Rice wine bottling and other successes: an update on my fermentation projects

This afternoon I processed the remainder of the 3 gallon jars of chhyang, backsweetening the brews, separating the liquid and the solid grains, and bottling the juice of the white grain into 22 bottles. The bottom half of my fridge is all chhyang, I have almost the equivalent of a 24-pack at this point, possibly higher in terms of the alcohol content.

The rice grains leftovers are an issue now, I made tu'rong with the last batch of rice, but it's not clear if I want to make more of it. That is after all an experiment and do I want to do multiple experiments with the same control variables? Maybe, I'm thinking, if I cook it well enough, I can use it for adding into stews and stuff?

So today's job was hard because lots of rice was left unfermented. Turns out so much of the rice in the taller bottles hadn't been cooked properly in late November, and never fermented. That was the reason the fermentation kept going without the taste being off because the enzyme has been constantly attacking the raw-ish grains all this time. So that was the upside: undercooking the grains lenthened the fermentation period, but on the other hand, separation was quite challenging since the grains got stuck, and pureeing was not an option as you don't want to feed your guests raw rice flower. Either I'll make sauce out of the remaining grains, or maybe use it for something fun, I remember seeing online posts about reusing the spent rice hulls. We'll see.

In other project news, my water kefir is absolutely kicking ass now that it's getting constant supply of nitrogen from various fruits. Milk kefir is being made every day and I drink a cup with my lunch or dinner, which means the grains are in tip-top healthy shape and have come back from their summer slumber. All three batches of water kefir are well, and now I'm thinking of starting a new kombucha batch soon. My existing yearold kombucha has been in the home use as tea vinegar, maybe it's time to back into the k-booch game.

Thinking I'm ready to pick back on the kinema and tempeh ferments in a few weeks as temperatures start warming up, and quite prepared mentally and equipment-wise for kodo and sorghum fermentation.