rice-wine making revisited

There's so much rice at home now that I feel guilty about it. Mom keeps sending us more. Not knowing what to do about it, I finally forced myself to give rice-wine making a go again. I cajoled two of my brothers to join in my 'project' and to my delight, they agreed without much convincing.

To start off, I had to call my mom for advice on the dos and donts. It has been years since my last go on it and I didn't want to go wrong. Mom said I have to try making just a few cups first to see if my sasadan "rice sprinkled with yeast" still makes good rice wine. I have to cook some rice, pound some yeast (home made by mom naturally), let the rice cool, sprinkle yeast on it then put it in an airtight container. To make sure it is really airtight, I should tighten the lid with plastic food wrap.

So I cooked 10 cups of rice to be our trial. Since there are some red rice that my kids do not really favour, I decided to use them for variety. I scrubbed my lazy-susan clean and scooped out the rice to cool. Then I divided it into three portions; the largest one for my youngest brother to sasad "sprinkle with yeast", the medium one for me and the smallest one for my other brother. The reasoning? Well, this youngest brother of mine often produces tasty rice wine. Mine is towards bitter tasting but always with a lot of wine, and the other brother hardly ever made any. We are not allowed to do the yeast sprinkling at the same time for fear of spoiling the product. After one portion is done, it had to be put in the container, before continuing with the next portion. According to the Dusun's belief, different palms that touch the yeast produce rice-wine of different tastes.

There, we have done it. Two weeks later we would know the result of our rice-wine making attempt. Hoping that I still have the flair for that!