Ingredients

6 cups of round glutinous rice, half a Shanghai wine cake ball, about 4 tablespoons of ground red yeast rice, and 1-2 cups of cold water.

Method

1. Wash all utensils, including spoons, twice with dishwashing liquid and rinse them with clean water.

2. Soak glutinous rice for 6 hours before steaming, and then cook it in a rice cooker. When cooking, the water only needs to cover the surface of the rice, and don't add too much. The cooked rice should be dry and slightly raw.

3. Let the cooked glutinous rice cool completely or warm below body temperature.

4. Prepare a clean small bowl and use a cup of bottled mineral water (or cold boiled water) to dissolve half of the Shanghai wine cake balls.

5. Sprinkle a little koji liquid on the surface of the glutinous rice. Pick up the glutinous rice that has been sprinkled with koji liquid and put it into another clean container (preferably a transparent one for easy observation), and then sprinkle it on the remaining glutinous rice. Surface, then serve. . . Until all the glutinous rice is sprinkled with distiller's yeast water, transfer it to a clean container, and mix the distiller's yeast and glutinous rice evenly in the clean container.

6. After mixing the koji and glutinous rice, mix in the red yeast rice powder crushed with a coffee grinder. The amount should be so that the glutinous rice grains are evenly coated with red yeast rice powder. Mix well.

7. Press the glutinous rice tightly, close the lid of the container and seal it. Do not open the lid within two days. Avoid direct sunlight during the entire fermentation process. Fermentation takes about five days at 25-30 degrees. The glutinous rice is completely soft and the sweet and wine flavor has come out.

8. Store the prepared rice wine in a refrigerator at 4°C to prevent further alcoholization. It can be stored for at least a month.

Tips

Making red yeast rice wine is not a mystery. The basics are to first master the method of making ordinary glutinous rice wine, and then pay attention to the fermentation characteristics of red yeast rice.

1. All containers, spoons, and cups used must be washed and there should be no oily flowers, but high-temperature sterilization is not required. This step is to prevent bacterial contamination. Do not open the fermentation container casually during the first two days of fermentation to avoid the introduction of miscellaneous bacteria. Within two days, rice wine bacteria and red yeast yeast will enter logarithmic reproduction. Once they become dominant strains, they will inhibit the production of other miscellaneous bacteria, so leave the lid open for the next few days. The smell and taste are not a big problem.

2. Round-grained glutinous rice is more suitable for making rice wine than long-grained glutinous rice. If the glutinous rice is cooked, you don’t have to soak it. If it is steamed, it must be soaked. The glutinous rice must not be cooked too thin, but should be dry, just half-cooked. Even if the rice wine produced in this way is soft and rotten, the grains will be distinct.

3. It is best to grind red yeast rice into powder. Red yeast rice is already cooked rice that has been washed, steamed and dried. It is okay to mix it with cooked glutinous rice for fermentation. Don’t worry about eating uncooked rice. It is not good to mix red yeast rice directly into glutinous rice without powdering it. After all, it has been sun-dried and has a very hard texture, which will affect the taste of the finished rice wine. Red yeast yeast fermentation alone is not efficient enough. However, ordinary koji contains two types of microorganisms: Botrytis cinerea and yeast, which are respectively responsible for the saccharification of starch and then the process of alcoholization. The function of red yeast mold is the icing on the cake, assisting in improving the taste, color and nutrition. In addition, the rice that red yeast rice is attached to is non-glutinous indica rice, and its sugar content and taste are incomparable to glutinous rice. In addition, if the red yeast rice is cooked again, the living bacteria will be destroyed by the high temperature and all will die. What is the purpose of fermentation? Therefore, grinding red yeast rice into powder must wait until the cooked glutinous rice is cold before adding it, just like distiller’s yeast.

4. When mixing in koji and red koji, the temperature of the glutinous rice must not be high, otherwise the live bacteria will be scalded. If unfortunately the high-temperature operation scalds the live bacteria to death, you can just let the glutinous rice cool and then add koji and red koji. This will just result in the loss of some koji and red koji.

5. The amount of koji used is not critical. You can add half to one grain to six cups of rice. It doesn’t matter how much water you add. Six cups of glutinous rice plus 1-2 cups of water is enough. Do not add too much water, as it will dilute the koji, reduce the fermentation efficiency, and the finished koji will not form a ball and will easily fall apart. The amount of red yeast rice added should be enough to coat all the glutinous rice grains evenly with the red yeast rice powder.

6. The best fermentation temperature is 25-30 degrees Celsius. The yeast yeast grows at a low speed and the fermentation is uniform. The wine taste and sweetness are rich and coordinated. If the temperature is too high, the fermentation bacteria will multiply rapidly and produce a large amount of invertase, which will decompose sugar and produce an overly strong wine taste and sour and bitter taste. In our house, we never put quilts in the thermostat and naked bottles at room temperature. Ordinary rice wine is fermented for three days, and red yeast rice wine is fermented for about five days. Use a spoon to taste it to determine whether to terminate the fermentation.

7. The length of fermentation time must also be controlled. If it is fermented at 25-30 degrees, the general fermentation will take 3 days. The red yeast rice wine will take about 5 days, which is sweeter and sweeter. The finished rice wine should be refrigerated at 4 degrees to slow down the fermentation. To make rice wine from glutinous rice, the first step is to convert starch into sugar to produce sweetness, the second step is to convert sugar into esters to produce wine taste, and the third step is to convert esters into acetic acid to become vinegar. The purpose of rice wine fermentation is to retain sugar and produce esters to avoid acid. So if the rice wine only has a sweet taste but no alcoholic taste, leave it for 1-2 days longer to wait for the alcoholic taste to come out. If the wine is too strong and not sweet enough, it is over fermented. The wine made at low temperature for a long time will be sweeter and lighter in flavor than the wine made at high temperature for a short time. The wine stored in the refrigerator will continue to ferment slowly, and the wine will become more and more flavorful as time goes by.

8. There must be enough air in the fermentation bottle or box, and the container must be filled to seventy-eight percent full. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a facultative anaerobic bacterium (meaning it can reproduce with and without oxygen). Saccharomyces cerevisiae has just begun to reproduce in large quantities and consumes oxygen and produces a large amount of sugar. Sugar will decompose into carbon dioxide and water when there is oxygen, so it cannot be grown. If you make rice wine with the lid on, it is easy for bacteria to grow if you open the lid.

Sugar turns into wine under anaerobic conditions. If you like wine with a strong wine flavor, be sure to keep the bottle sealed during fermentation.

9. Monascus produced by red yeast fermentation is easily decomposed by light, so red yeast rice wine must be protected from light during fermentation, otherwise the color will become lighter and lighter. I used a brown paper bag to cover the container for fermentation. Ordinary rice wine fermentation does not require light protection.

10. Red yeast fermentation is aerobic fermentation, which means it needs oxygen. Therefore, making sweet red yeast rice wine requires a certain amount of oxygen and the release of carbon dioxide produced by fermentation. Therefore, starting from the third day of fermentation, open the lid and deflate quickly once a day. The key word is rapid, otherwise miscellaneous bacteria will be introduced.

11. After two days of fermentation, you will see red wine juice accumulating at the bottom of the bottle and making the glutinous rice float. The color of glutinous rice mixed with red yeast rice flour becomes darker and darker as time goes by, indicating that red yeast rice yeast is working hard to reproduce. At the same time, you will also see more and more wine, and the glutinous rice grains will become softer and softer. Using the same amount of glutinous rice, red yeast rice wine can produce more wine than glutinous rice wine. The glutinous rice mixed with red yeast rice powder softens slower than the glutinous rice used to make ordinary rice wine. The difference is about a day. On the fourth day of fermentation, stir the glutinous rice with clean chopsticks. After another day, the red lees rice wine will be ready. When you open the lid, the aroma of wine fills your nostrils, and when you take a sip, you can see that the wine taste and sweetness are perfectly mixed, and the wine taste is heavier than that of sweet wine, and the aftertaste is longer.

12. Fermented rice wine, the rice grains are plump and distinct, but the rice grains taste crispy and rotten. The color is bright red, the wine is rich, the aroma is sweet, and the glutinous rice is not scattered and is lumpy. Every grain of glutinous rice is bright red. If the fermentation is over-fermented, the wine will be strong and offensive to the nose. If the fermentation is insufficient, the rice grains will be raw and chewy, the sweet wine flavor will not be enough, and the red color on the glutinous rice will be uneven. .

13. The prepared wine can be kept for a long time if kept in the refrigerator at 4 degrees Celsius, and the wine flavor will become stronger and stronger. Use a clean spoon to take out and eat each time. The one in my photo is the rice wine that has been stored for a month. The rice grains are a bit collapsed and the taste is more mellow. The wine is thick but not overpowering, and the sweetness is sweet and refreshing. After a while, the filtered liquid will be fragrant red rice wine, and the filtered dregs will be red rice grains that can be used for cooking.

14. In addition, if the rice wine is unfortunately not as sweet as the wine, you can’t eat it directly. You can use it to cook vegetables, roast meat and duck, and the taste will be great. Not wasted.