I made sweet rice wine because Piaopiao's mother had a period when she liked to eat it. Especially when Piaopiao was born, her milk hadn't come out for several days. Almost everyone she knew said "eating sweet rice wine is particularly effective" and "eating pig trotters will be fine". She ate pig trotters for two meals, but found it too greasy and stopped. However, this kind of snack seems to be liked by many women, so I also held the attitude of "better safe than sorry" and "at least harmless", and made a lot. Interestingly, after eating for a few days, her milk did come out - seemingly once again proving the magic of "folk remedies". However, interestingly, when Feifei was born, she didn't like to eat it, so I didn't make it. But at about the same time, the milk still came, and was even more abundant than last time. If we want to argue based on "personal experience", we could also say "maybe last time it was because she ate sweet rice wine that there wasn't enough milk".
There are many recipes for sweet rice wine available online. Many of them sound very mysterious, precise like biochemical experiments. But my biggest pursuit in cooking is simplification.
The formation of sweet rice wine is the process of some microorganisms' enzymes hydrolyzing starch. The so-called "ferment" is just a bunch of microorganism "seeds". Under suitable growth conditions, they produce various different enzymes. Some break down starch into monosaccharides, some break down proteins into peptides or amino acids, and others convert monosaccharides into alcohol. Whether it's the protein after hydrolysis, or monosaccharides and alcohol, all these are the reasons why sweet rice wine is sweet rice wine.
Microbial growth and enzymatic reactions both have issues regarding whether the reaction conditions are appropriate. This is the source of all sorts of "experiences" and "secrets". Generally speaking, the reaction conditions of these hydrolytic enzymes are quite broad, so precise control isn't really necessary. At the optimal temperature (some people online say 30 degrees), the reaction speed is faster. When the temperature is lower, the reaction speed is slower, but eventually it will still become sweet rice wine. And there's no need to maintain a constant temperature; fluctuations between high and low temperatures are perfectly fine. For personal sweet rice wine making, "standardization" is not the goal, so precise control of conditions doesn't have much significance.
My method is very simple: soak glutinous rice overnight, steam it until cooked, cool it down, crush the ferment into powder, add it to the glutinous rice and mix evenly, then put it into a sealed container. I use glass bottles so I can see the changes inside. Some people add cooled boiled water (mainly for sterilization) in between, which helps the ferment fully contact with the glutinous rice and speeds up the reaction. However, adding water will also dilute the resulting sweet rice wine. If you want to save effort, just put the bottle on the stove and let it absorb some heat while cooking. If you want to speed up the process, immerse it in hot water. Remember to change the hot water when you think of it, and if you forget, let it endure. The only thing to note is that all containers should be thoroughly cleaned, avoiding contamination by other bacteria and oil stains.
Since the optimal temperatures for different enzyme activities are not the same, the speed and final degree of various reactions under different temperatures may vary, and the composition and dosage of the ferment will also have a significant impact. These differences result in varying compositions of sugar, alcohol, and protein hydrolysates in the final product, and these compositional differences also reflect different flavors. In making sweet rice wine, others' experiences are just theirs, yours still needs to be explored by yourself.
A few days later (it is said that under conditions of adding water and keeping warm, two days are enough), you can see the glutinous rice becomes fluffy, turns milky white, produces liquid, open the bottle cap and smell it, it has a sweet taste, and a faint alcoholic smell, it's almost done. If you hope for a stronger alcoholic flavor, stir it and leave it for another one or two days, otherwise store it in the refrigerator to eat slowly. Each time I made it, the amount of glutinous rice and ferment used was different, and the indoor temperature was not exactly the same, so the completion times were different, but eventually they all succeeded.
Brewing wine is probably one of the earliest food processing technologies of mankind. When humans were completely unaware of terms such as starch, glucose, alcohol, microorganisms, and enzymes, ancient people from all over the world could already create wines with different characteristics. This cannot help but show that the creativity of the masses is infinite, and experience can often solve problems. The development of biochemistry has only made the brewing process simpler, and those mysterious experiences can be clarified.
If we take the production of alcohol as the center, the raw material is monosaccharide. Therefore, anything that can produce monosaccharide can be used to make wine. Various fruit juices contain a considerable amount of monosaccharides or carbohydrates that can easily be converted into monosaccharides, and thus can be used to make various fruit wines. Wine is obtained from grapes, kiwi wine from kiwifruits, and apple wine from apples. Starch - whether it's corn or rice - needs to be hydrolyzed into monosaccharides first, but this conversion is not difficult. Whether it's sweet rice wine, Maotai, or erguotou, the core conversion process is the same. If the solid is filtered out from the sweet rice wine, the resulting liquid is rice wine. Distill and purify the rice wine, and you get highly pure baijiu - this is almost the easiest way for the protagonists of穿越novels to make money when they travel back to ancient times. From a chemical point of view, the main components of Maotai and erguotou are the same, the difference lies only in some trace components. But these trace components are like Edison's one percent inspiration, determining whether it is Maotai or baijiu.
Using grains to make wine is not considered wasteful, but using them to produce alcohol for fuel is indeed a matter of competing with people for food. However, things that humans don't eat, like straw, are also carbohydrates, theoretically they can be completely converted into monosaccharides to make wine. Only these stubborn things are not easy to convert, resulting in large numbers of scientists engaging in intellectual battles with them, and they have a tendency to surrender step by step. But if you're willing to distill your sweet rice wine into alcohol for fuel, you can become a "noble" "environmentalist", proudly claiming that you are contributing to the sustainable development of humanity.
If we look further from the conversion of monosaccharides into alcohol, alcohol can also be converted into acetic acid. If you want to make sweet rice wine, there shouldn't be any acetic acid bacteria in the ferment. The enzymes that convert monosaccharides into alcohol should not be too rampant, leaving some space for sugars. But if you want to make vinegar, you hope that the acetic acid bacteria will show their full potential, trying to eliminate all the alcohol. Besides the ferment, there are also these bacteria in the air, which is where experience is most useful - some people can "brew good wine in every jar, make sour vinegar in every pot", while others "brew good wine in every jar, make sour vinegar in every pot".
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