Rice wine is an Asian drink that many people enjoy when they are eating Chinese or Japanese food, or as a change from drinking the beer or wine that they normally drink. If you are a more advanced wine maker, making rice wine may have been something that has crossed your mind. Rice wine is definitely a unique beverage, and people tend to really love the taste of it or hate it. If you are one of the ones that fall into the ‘love it’ group, read on for some tips in making rice wine.

Unlike regular wines, that you can make in about an hour, making rice wine is a bit more of a labor intensive project. Also with regular wine making, the end result is largely dependent on how good the ingredients are and if the wine was aged or not. For rice wine, the ingredients are important, but the skills of the brewer are probably even more important.

So what are the basic steps for making rice wine? The first step is to wash and then steam the rice. Then you need to mix the rice with water, yeast and koji. Koji is a kind of rice that is grown with a specific type of mold. After you mix these two ingredients in, the fermentation process begins. Every day during the next four days, more rice and koji are added to the original mixture. Wait between 18 and 32 days and just press all the liquid out of the rice. After that you have a choice: to pasteurize or not to pasteurize. If you don’t heat the sake up really quickly for a short amount of time, you are going to have to store it in a refrigerator, and it won’t last for very long. When you do pasteurize it, you will be able to age it for years and years, just like you would do a find wine.

Making rice wine is a lot like making red or white wine, because it is an art. It is also just as complicated and intricate as making regular wine. If you like making wine, why not give making rice wine a try?