand at converting rice with enzymes. Would be a ton faster.

Ya they got that black and red rice at the shop across the street, I just haven't used it yet. But will.. My wife has been telling me from the start that it's just as good. And I definitely don't strip on the grain either. You can see my setup above in the pics. I generally will siphon out the liquid as much as possible using a pipe with a well strainer attached into one container . (see pics above) Then filter and squeeze in a sock all the rice dry into another container then the next day draw the clear wine leaving the sediment and a little bit of wine on the bottom to get the absolute clearest wine to strip. I only take the hearts of the spirit runs but that's just my personal preference.