How to make rice wine at home

Rice wine, a very popular food in southern China, is also called fermented rice or sweet wine. It’s very delicious, sweet and nutritious. People usually eat it at breakfast by boiling it together with some small glutinous rice balls or egg flakes. It’s very convenient and time-saving to cook it.

You can buy rice wine from supermarket or make it at home by yourself. Sometimes I make rice wine myself.  It is very simple to do it. 

Ingredients: 2cups of sticky rice  water   sweet wine yeast

The following are steps involved in the procedure that I make rice wine. Anybody interested can try it step by step.

1.     Take 2 cups of glutinous rice(about half kilogram), clean and soak it in a bowl for about 12-16 hours, until it is easy to break.

2.     Add enough water in a steamer; put a cleaned chinese cloth (gauze) over the layer of it. When the water starts boiling you can put the rice prepared in step one evenly over the cloth. Continue steaming about an hour, taste the rice, if the rice is still hard, you can sprinkle some water and steam it for a little longer until the rice is soft.

3. When you are waiting by step 2, you can take the time to prepare the sweet wine yeast. The amount of the yeast depends on the yeast type you buy. The yeast I bought is 20 gram for 3 kilogram rice. You can find the instruction on the package of the yeast. dissolve the yeast in some warm water and set aside  for later use.

4. When the rice is ok, cool it to room temperature. Just leave it alone. If you are eager to finish you can speed up with chopsticks by stirring it from time to time. Cool it thoroughly.

5.   Mix the rice with the wine yeast evenly, mix well, transfer it to a well cleaned fermentation container(airtight). then press the rice by hand, make the rice surface smooth. The rice is 2/3 full. In the end make a hole in the middle of the rice with one of your fingers.

6.  Finally, cover the container with the lid to make sure the air can’t enter. Place it next to the heater in winter or leave it alone in summer and make sure the temperature of the fermentation is about 30 celsius.

7.  Now the only thing you need to do is waiting, the time is about  24-36 hours. After 24 hours  you need to check it often. When it is  ok the rice wine should smell fragrant, and there should be some sweet juice in it. Ok, the whole process is finished.

8.  Put it in the refrigarator for at least one day for best taste. You can eat it directly or boil it with eggs. It will taste both delicious and nutritious .

9. The most important thing you need to take care/pay attention is that all vessels and pots you use in the whole process must clean without any oil.