George is a national treasure.

Finally someone who explains everything! And without any extra gimmicks. This makes me glad.

In china its called HuangJiu(yellow wine) We don't worry about steaming the rice. The water just gets absorbed by the rice and goes into the fermentor with no starch loss. Its farmers brew so the process is kept very simple, so its just cooked in a wok.

How timely.... I have about for 5 gallon buckets of rice on bags and all fresh and I didn't know what to do with it until now. Thank you George ever so much

very happy you made another video on that subject. I was looking for the old one and couldn't find it anymore

The ball device used is a tea infuser. Used to make a tea with loose leaf teas.

You have a passion for teaching and I very much appreciate it. Thank you for all of your awesome videos.

Can’t wait for the next part. Thanks for all the great info.

I'm so glad I found your channel! I love how you explain the science behind the brew.

@16:40 YES! Just seconds before I was thinking "What's that in the bottles, George?!"

Best instruction to make real sake that I have ever seen or read. Lots of fake sake (rice infused into alcohol) recipes, but it's not easy to find a real recipe for the real stuff. As far as temperature control is concered, I would use a normal thermal pad controlled by a thermostat (e.g. the typical SC-100) just like it is normally done to control temperature of wort during fermentation. As far as weighing small weights, there are relatively cheap (around €40) electronic scales which measure 1/100 or 1/1000 (yes, one thousanth) of a gram available, e.g., on Amazon. They can be useful also for those who buy dried brewing yeast in large quantities (500g) and then use 10 g or so for a brewing batch. They have of course a lot of other uses.

Always wanted to try this. Thanks for all the detail!

Outstanding video George never tried to make saki but I make a Korean rice wine called Makgeolli using rice and nuruk it's milky white an oh so good. Keep them coming my friend I always enjoy your videos no matter what the subject is. Thank You.

If you find your way to the Portland, Oregon area, you should try to take a tour at SakeOne in Forrest Grove. It's a great tour and they make some great Sake. They make all the G, Momokawa, and Moonstone Sake brands you can find all over the US.

You are definitely the professor of distilling. Your love of this hobby is contagious. I'm always looking forward to the next bit of information.

Thanks for making this video. My Koji kin is in the oven with a hot water bottle to keep it warm enough! Not sure my rice was moist enough, but we will see!

Place your PID thermal coupling in the Ric, place a heating pad under the pan, plug into PID set temperature, PID holes temp 👍

You are awesome to watch 👍 tack

George, you went into much greater detail on the whole process of making sake, then in your original. I find this very fascinating indeed. Hey, perhaps I’ll give a go at making some Rice-A-Roni sake? Probably too many Sorbates or other harmful things for yeast? Perhaps I’ll find out! Keep up the great work George!

thank you great help

The best rice to make sake,is parboiled longgrain rice,rasins ,oranges,suggar and fermented with tokay yeast

"koji kin" looks like a kind of white mold. it looks similar to one on french cheese camembert. a black one would probably be deadly for some human beings on a long run? as a philosopher žižek states when wine goes bad one sells it as champagne, when a car lacks a roof one sells it as convertible. :)

I’ve used a incandescent lamp controlled by a dimmer in the oven to hold temperature for sake and yogurt making. Easy to set the temp with a digital oven thermometer and a probe.

That's a tea strainer to make cups of tea. If you need a warm constant temperature, an electric blanket with variable settings is good, draped over a frame or chair over your fermentation vessel. Cheap to run and can be done anywhere , plus you can use it in bed.

Cooking the rice in a normal rice cooker accomplishes the soaking/steaming steps. Let cool, add the yeast/mold, put in fermenter.

This is awesome!! :)

Speaking of sweet rice or sticky rice, there is one traditional food in China, which you take some sticky rice and soak it in water overnight, steam it thoroughly, rinse it with cold boiled water to bring its temperature down to around 35℃ and break up the rice into separate grains at the same time, then pitch it with amylase producing mold (something similar to koji), and keep it warm for about a week or two. It will turn into a sweet liquid with rice lees inside, good for having it straight forward, also makes very good Chinese dessert ingredient. Yeast is not added to the rice after pitching with mold, however there might be some wild yeast inside the 'koji' along with the mold, so it could have some alcohol inside, usually under 2%. I have once tried using the liquid part of it to make sparkling rice wine with champagne yeast, that ended surprisingly well.

Thank you...without your help I would be still scraping sticks and stones...Montana is a second home if you wanna come round..

I love your videos, the science, your pleasant voice and you’re an excellent presenter.

Hi Gorge it’s good to see you’re video, I see you steam the rice as it cooks it collets water, if I put the rice in the rice cooker as my wife cooks her rice, it should come out the same as if I steamed it. The point is I was wondering if amylase would convert rice starch to sugars

Other channels advocate using long grain or "sweet" rice. What are the attributes of sweet rice - is this a short or long grain? Is it safe to assume that sweet rice will have a higher ABV because of a larger sugar content than other types of rice? Thanks George - love what you do for us!

Thank you George!

Was wondering if you could use an electric heating pad for doing this?

Sake making interesting

I love your videos. How did you come up with the ratio of koji-kin/ plane rice and water? I want to try and make this

how was the sweat rice? was it better than the shot grain rice?

Say, can you do a video on making soju which is a distilled Korean rice wine?

I'm planning on steaming roughly 18 pounds of Calrose that has been polished 50%. Since this is a large amount. Can I prepare 3 or 4 pounds at a time and refrigerate until I get it all done?

Turn the oven light on supposed to hold at 80 degrees

George, when you soaked the rice for 1.5 hours, how long did you let it dry before steaming the rice?

George is the man

by using koji to convert starch to sugar can you not do the same thing using an amylase solution

Hello, im currently brewing, trying to brew rice wine.. i saw many videos where they use s type airlock, so i used it to. but never paid attention whether lid to the airlock should be there or not .. please help.. should i have closed the lid of the airlock ?? Plzz reply

I bet you could put your casserole dish on a heating pad set to low instead of moving it in and out of the oven.

IDEA - I bet you could put a uncovered pot of water with a Sous Vide Precision Cooker set to 86º in the oven chamber (might be a tight fit). That should provide a stabile temperature as well as humidity.

I've never tried it... Wife says she's had it a few times and liked it. Might give it a shot after the wheat whiskeys and American Scotch tests. Thanks George, always enjoyable 👍👍 BTW, I picked 12 lbs of ripe persimmons today, I've got them cleaned and ready.... Going to try some brandy straight from fruit. Persimmon wine isn't bad, but it took about 4 years in the bottle to get that way 😝 Good now tho, lol. Take care !

if I don't have any "KOJI KIN"? could I use dady yeast?

Great video, i have a question for you about distilling. When using a boiler with a heating element for double distilling, do i add water to my initial distillate to get enough volume to keep the element submerged?

Yea, back 2 making washes.

George and the Texan praise jesus pass the biscuits guy collab, must have

i have a trick to share to keep your stove at the temperature' use the appropriate wattage tungsten light bulb like a 25- watt for example ; be it just a socket with wire ; i used it to make natto .

Question, we don't want the rice coming into direct contact with the water because it washes the starches out, makes sense, but what if I boiled the rice, which would be easier to do in large quantities, and just kept the liquid aside and used it for the liquid in the fermentor? I could steam for the initial Amalysistic Rice, but could I cheat for the rest of it. I just don't like the idea I having to steam 50kg of rice, (got it for a good price)

following George

I know I'm late to the party here, but does anyone know or have any links to some of the equipment or ingredients used in the video? Thank you!

QUESTION: Can I run long-grain through my grain grinder to produce a smaller grain as suggested?

Hello, how are you? Want it to ask if there is any yeast nutrient added? Quite a few recipes are calling for it. Is that necessary? Thank you

Where did you purchase the fermenter

It's for tea leaves, to brew in the cup

My question is, why can't you use this same yeast + fungus combination to make other brews. Anything high in starch should work amazing with this.

Is there a reason we don’t want the rice to come in contact with water? It’s still coming in contact with steam. Just trying to understand the science.

if you want to double or triple mash would you double or triple the amount of kome koji

looove this man; let s clone him & make armies of him; he s a good man; just bought 2 fermentators; a distiller and the chiller from the company GRAINFATHER and man no real instructions; if it wouldnt be for you George; i d be stuck with the few clown incompetent videos representing this company; i m watching as much videos from you as i can; i m originally from canada and moved to australia...been to texas twice and looove the people; instead of using STARSAND why not use 70% ethanol, Bless you George

Could you use SEBstar HTL instead of the koji kin?

thanks for the vid and all the good info i cant get koji kin what should do?

Damn, we miss you George 🙏

Does anyone know where to watch the part 2 and buy koji kin?

how about shochu?

Mine is very potent and very sour. How do you sweeten it. I wanted to flavor it like a hard lemonade m

I know Imperial Units are older, but I don't see them as inferior to French Units.

George has 35yrs of U.S. Military Service...Tax Money well spent !

You mean that you have modified it so that an "Amylolytic enzyme" can convert the complex sugars in to simple sugars.

Sticky rice is good, and the word you are looking for is microbe, not bacteria.

Sorry George, but Starsan will not sterilise, it lowers pH to a point that will retard the growth of most bacteria and some yeast and mould, but it won't make anything sterile. To sterilise you need to think autoclave - 120C for 20 minutes.

Can you just use alpha amylase

Instead of foil use a warm dampened towel

Its a Tea strainer.

My rice wine is starting to smell like a hog waller Peeeewwwwwweeeee

Can you distillate the sake you made

old man, 1:½ is the same as 2:1 xD

Koji kin link please

it's not saki, its sakE

Good set of videos. Found them a little too long. Four 25 minutes videos on Sake? I sometimes felt you were teaching Forrest Gump how to make Sake.

helpful vid but less talk please more progress .. this should have been a 15 min vid ..

Really good info. I couple of issues: 1. Yes, you need to focus on sanitization. I kinda cringed when you stuck your fingers in the rice and when you used the spoon. Maybe they were sanitized first? 2. It's worth mentioning that you absolutely don't need to do any of the stuff you mention in your first video. You can go to your local Asian grocery store (if you have one) and buy koji in the deli section. It comes in the same kind of container as yogurt does. Or you can buy dehydrated koji online, and just re-hydrate it.

the sniffles and coughing make me think you got covid. loss of smell?