Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

I want to create an inventory of the fermentation and planting projects for the rest of the summer. I have finally been successful with the tempeh-based starter culture, and that’s been a massive encouragement to me. I’m thinking of cultivating rice wine starter culture and red rice yeast culture as well. If I can do those, it would be incredibly exciting.

Beyond that, the most immediate project is growing mushrooms at my apartment. I also have smaller project ideas, like growing tomato plants in my hydroponic system. Of course, there are the regular fermentation projects I need to continue, but they’re more process-based and not especially exciting. I haven’t been able to do the actual tempeh fermentation yet, only the starter fermentation, so that would be one important project to do now that I have a ton of starter. My next few projects are making proper tempeh, the rice yeast starter, the red rice yeast starter, and other ferments I have been targeting, such as sorghum and rye. An experimental batch of rye ferment succeeded, but I want to explore that further to see how much better it can get.

I think I’m at a stage where I can play around with textures in rice wine. Adding nettle to rice wine appears to thicken it or make it slightly gloopy. If I can stretch that farther and use nettle or some other herbs to make rice wine even thicker, then I have both texture and flavor in my control. I don’t know if dumping a bunch of flowers in cold temperatures is the best way to infuse flavor, but that’s another consideration.

So I have three variables that I can play around with in my rice brewing. In the fermentation part itself, it’s either white rice yeast or red rice yeast. For the final product, I can change the color of the brew (white, red, probably purple, yellow, and others), the flavor, and the texture. With so many variables in my control, the room for experimentation becomes excitingly and incomprehensibly large. Just the rice brewing could keep me occupied for years. I should definitely write this down in my blog.

To summarize my plan:

• Starter Cultures: Red rice yeast and regular rice yeast.
• Toasted rice vs regular: If I toast the rice before steaming, it’ll probably make it smokier?
• Brewing Stages: I can extract the brew at the first stage, called Nee-Gaar in Nepali, or the second stage, called chhyang.
• Flavoring Stage: I can vary the color, texture, and flavor.
• Level of backsweetening: How sweet do I want to get it ‘naturally’, or by adding additional sugar?
• Level of carbonation: How fizzy do I want it to make? It depends on the level of backsweetening mostly, but I can also pasteurize the drink to disrupt the sugar & ferment relationship…

With these variables, I have at least 16 possibilities before even considering all the potential colors and other factors. I need to explore a lot more of that.