The various seed mashes used for rice wine brewing can be classfied into three types according to the preparation processes: "Traditional seed mash" ("LING FANG Jiu Mu" in Chinese pronunciation), "Pure Cultured Seed Mash"
The various seed mashes used for rice wine brewing can be classfied into three types according to the preparation processes: "Traditional seed mash" ("LING FANG Jiu Mu" in Chinese pronunciation), "Pure Cultured Seed Mash" and Active Instant Dried Yeast (AIDY).
Polished rice ↓ Steeping in hot and acidified liquid ↓ Steaming ↓ Spreading the steamed rice to cool it to a room temperature ↓ Mixed with Jiu Qu, acidified liquid, young mash or dried seed mash ↓ Fermentation for about 7 days ↓ Seed mash ready for rice wine brewingSo the seed mash preparation process had no considerable difference with main mash fermentation process.
Fresh water Polished rice │ ↓ ├────────→ Socking │ ↓ │ Steaming │ ↓ ├───────→ Cooling the steamed rice │ ↓ by drenching fresh water through it │ Mixed with Xiao Qu ← Xiao Qu │ ↓ │ Sacchrafication │ ↓ └──────→ Mixed with wheat Jiu Qu and water ← wheat Jiu Qu ↓ Fermentation ↓ Stirring ↓ Secondary fermentation ↓ Seed mash
|ingredients||weight ( kg)|
|Wheat Jiu Qu||19.5|
|Xiao Qu||0.187~0.25||( major microbes are Rhizopus spp. and yeasts)|
|Water (including the water||230|
|absorbed in the cource of steeping|
Saccharification and fermentation of the seed mash lasts about 7 days, then the young seed mash is poured into jars with narrow neck for secondary fermentation. Much ethanol is produced after 20- 30 days (or may be three months ). Usually the ethanol content of the seed mash can reached up to 15%. The chemical compositions of the seed mash is given in table 1 below.
|Ethanol (v/v, %)||15.44|
|Total acids ( g/100 ml)||0.3799|
|Sugar ( g/100 ml, glucose)||0.3936|
|Starch ( g/100 ml)||4.42|
The instant seed mash is inoculated with yeast pure 