Making Chinese Medicine Series 01 – 米酒 Rice Wine

 

The Making of Rice Wine
(estimated 10-13% alcohol and powerful medicine)

Eight Steps to Heavenly Dew:

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Ingredients:
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4 Cups of rice (sticky rice preferably- I also used short grain ‘milk rice’ and it worked the same way)

One ball of wine yeast [da qu 大曲]

Water

 

Utensils:
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One large glass jar

Kitchen cloth

One metal tray

1.Cook the rice as per usual (sticky rice absorbs a lot of water, I ended up using 10 glasses of water). There is no need to steam it either, which I only found out after much research.

2.Spread the rice to let it cool down (this is probably the most time consuming part of the making). It has to cool down enough so that the yeast is not kanled, room temperature is suggested

3.Crush the yeast ball into a powder and mix in with the rice (I used my hands, some sources warn this may increase risk of contamination)

4.Place the rice-yeast mixture in the glass jar and fill it up with luke-warm water 1 cm above the level of the rice (this step is crucial because rice which is not submersed in water will grow mold, which I had to learn the hard way)

5.Place the jar besides or atop a heater (it was winter, so it was not hard to do for me), and cover it with a cloth (because yeast prefers the yin-darkness) and do not screw any lid on as the pressure from produced CO2 might make the jar explode. (I used a kitchen cloth to cover the top).

6.Stir twice a day (morning and evening), since the rice will float to the surface (vital step). Many sources online say to just leave the jar for up to one month, two of my batches grew black mold, so ensuring that the rice is not exposed to the air is paramount)

7.The rice will turn into a liquid, which should be tested after a few days for flavor and alcohol percentage.

8.When the desired flavor is achieved, drain the liquid, fill the rice wine into bottle and store in fridge (mine was ready after 5 days and packed a real punch). Over time the wine sediments will settle and become more transparent.