#no.112423

7 months ago I started an experiment to see if the rice wine starter I bought could ferment other starches. I made a batch that mixed water with yellow maca powder, oat flour and a small amount of molasses.

It continued bubbling for 5 months.

I think it managed to saccharify most of the starches in the maca powder, at least. Not so much the oat flour, which mostly congealed at the bottom. I tossed two thirds of it when the sludge at the bottom was too hard to strain, and put the liquid that remained in a different container, which I left sitting under airlock while I spent two months visiting family.

Today I tasted it.

Great news!

I did not make poison!

No evidence of infection, and it tastes like drinkable alcohol.

Actually, it mostly tastes like maca, minus the sugar. The oat flour has an interesting effect on the texture of the brew, moreso than the taste. Oats contain beta-glucans, which are a type of soluble fiber that, when dissolved in a liquid, impart a very creamy, velvety mouthfeel. They also give the beverage a haze, much like a pectin haze.

They add density to the brew, raising the hydrometer reading by quite a significant margin. This is something to keep in mind if you want to add oats to a brew and you're using a hydrometer to calculate the alcohol percentage.

There's no hope of this brew clearing. The soluble fiber isn't just mixed with the liquid; it's actually dissolved into it, which is why it's able to change the hydrometer reading. Fining agents can only help clear suspensions, not solutions.

Ever since I discovered that rice wine starter can saccharify (convert into sugar) more than just rice, I've been wanting to test it out on other starchy foods I previously assumed to be unfermentable with the equipment I have at my disposal.

Recipe:

2lb oat flour (87% Correction: 73% carbohydrate)

1lb maca powder (70% carbohydrate)

0.8lb molasses (75% carbohydrate)

11 cups Teeccino brand Chaga Ashwagandha Butterscotch Cream Mushroom Herbal "Coffee"

2 shanghai yeast balls (rice wine starter )

I probably didn't need to add that 2nd yeast ball.

I got concerned when there were no bubbles after 12 hrs and then went out to see a movie and came back to a (thankfully minor) mess on my hands when some of it foamed out the top. It had settled back down by the time I got back. I only lost 120g of must.

I wanted to use a grain as my base to make something beer-like. I can't do anything with gluten, for medical reasons, so I picked oat flour as my main carbohydrate source after seeing Jesse from the Still It youtube channel make a vodka by fermenting rolled oats with a rice wine starter (he used Yellow Label Angel Yeast) and then distilling it in one of his videos.

For my secondary carbohydrate source, I found this unused bag of maca powder at the back of my pantry. I think I originally planned to use in a brownie recipe, because it has a butterscotch-like flavor to it that goes nicely with chocolate, but I hate baking so it just ended up just sitting on the shelf ages. It has a lower starch content than oat flour, which is why I didn’t want to use it as my primary carbohydrate source.

If the microorganisms in the rice wine starter can successfully saccharify all that starch, I should get about 2.2 lbs of fermentable sugar out of this.

The 1lb of molasses, which I plan to wait a couple weeks before adding, will contribute another 0.75lb of sugar, so ~3lbs fermentable sugar in total.

Added 1lb of molasses to the "beer" batch. As you can see it has all sunk to the bottom. I'll stir it up tomorrow. I also tried adding a couple crushed up digestive enzyme supplement tablets to help along the saccharification of the oat flour. I sense the rice wine starter I used had an easier time processing the starch in the maca powder than the starch in the oat flour.

I racked the December batch of hōjicha tea mead yesterday. It tastes young. There are no off flavors, but it needs more aging to help the flavors mellow. It has a sharp alcohol kick that you feel but don't really taste. Just a burning sensation in the throat as you swallow.

I tried experimenting with some acids I bought (lactic, malic, tartaric). I determined that this mead doesn't need any acid additions after all. Of the three, the tartaric acid was the only one that didn't make it taste worse, but it also didn't make it taste better. Hōjicha tea naturally contains gallic acid, which is also found in oak apples (the fruit of the oak tree), aka gall nuts according to its wikipedia page. There's actually a tannin powder brewing suppliers sell made from gall nuts.

The mouthfeel is a little thin. I'll wait until June to see how much it improves on its own and then maybe add some maltodextrin if I'm still not happy with it.

I plan to submit this one to the Mead Stampede competition.

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A while ago I split the blackberry blossom honey mead into two batches, and blended one with my pomegranate wine.

I bottled the blended batch now that it has almost entirely cleared.

There's still a layer of dry/mostly dry oat flour caked at the bottom of the carboy. I'm doing my best to go in twice a day with a barbecue skewer to stir it up, but it's still not fully saturated. This would be much easier if I was fermenting in a bucket and I could just use a big spoon, but as it happens I only have the one wide-mouth fermenter and it's in use.