22
votes
Brewing your own rice wine (makgeolli, doburoku, chojiu, etc...)
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- Title
- 【日本酒(どぶろく)の作り方】自家製の米麹(米こうじ)を使って自家醸造します。 HOMEMADE DOBUROKU (JAPANESE SAKE) 自家酿造日本酒 (米酒) 【海外生活の楽しみ】
- Authors
- 海外で作る日本食
- Duration
- 4:06
- Published
- Nov 30 2020
Just a general post checking to see if anyone else tries this. I've been brewing my own rice wine at home since the end of summer; starting first with a makgeolli kit purchased at a supermarket. This kit supplies the rice and fungus culture needed to brew rice wine, I just added water and let it sit for a week.
Since then, I've branched into other procedures such as the one I've linked to in this topic. When producing sake, making your own koji rice can be difficult, so I purchased it from a local sake brewery. I sourced my own brewing vessel, steamed my rice, added it to the koji rice, then added water.
After going through the process a few times, I've found making your own rice wine to be incredibly enjoyable and educational; experimenting with the process can lead to interesting results, and it's fairly easy to know when you've gone wrong. (A bad scent or the appearance of mould are a good way to tell.)
Has anyone else tried this too? And if so, what were your results?
I used to make lots of mak, but haven't for a few years. I agree that it is really enjoyable, plus the high alcohol content is interesting. The stuff in the stores is usuall 5 or 6% (and usually adds aspartame and sweeteners). When I first started making it, people didn't quite like it because the flavor was strong and it was not sweet. The funny thing is that now there are brands selling this style of mak as a premium "traditional" variety! haha
I've made makgeolli before! Thank goodness you've reminded me to do it again soon, it's been a while.
I agree, it's a really satisfying project, yet very easy to do. I've never brewed any alcoholic drinks before, have very limited experience in fermentation in general, and makgeolli is the easiest fermentation adventure I've tried. I think anyone could do it. I bought the culture at a local Korean store, but I know you can get it on Amazon/online as well. (It's just a bag of dried crumbly stuff, not anything weird or slimy like a kombucha scoby, if anyone is curious about that part.)
And it tastes so good.
Since relocating to the US I've been making makgeolli -- it's easier to find the culture here than Hong Kong, and cheaper to make than purchase. Very easy to brew, and the lees are excellent as a face mask, pickle agent, etc. One often sees this guide shared in Anglophone spaces.
Huangjiu is a similar process, as is jiuniang.
Do you ever flavor it with kelp or miso to give it a more savory flavor? I made a seaweed wine - well I called it seaweed wine as I was following an elderflower wine recipe and just made a direct substitute - that turned out better than expected. I'd love to see this mixed in with plum/seaweed/spices to see if you can get some interesting flavors. I might try it out myself this weekend. Maybe with Chinese 5 spice to replicate the cinnamon addition in Tepache.
I'd really love to see what this looks like, sounds super interesting to me.
Nice, there are some pictures of the process in a post I wrote up for r/prisonhooch last year when I made it. It's bottled now and clarified. It looks kind of like a Kilju or Sake and taste like sake with a pretty mellow ocean undertone. I've been opening up a new bottle every 4 months to try it out and it's getting better over time.
Tangentially related, I went to a speakeasy in Boston that had a Wakame based cocktail with a mushroom liquor that ended up tasting like a semi-savory hot chocolate. It wasn't amazing but it was definitely the most interesting cocktail I'd had in a while. I'm planning to try a few cocktail recipes when I pop the next bottle, maybe with plum or with some dehydrated candy cap mushrooms I've been sitting on since last winter.
Do you ever get a little weird with your fermentations?
Nice, that looks simple minus the koji rice acquisition. Maybe I haven't looked around hard enough. I bought a culture powder to make my own koji but it didnt go well last time and ive been hesitant since acquiring a heat wrap, which should help quite a bit. Now i feel like i have to try the koji again this weekend :)
It looks to me like there are plenty of stores that sell it online, unless you're hoping to buy it local for whatever reason.
Yeah i tend to shy away from online stores for the most part but thats good to know if i get desperate, thanks!
I bought the kit from this guy ages ago, even though his instructions are .... not the most straightforwardly written. Sstill haven't actually used it. Who know if the koji culture in my freezer is still viable. One day I'll get it started, my weekends seem to keep filling up with things.
I make 2 to 3 gallons of mead at a time but I've been thinking of giving this a try!
Cool post, thanks for the info.
Is mead as easy to make as the recipe in this video? That stuff is amazing.
PS: I just started making some black rice makgeolli yesterday. It's still in the beginning stages, but here's a video from someone else on the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQzZLiiCl2g
Never heard of this one before, curious how yours turns out!
Glad to see there's a lot of other brewers on here! I have some pictures of past experiments over here on Bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/demonshome.bsky.social