A new risky batch of chhang made

Oh yeah, a new batch of chhyang has been started! I'm excited, concerned and hopeful about this new batch, let's jump in!

First the price of this batch compared to the previous batches is significantly cheaper. I paid $25 for 10lb of sweet rice, this time was more like 12. That's the first win. Second, I soaked the rice for several days, to the point it was almost going bad even before being cooked, so that's going to be different. Third I boiled a large portion of the rice instead of steaming them as I've done in the previous couple of batches. That's because in the last batch I discovered that most of the rice grains weren't being fully cooked and there were far too many issues to fix there. I'm sure i made some error or other and that is a solvable problem, but it was nearing midnight, and I had to sleep, so boiled it was!

Fourth, the texture of the rice grains is quite...clumpy, instead of distinct grains, so there might be interesting downstream effects of that, I will keep a close eye on that. The mixture looks more like a gel than rice-with-water. Fifth, I had to add the water to the mixture on day 0 instead of after six or seven days as I usually do because the rice was going to go bad without water, and I'd rather have not risked that. Sixth, I added way, wayyy lesser yeast grains that I've done for the previous batches. I wanted to add no yeast grains, but because there were already so many other variables beyond my control, I didn't want to throw another spanner in the works. It should hopefully not overferment, while still giving a decent flavor.

Finally, the experiment I'm most excited about. I bought some 'red rice yeast lees' from the Asian store, it's meant to be used for cooking. Because I didn't find the dry grains anywhere else, I decided to use them for the current fermentation project. The hope is they still had whatever organisms are needed for fermentation and do their job, turn the rice red, all of it, and add the unique flavor and color characteristics. If this experiment works out I'd be eager to do a 50-50 mixture of red and white rice wine. My suspicion is that it might not colonize other grains, but just give the rice reddish tint. As long as it doesn't spoil the rice I'm fine. It's already frothing more than other jars, dunno if that's good or nah.

So excited for this!