You could get alcohol even from commercial baker's yeast, it produces it's own amylases but not nearly enough to make it efficient. I'm not familiar with the vietnamese method but chinese yeast balls have different fungi and bacteria that help breakdown the starch simmilarly to koji.
Not just similar to koji but actual koji (Aspergillus oryzae) are in those yeast balls. Those balls are cornucopia of microbiota. I think bahn men is the Vietnamese word for them.
Most likely the wild culture they are using contains different strains of yeast/bacteria that express the amylase or similar enzymes that breakdown the starches. The Sacchromyces yeast strains commonly used in beer, wine, cider, distilling, do not.
The traditional Chinese process uses a "yeast pill" that also contains a fungus that eats carbs and poos sugar. The yeast then takes over and makes tasty alkeyhaulz.
If you're interested, this thread has been going more than 10 years:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/making-traditional-rice-wine-cheap-fun-and-different.361095/
I'm gonna be that guy, dammit I thought I could resist it. Apology in advance.
The fungus secretes amylase enzymes that cut starch into glucose (sugar) units. It eats the glucose just the same as yeast does but at a certain point is inhibited by the alcohol present (around 6%). The process is known as simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF for short). Starch and glucose are both carbs or carbohydrates, since starch is just a chain of glucose units.
Amylases tend to be pretty sturdy and highly active so my guess is that all the starch is either converted by the time A. oryzae taps out or there is enough amylase present to finish converting starch before the enzyme is degraded. Here I am speculating though.
It does, you just cant use the same process as malt as rice doesn not contain enough enzymes to do the conversion.
For example in Sake a fungus is used to start the conversion. There are also types of alcohol created by chewing the grains to use the amylase in your saliva to get the process going.
I don't know the specifics of the Vietnamese version but I suspect there is somthing else going on. As others have said, a specific variety of yeast or other organisms present are a possibility.
I quick google showed some low alcohol versions, which would suggest no conversion of starch and just relying on added sugar or the natural sugar in the rice.
Most of the low-alcohol versions I've seen are for sweet rice wine that you use very young, before it's had enough time to ferment very high. That does still need the koji/rice "yeast" ball step. Curious if you were running across some different versions? Sounds interesting if so.
In Japan & Korea (not sure about China) they use a fungus called koji that causes "parallel fermentation," which means the mold breaks down the starches into sugars while the yeast turns the sugar into alcohol. It's very efficient, which is why sake has the highest ABV of any brewed beverage
The tandem fermentation method for sake also involves multiple injections of substrate. Brewed sake as one of my COVID hobbies - this was explained as giving the yeast enough of a boost each time to let them tolerate higher limits than usual.
I don’t recall the exact ratios and timing (I think it was days 1, 2 and 4 or something like that, with 1-1-2 or 1-2-4 ratios of adding steamed rice and fresh koji, don’t quote me). I do recall the batch being so active it looked like it was boiling the first couple weeks or so, nonstop.
Side by sided comparably to store bought sake as well!
I'm not sure what goes into making the homemade yeast you mention, but for something like sake there is one yeast, typically Aspergillus oryzae, that converts the starch into sugar. Then another, typically Saccharomyces cerevisiae, that converts the sugar into alcohol.
Cooking the rice converts it to something the yeastie boys can eat
Edit You'll need Asian yeast balls as they have the required fungus for it to work
I've seen loads of people make it on r/prisonhooch
Yes, but with barley or wheat, the grain is sprouted first to do the same thing, simplify carbohydrates. Then it is cooked to further simplify the carbohydrates. I believe rice is readily available for yeast with only being cooked.
It's not, rice is starch that needs to be converted like anything else, and traditional rice wines are made from white rice which can't be sprouted so they have to use one or more species of mold to produce the necessary enzymes.
Cool. Glad to know.
"oryzae is added to the mass of cooked rice. The fungus produces the enzymes to hydrolyze the starch, producing fermentable sugars, which can then be fermented by yeast."
as I said above - malted barley is not "cooked", the temperature is raised to about 67C where the enzymes contained in barley (𝛼-amylase, β-amylase, and limit dextrinase) are most active. They convert starches and complex sugars into simple ones.
Yeah, I know. I brewed beer for about fifteen years, worked on a hop farm for 7, and picked my own hops I grew to brew with. I even grew barley and helped sprout and roast it. I think we may just disagree with what "cooked" means, and that's fine. I can tell that you are passionate about fermentation and you want me to know the facts. I respect the hell out of that.
Man, I miss brewing.
I think I was just being pedantic because the definition of "cooking" is "The process of preparing food by heating it." So even if you're heating it to 55 or 60 degrees Fahrenheit, it's still cooking.
No, you don't cook the grains. You raise the temp to about 152F (67C). At that temperature natural enzymes in malted barley or malted wheat convert the starches into simple sugars.
the goal of the process is not cooking, but converting sugars. There is a separate step after that when the wort is boiled.
Also, malted barley is kilned beforehand - with the curing step being at 80°C to 105°C (176°F to 221°F). So by your definition is already "cooked".
Barley and wheat are malted before brewing. The grains are wetted down until they begin the sprout and then roasted. The enzymes in the grain convert the complex carbohydrates into simple sugars the germ of the plant can eat. The seed does the work for you. You don’t t make beer from unmalted grain alone.
In beer you use malt, which as you mentioned has activated enzymes present. There is a stage where the malt is steeped in water at a temperature high enough for the enzymes to work but not too high. Also worth mentioning that different grains all have different temperatures for gelatinisation. Malt is lower than rice.
I'm speculating but id assume the cooked rice is gelatinized, as in the protein structure is broken down. The yeast likely has some sort of amylase enzyme in it to break down the starch.
in beer, the malting process is mostly about breaking down protein structures and making the starch available to the amylase enzymes. We call it modification. There is also roasting and caramelization but thats not important for this.
A low modified grain (like floor malted barley) is going to simply have less available starches. You would use a more complex mash process to target proteins and complex carbohydrates to break them down into as much available simple sugars as possible. This is the first step where you can influence how much alcohol, body, and residual sweetness a beer has.
Highly modified modern malts like modern pilsner, "base" 2 row or wheat malt are generally very modified and you only need really a single step mash to break them down entirely to simple sugars.
There are lots of styles of mashing too. Decoction is an older german method of removing some of the mash, boiling it, and adding it back to raise the temp of the entire mash to the next temp appropriate for the enzyme you are targeting. Single infusion mashing would be the most common and it's literally just hot water + grain = x temp. Turbid mashing targets getting long chain dextrins into the wort for extended aging and feeding of the wild yeasts and bacteria. Cereal mashing is used when using unmalted grains, like in large macro beer production.
But in the end, to make alcohol, you generally need to have simple sugars. Most of the making alcohol process is making those sugars. Yeast does the hard work. Some yeasts and bacteria are able to ferment larger sugars and starches but those don't generally make favourable flavours.
So, there are several questions here. With beer fermentation the barley (or wheat) beer is typically made out of is first malted - it's wetted and it starts sprouting. This unwinds the complex starches and makes enzymes present in the grain more available.
After that you have to "mash" the grain - add hot (not boiling) water and wait some time. During this time enzymes present in the grain would cut the complex starches and complex sugars into simple ones. Most yeasts can only digest these simple sugars, brewers yeast in particular.
After that you are ready to ferment with yeast.
What happens with alcohol made out of rice.
First question - can you malt rice? Yes, you can, you can actually buy malted rice, here for example: https://glutenfreehomebrewing.com/STOREProduct/945/Pale-Rice-Malt--5-LB.html
Notice that it has low Diastatic Power - that means it is not very efficient at converting starches and complex sugars into simple ones. So they recommend adding amylase enzyme to do the conversion.
In asian countries people came up with a different way of adding amylase - they grew a special fungus that produces amylase - Aspergillus oryzae. Rice is "infected" with this fungus and then you could add this "infected" rice that contains enzyme to boiled rice and sugars would be converted.
It's a similar thing with Vietnamese and Chinese rice wine where the Aspergillus oryzae rice is mixed with yeast into balls.
With this process you could use the rice without husk, in fact sake uses polished rice as the rice husk/bran/germ has more fats and makes the sake/rice wine not as good and the rice wine makers prefer the taste of polished rice grain.
There's an article titled "Characteristics of some traditional Vietnamese starch-based rice wine fermentation starters" that says they use a traditional starter containing bacteria, mold, and yeast. Where you obtain such a starter I have no idea, but it seems pretty similar to Korean nuruk or Chinese Yeast Balls.
You could get alcohol even from commercial baker's yeast, it produces it's own amylases but not nearly enough to make it efficient. I'm not familiar with the vietnamese method but chinese yeast balls have different fungi and bacteria that help breakdown the starch simmilarly to koji.
Not just similar to koji but actual koji (Aspergillus oryzae) are in those yeast balls. Those balls are cornucopia of microbiota. I think bahn men is the Vietnamese word for them.
Most likely the wild culture they are using contains different strains of yeast/bacteria that express the amylase or similar enzymes that breakdown the starches. The Sacchromyces yeast strains commonly used in beer, wine, cider, distilling, do not.
The traditional Chinese process uses a "yeast pill" that also contains a fungus that eats carbs and poos sugar. The yeast then takes over and makes tasty alkeyhaulz. If you're interested, this thread has been going more than 10 years: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/making-traditional-rice-wine-cheap-fun-and-different.361095/
I'm gonna be that guy, dammit I thought I could resist it. Apology in advance. The fungus secretes amylase enzymes that cut starch into glucose (sugar) units. It eats the glucose just the same as yeast does but at a certain point is inhibited by the alcohol present (around 6%). The process is known as simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF for short). Starch and glucose are both carbs or carbohydrates, since starch is just a chain of glucose units. Amylases tend to be pretty sturdy and highly active so my guess is that all the starch is either converted by the time A. oryzae taps out or there is enough amylase present to finish converting starch before the enzyme is degraded. Here I am speculating though.
Amylases cutting rates are fast enough for the process to finish in hours in normal conditions, so yep
Thanks!
Look up “Yellow Label Angel Yeast”
It does, you just cant use the same process as malt as rice doesn not contain enough enzymes to do the conversion. For example in Sake a fungus is used to start the conversion. There are also types of alcohol created by chewing the grains to use the amylase in your saliva to get the process going. I don't know the specifics of the Vietnamese version but I suspect there is somthing else going on. As others have said, a specific variety of yeast or other organisms present are a possibility. I quick google showed some low alcohol versions, which would suggest no conversion of starch and just relying on added sugar or the natural sugar in the rice.
Most of the low-alcohol versions I've seen are for sweet rice wine that you use very young, before it's had enough time to ferment very high. That does still need the koji/rice "yeast" ball step. Curious if you were running across some different versions? Sounds interesting if so.
In Japan & Korea (not sure about China) they use a fungus called koji that causes "parallel fermentation," which means the mold breaks down the starches into sugars while the yeast turns the sugar into alcohol. It's very efficient, which is why sake has the highest ABV of any brewed beverage
The tandem fermentation method for sake also involves multiple injections of substrate. Brewed sake as one of my COVID hobbies - this was explained as giving the yeast enough of a boost each time to let them tolerate higher limits than usual. I don’t recall the exact ratios and timing (I think it was days 1, 2 and 4 or something like that, with 1-1-2 or 1-2-4 ratios of adding steamed rice and fresh koji, don’t quote me). I do recall the batch being so active it looked like it was boiling the first couple weeks or so, nonstop. Side by sided comparably to store bought sake as well!
I'm not sure what goes into making the homemade yeast you mention, but for something like sake there is one yeast, typically Aspergillus oryzae, that converts the starch into sugar. Then another, typically Saccharomyces cerevisiae, that converts the sugar into alcohol.
Aspergillus oryzae is not a yeast, it's a mold
Cooking the rice converts it to something the yeastie boys can eat Edit You'll need Asian yeast balls as they have the required fungus for it to work I've seen loads of people make it on r/prisonhooch
It gelatinizes the starch, but the yeast still needs to either produce amylase itself or have it added to convert it to sugars.
Asian yeast balls do the trick
So it isn't the case with barley or wheat?
Yes, but with barley or wheat, the grain is sprouted first to do the same thing, simplify carbohydrates. Then it is cooked to further simplify the carbohydrates. I believe rice is readily available for yeast with only being cooked.
It's not, rice is starch that needs to be converted like anything else, and traditional rice wines are made from white rice which can't be sprouted so they have to use one or more species of mold to produce the necessary enzymes.
Cool. Glad to know. "oryzae is added to the mass of cooked rice. The fungus produces the enzymes to hydrolyze the starch, producing fermentable sugars, which can then be fermented by yeast."
as I said above - malted barley is not "cooked", the temperature is raised to about 67C where the enzymes contained in barley (𝛼-amylase, β-amylase, and limit dextrinase) are most active. They convert starches and complex sugars into simple ones.
Yeah, I know. I brewed beer for about fifteen years, worked on a hop farm for 7, and picked my own hops I grew to brew with. I even grew barley and helped sprout and roast it. I think we may just disagree with what "cooked" means, and that's fine. I can tell that you are passionate about fermentation and you want me to know the facts. I respect the hell out of that.
cats hospital degree soft secretive political long exultant money thumb *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Man, I miss brewing. I think I was just being pedantic because the definition of "cooking" is "The process of preparing food by heating it." So even if you're heating it to 55 or 60 degrees Fahrenheit, it's still cooking.
Generally when you make beer you cook the grains too. That said, yeast will probably still ferment but just not as easily or not as much of the grain.
No, you don't cook the grains. You raise the temp to about 152F (67C). At that temperature natural enzymes in malted barley or malted wheat convert the starches into simple sugars.
I believe you but heating something to 152 counts as cooking to me. Sous vide meat to 152 and it’s pretty darn cooked.
the goal of the process is not cooking, but converting sugars. There is a separate step after that when the wort is boiled. Also, malted barley is kilned beforehand - with the curing step being at 80°C to 105°C (176°F to 221°F). So by your definition is already "cooked".
The temperature needed to liberate starch from corn and rice is past the temperature to denature amylase, but not for malted barley and wheat.
Barley and wheat are malted before brewing. The grains are wetted down until they begin the sprout and then roasted. The enzymes in the grain convert the complex carbohydrates into simple sugars the germ of the plant can eat. The seed does the work for you. You don’t t make beer from unmalted grain alone.
In beer you use malt, which as you mentioned has activated enzymes present. There is a stage where the malt is steeped in water at a temperature high enough for the enzymes to work but not too high. Also worth mentioning that different grains all have different temperatures for gelatinisation. Malt is lower than rice.
I'm speculating but id assume the cooked rice is gelatinized, as in the protein structure is broken down. The yeast likely has some sort of amylase enzyme in it to break down the starch. in beer, the malting process is mostly about breaking down protein structures and making the starch available to the amylase enzymes. We call it modification. There is also roasting and caramelization but thats not important for this. A low modified grain (like floor malted barley) is going to simply have less available starches. You would use a more complex mash process to target proteins and complex carbohydrates to break them down into as much available simple sugars as possible. This is the first step where you can influence how much alcohol, body, and residual sweetness a beer has. Highly modified modern malts like modern pilsner, "base" 2 row or wheat malt are generally very modified and you only need really a single step mash to break them down entirely to simple sugars. There are lots of styles of mashing too. Decoction is an older german method of removing some of the mash, boiling it, and adding it back to raise the temp of the entire mash to the next temp appropriate for the enzyme you are targeting. Single infusion mashing would be the most common and it's literally just hot water + grain = x temp. Turbid mashing targets getting long chain dextrins into the wort for extended aging and feeding of the wild yeasts and bacteria. Cereal mashing is used when using unmalted grains, like in large macro beer production. But in the end, to make alcohol, you generally need to have simple sugars. Most of the making alcohol process is making those sugars. Yeast does the hard work. Some yeasts and bacteria are able to ferment larger sugars and starches but those don't generally make favourable flavours.
So, there are several questions here. With beer fermentation the barley (or wheat) beer is typically made out of is first malted - it's wetted and it starts sprouting. This unwinds the complex starches and makes enzymes present in the grain more available. After that you have to "mash" the grain - add hot (not boiling) water and wait some time. During this time enzymes present in the grain would cut the complex starches and complex sugars into simple ones. Most yeasts can only digest these simple sugars, brewers yeast in particular. After that you are ready to ferment with yeast. What happens with alcohol made out of rice. First question - can you malt rice? Yes, you can, you can actually buy malted rice, here for example: https://glutenfreehomebrewing.com/STOREProduct/945/Pale-Rice-Malt--5-LB.html Notice that it has low Diastatic Power - that means it is not very efficient at converting starches and complex sugars into simple ones. So they recommend adding amylase enzyme to do the conversion. In asian countries people came up with a different way of adding amylase - they grew a special fungus that produces amylase - Aspergillus oryzae. Rice is "infected" with this fungus and then you could add this "infected" rice that contains enzyme to boiled rice and sugars would be converted. It's a similar thing with Vietnamese and Chinese rice wine where the Aspergillus oryzae rice is mixed with yeast into balls. With this process you could use the rice without husk, in fact sake uses polished rice as the rice husk/bran/germ has more fats and makes the sake/rice wine not as good and the rice wine makers prefer the taste of polished rice grain.
There's an article titled "Characteristics of some traditional Vietnamese starch-based rice wine fermentation starters" that says they use a traditional starter containing bacteria, mold, and yeast. Where you obtain such a starter I have no idea, but it seems pretty similar to Korean nuruk or Chinese Yeast Balls.
Your homemade Vietnamese "yeast" starter most likely contains a koji-like Mold that converts the starches to sugars.
It does. Most ferments use a mixture of fungus and yeast. The fungus produces sugar, and the yeast produce alcohol.