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Rice wine is a generic term for an alcoholic beverage fermented from rice, traditionally consumed in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. Rice wine is made by the fermentation of rice starch, during which microbes enzymatically convert its starches to sugar. [1] Sake in Japan, Mijiu in China, and Cheongju and Makgeolli in Korea are some of the most notable types of rice wine.
Rice wine typically has an alcohol content of 10–25% ABV, and is typically served warm. One panel of taste testers arrived at 60 °C (140 °F) as an optimum serving temperature. [2] Rice wines are used in East Asian, Southeast Asian and South Asian cuisine at formal dinners and banquets and in cooking.
The production of rice wine has thousands of years of history. In ancient China, rice wine was the primary alcoholic drink. The first known fermented beverage in the world was a wine made from rice and honey about 9,000 years ago in central China. [3] In the Shang Dynasty (1750-1100 BCE), funerary objects routinely featured wine vessels. [4] The production of rice wine in Japan is believed to have started around third century BCE, after the introduction of wet rice cultivation. [5]
As a result of Alexander the Great's expedition to India, the Roman Empire had begun importing rice wine by the first century BCE. [6]
Despite being called a wine, the rice wine's production process has some similarities to that of brewing beer, reflecting its chief ingredient being a grain rather than a fruit. The specific approaches to making rice wine vary by type. Some rice wine (such as the Chinese rice wine, or Mijiu) is made from glutinous rice, while others (such as the Japanese Sake) is made from non-glutinous rice. However, all systems combine rice with some fungal culture in some ways. The fungal culture is called jiuqu in Chinese and koji in Japanese. In the traditional Chinese rice-wine-making approach, the glutinous rice is soaked for several days before being steamed, and subsequently is left to cool in a ceramic vat at near room temperature. Then, the jiuqu is added and mixed with the rice. The primary functions of jiuqu are to supply enzymes to convert starch to sugar and to supply yeast for ethanol production. After a few days, the liquid formed in the ceramic vat is combined with an additional mix of water and fungi to adjust the rice wine's water content. [7]
Name | Place of origin | Region of origin | Description |
---|---|---|---|
Agkud | Philippines | Southeast Asia | Fermented rice paste or rice wine of the Manobo people from Bukidnon |
Apong | India | South Asia | Indigenous to the Mising tribe, an indigenous Assamese community from the northeastern states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh |
Ara | Bhutan | South Asia | Also made with millet, or maize |
Beopju | Korea | East Asia | A variety of cheongju |
Brem | Bali, Indonesia | Southeast Asia | |
Cơm rượu | Vietnam | Southeast Asia | Made from glutinous rice. |
Cheongju | Korea | East Asia | Clear; refined |
Cholai | West Bengal, India | South Asia | Reddish |
Choujiu | Xi'an, Shaanxi, China | East Asia | A milky wine made with glutinous rice |
Chuak | India | South Asia | Milky rice wine from Tripura, India |
Chhaang | Nepal, India, Bhutan | South Asia | Milky rice wine from Nepal, Northeast India, Bhutan |
Dansul | Korea | East Asia | Milky; sweet |
Gwaha-ju | Korea | East Asia | Fortified |
Hakka | Meizhou, Guangdong, China | East Asia | Made from red yeast rice and glutinous rice |
Hariya | India | South Asia | White; watery |
Handia | India | South Asia | White; watery, from Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India |
Hanji | India | South Asia, | Native to Chakma community living in India, Myanmar, Bangladesh. It is a fermented wine made from rice and apparently is white in colour. And is majorly consumed during festive season. |
Huangjiu | China | East Asia | Fermented, literally "yellow wine" or "yellow liquor", with colors varying from clear to brown or brownish red |
Judima | India | South Asia | Fermented, distinguished by the use of a local wild herb called thembra |
Lao-Lao | Laos | Southeast Asia | Clear |
Lihing | Sabah, Malaysian Borneo | Southeast Asia | Kadazan-Dusun [ clarification needed ] |
Laopani(Xaaj) | India | South Asia | Made from fermented rice; popular in Assam. Concentrated (pale yellow coloured extract) of the same is called Rohi |
Lugdi | India | South Asia | Milky rice wine from Himachal Pradesh, India |
Makgeolli | Korea | East Asia | Milky |
Mijiu | China | East Asia | A clear, sweet liqueur made from fermented glutinous rice |
Mirin | Japan | East Asia | Used in cooking |
Pangasi | Philippines | Southeast Asia | Rice wines with ginger from the Visayas and Mindanao islands of the Philippines. Sometimes made with job's tears or cassava. [8] |
Phú Lộc rice wine | Vietnam | Southeast Asia | The spirit is made from sticky rice fermented with a traditional strain of yeast. |
Rượu cần | Vietnam | Southeast Asia | Drunk through long, thin bamboo tubes. |
Rượu nếp | Vietnam | Southeast Asia | Mildly alcoholic Vietnamese pudding or wine made from fermented glutinous rice. |
Rượu đế | Vietnam | Southeast Asia | Made of either glutinous or non-glutinous rice. |
Sake | Japan | East Asia | The term "sake", in Japanese, literally means "alcohol", and the Japanese rice wine usually termed nihonshu (日本酒; "Japanese liquor") in Japan. It is the most widely known type of rice wine in North America because of its ubiquitous appearance in Japanese restaurants. |
Sato | Northeast Thailand | Southeast Asia | — |
Shaoxing | Shaoxing, Zhejiang, China | East Asia | One of the most famous varieties of huangjiu, or traditional Chinese wines |
Sra peang | Northeastern Cambodia | Southeast Asia | Cloudy white rice wine indigenous to several ethnic groups in Northeastern Cambodia (Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri). |
Sulai | India | South Asia | Rice wine from Assam region |
Sonti | India | South Asia | Andhra Pradesh, Telangana |
Sunda Kanji | India | South Asia | Rice wine from Tamil Nadu |
Tapai | Austronesia | Southeast Asia | — |
Tapuy | Philippines | Southeast Asia | Also called baya or tapey. Clear rice wine from Banaue and Mountain Province in the Philippines |
Tuak | Borneo | Southeast Asia | Dayak |
Leiyi, Zam, Khar, Paso and Chathur | India | South Asia | Varieties of wine and beer from Manipur region [9] |
Zutho | India | South Asia | Rice wine from Nagaland |
A drink or beverage is a liquid intended for human consumption. In addition to their basic function of satisfying thirst, drinks play important roles in human culture. Common types of drinks include plain drinking water, milk, juice, smoothies and soft drinks. Traditionally warm beverages include coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. Caffeinated drinks that contain the stimulant caffeine have a long history.
Sake, saké, or saki, also referred to as Japanese rice wine, is an alcoholic beverage of Japanese origin made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran. Despite the name Japanese rice wine, sake, and indeed any East Asian rice wine, is produced by a brewing process more akin to that of beer, where starch is converted into sugars that ferment into alcohol, whereas in wine, alcohol is produced by fermenting sugar that is naturally present in fruit, typically grapes.
There is a long history of alcoholic drinks in China. They include rice and grape wine, beer, whisky and various liquors including baijiu, the most-consumed distilled spirit in the world.
Kumis is a fermented dairy product traditionally made from mare milk or donkey milk. The drink remains important to the peoples of the Central Asian steppes, of Turkic and Mongol origin: Kazakhs, Bashkirs, Kalmyks, Kyrgyz, Mongols, and Yakuts. Kumis was historically consumed by the Khitans, Jurchens, Hungarians, and Han Chinese of North China as well.
Ethanol fermentation, also called alcoholic fermentation, is a biological process which converts sugars such as glucose, fructose, and sucrose into cellular energy, producing ethanol and carbon dioxide as by-products. Because yeasts perform this conversion in the absence of oxygen, alcoholic fermentation is considered an anaerobic process. It also takes place in some species of fish where it provides energy when oxygen is scarce.
Makgeolli, sometimes anglicized to makkoli, is a Korean alcoholic drink. It is a milky, off-white, and lightly sparkling rice wine that has a slight viscosity, and tastes slightly sweet, tangy, bitter, and astringent. Chalky sediment gives it a cloudy appearance. As a low proof drink of six to nine percent alcohol by volume, it is often considered a "communal beverage" rather than hard liquor.
Korean cuisine has a wide variety of traditional alcoholic drinks, known as sul (술). Many of these drinks end with the Sino-Korean word -ju, and some end with the native Korean word -sul. The Sino-Korean -ju is not used as an independent noun.
Beer is one of the oldest human-produced drinks. The first chemically confirmed barley-beer – from the area of Mesopotamia, part of modern-day Iraq – dates back to the 5th millennium BCE. The written history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia records the use of beer, and the drink has spread throughout the world; a 3,900-year-old Sumerian poem honouring Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer-recipe, describing the production of beer from barley bread, and in China, residue on pottery dating from around 5,000 years ago shows that beer was brewed using barley and other grains.
Cheongju, sometimes romanized as Chungju, is a clear, refined rice wine of Korean origin.
In food processing, fermentation is the conversion of carbohydrates to alcohol or organic acids using microorganisms—yeasts or bacteria—under anaerobic (oxygen-free) conditions. Fermentation usually implies that the action of microorganisms is desired. The science of fermentation is known as zymology or zymurgy.
Tapai is a traditional fermented preparation of rice or other starchy foods, and is found throughout much of Southeast Asia, especially in Austronesian cultures, and parts of East Asia. It refers to both the alcoholic paste and the alcoholic beverage derived from it. It has a sweet or sour taste and can be eaten as is, as ingredients for traditional recipes, or fermented further to make rice wine. Tapai is traditionally made with white rice or glutinous rice, but can also be made from a variety of carbohydrate sources, including cassava and potatoes. Fermentation is performed by a variety of moulds including Aspergillus oryzae, Rhizopus oryzae, Amylomyces rouxii or Mucor species, and yeasts including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Saccharomycopsis fibuliger, Endomycopsis burtonii and others, along with bacteria.
Sato is a traditional northeastern Thailand (Isan) alcoholic fermented drink that has been made for centuries from starchy glutinous or sticky rice by growers in that region. Just as other regional varieties made not from grapes but cereal are commonly called wine rather than beer, sato is commonly called Thai rice wine. When brewed in little brown jugs called hai (ไห), it is called lao hai (เหล้าไห) or lao u (เหล้าอุ).
Mijiu, also spelt michiu, is a Chinese rice wine made from glutinous rice. It is generally clear in appearance with balanced sweetness and acidity, similar to its Japanese counterpart sake and Korean counterpart cheongju. The alcohol content ranges between 15% and 20%. Rice wine was made around or before 1000 BC in ancient China, and then the practice spread to Japan and other East Asian countries. Since then, it has played an important role in Chinese life. In most Chinese supermarkets there are various kinds of rice wines. It is a traditional beverage to the Chinese and some of the families still follow the custom of making rice wine by themselves. The rice wine is made using glutinous rice, Chinese yeast and water. It is also served as an aperitif and is believed to be beneficial in improving metabolism and skin.
Brem is traditional fermented food or fermented beverage from Indonesia. There are two types of brem, brem cake (solid) that is usually eaten as snack from Madiun and Wonogiri, and brem beverage (liquid) made of rice wine from Bali and Nusa Tenggara, but mostly known from Bali. Brem first appeared in Java around the year 1000, based on investigations regarding old Javanese inscriptions and literature.
A fermentation starter is a preparation to assist the beginning of the fermentation process in preparation of various foods and alcoholic drinks. Food groups where they are used include breads, especially sourdough bread, and cheese. A starter culture is a microbiological culture which actually performs fermentation. These starters usually consist of a cultivation medium, such as grains, seeds, or nutrient liquids that have been well colonized by the microorganisms used for the fermentation.
Jiuniang is a sweet, soup- or pudding-like dish in Chinese cuisine. It is also known as sweet wine or sweet rice wine. It consists of a mixture of partially digested rice grains floating in a sweet saccharified liquid, with small amounts of alcohol (1.5–2%) and lactic acid (0.5%). It is made by fermenting glutinous rice with a starter called jiuqu containing Rhizopus oryzae or Aspergillus oryzae and often yeast and bacteria.
Jiuqu, also simply known as qu is a type of dried fermentation starter used in the production of traditional Chinese alcoholic beverages. The word jiuqu specifically refers to a type of yeast used to make alcohol such as huangjiu, baijiu and jiuniang.
Huangjiu is a type of Chinese rice wine most popular in the Jiangnan area. Huangjiu is brewed by mixing steamed grains including rice, glutinous rice or millet with qū as starter culture, followed by saccharification and fermentation at around 13–18 °C (55–64 °F) for fortnights. Its alcohol content is typically 8% to 20%.
Nuruk (Korean: 누룩) is a traditional Korean fermentation starter. It is used to make various types of Korean alcoholic beverages including takju, cheongju, and soju. It is an essential ingredient in Shindari and is mixed with rice. Historically, it was used in a variety of provinces of Korea, including Jeju Island.