Strawberry Sweet Rice Wine (Strawberry Jiu niang)

Homemade with fresh strawberries🍓 and sweet rice🍚~

This refreshing and mild Strawberry Sweet Rice Wine has such a balanced taste of sweetness and acidity.

At the moment when I uncovered my strawberry Jiu Niang, a bumblebee 🐝 was attracted by its fruity scent and landed on my balcony. 

Can you imagine how sweet this strawberry wine smelled?

Jiu niang – a worldwide traditional alcoholic drink

Since I posted my last sweet fermented rice video on Tiktok, people have been leaving comments like: It’s not a Chinese food, it’s a Korean/Thai/Vietnamese food…

It’s interesting to see that so many countries have similar but slightly different methods to make sweet fermented rice:

– Traditional Korean rice wine is called “Makgeolli”.

    Makgeolli is made from short grain rice instead of glutinous rice. People use Nuruk (누룩) as a traditional fermentation starter.

    Typically the fermentation process of Makgeolli is going to take 10 to 14 days, which is longer than Chinese Jiu Niang’s fermenting time. Therefore Makgeolli has a slightly higher alcohol by volume: 6–9%.

– A Thai version of fermented sweet rice dessert is called “Khao Mak”. 

    “Look pang“, a starch ball which contains mold and yeast, is the traditional fermentation starter for Thai sweet rice wine. Finished Khao Mak us usually wrapped in banana leaves.

– Vietnamese rice wine dessert is called “Com Ruou”.

  Overall, Vietnamese Com Ruou is very similar to Chinese Jiu Niang, the biggest difference is that Vietnamese fermented rice is usually rolled into small balls. 

Is sweet rice wine healthy?

Traditional Chinese sweet rice wine is low in alcohol level (2.5% ~ 3.5%) and high in nutrients and beneficial bacteria!

Overall, sweet fermented rice (jiu niang) is a healthy dessert. Similar to other fermented foods such, as kimchi and pickles, sweet fermented rice contains a good amount of nutrients and beneficial bacteria that can strengthen your immune and digestive system.

Note: Although sweet fermented rice has a very low alcohol level, it’s still best not to eat it if you’re pregnant. “There is no known safe amount of alcohol use during pregnancy or while trying to get pregnant.” – CDC

4 Ingredients for Making Strawberry Sweet Rice Wine

1. Strawberry 

Mr He brought home a batch of large and beautiful strawberries. However, they tasted sour like lemons.🍋

However, when these sour strawberries are mixed with steamed glutinous rice, delicious sweet strawberry wine is created after 2 days of fermentation.

It’s a great method to use up your sour strawberries~

– How to clean strawberries?

    It’s important to wash all the ingredients, utensils, and your hands thoroughly to prevent mold growth. 

    According to MasterClass, “the most effective way to clean pesticide residue off of strawberries is to submerge them in a vinegar bath“. Mix water with white vinegar, and soak the strawberries in vinegar bath for 20 minutes. Then rinse off the vinegar with cold running water.

    Steam the strawberries over high heat for 5 minutes to kill bacteria as well as other pathogens.

2. Sweet Rice

The main ingredient for making 酒酿 is sweet rice (糯米), also known as glutinous rice or sticky rice.

You may have this question: Can I use white rice instead sweet rice? – The answer is yes!

When sweet rice is not available, it’s very common for people to use white rice (粘米) as a substitute.

The fermented rice taste sweet because the yeast transforms the starch into glucose. Therefore, as long as the rice you use contains a great amount of starch, you will be able to make fermented sweet rice with it.

In this recipe, the author used white rice to make Tapai (very similar to jiu niang).

3. Yeast

Distiller’s yeast ( 酒曲 ，jiu qu) plays a crucial role as the “wine starter” during the fermentation process. Different kinds of distiller’s yeast require different fermentation temperatures and fermentation time. 

The most commonly used yeast for making Chinese sweet fermented rice is in ball shape:

You will need to grind a yeast ball into powder before using. Each single yeast ball can ferment about 2kg sweet rice into sweet rice wine!

– Ideal Fermentation Temperature

    For this particular distiller’s yeast, it’s ideal to maintain the fermentation temperature at 30°C (85 °F)  for 48 hours. 

• When the temperature is higher than 40 °C, the yeast will die and the fermented rice will taste sour. 
• When the temperature is lower than 20°C, the fermentation process won’t start or will be super slow, the sweet rice will still taste hard and bland after fermentation.
• If the fermentation process is to long, the sweet rice grains will turn hollow, and the wine will taste too strong instead of sweet.

4. Water

Adding water to steamed sweet rice sounds like a very easy step. However, it’s actually very important and could be tricky!

If we add too much water, the fermented rice will taste soggy and sour. While if the water is not enough, the yeast won’t be fully activated, so that they won’t produce a lot of liquid.

To strictly control the amount of water, my suggestion is to steam the rice instead of boiling the rice with a rice cooker. In this way, the rice grains won’t absorb too much water, will stay dry, and won’t stick to each other after cooked.

How to sterilize food containers to prevent mold

According to the Spruce Eats, you can bake your glass food containers at 275F for at least 20 minutes to kill germs.

To use this method, make sure your food containers are oven-safe. 

If you have a pot that is big enough, you can also boil the glass container for at least 5 minutes. 

Now we have everything ready~ Let’s start making the most delicious strawberry sweet rice wine!

Remember that you can eat both the sweet fermented rice and the wine.

Equipment you will need:

• Steamer Cookware

• Glass baking dish with lid

• Cheesecloth  (Or parchment paper)

• Kitchen scale

Ingredients:

• 200 g strawberries (about 7 medium-size strawberries🍓)
• 250 g water – boiled and let cool to room temperature (or bottled water. Do not use raw water!)
• 500 g sweet rice (also known as glutinous rice)

• 2 g rice wine starter (Chinese wine yeast balls. Can be found on Amazon.)

Step by Step INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Wash 500g sweet rice for 3 to 4 times, until the water becomes clear. Soak the sweet rice in cold water overnight.

2. The next day, the soaked rice grains should be easily crushed with fingers. Drain the water.

3. Use a large pot to boil the glass food storage container for 5 minutes to kill the germs. Or bake the glass food storage container at 275 °F (135 °C) for 20 minutes. Set aside and let cool.

4. Line a steamer with cheese cloth (or parchment paper), pour the soaked sweet rice over the cheese cloth.

5 Poke some holes into the rice with your index finger, so that it can be cooked more quickly and evenly. Steam the sweet rice over high heat for 40 minutes.

6. Wash about 7 strawberries, remove leaves and stems (you will get about 200g strawberry fruit), cut each strawberry into halves.

7. After the sweet rice has been steamed for 40 minutes, turn off the heat, open the lid of the steamer, place the strawberries over the sweet rice.

8. Put the lid on, turn on the heat, steam the strawberries with the sweet rice over high heat for 5 more minutes.

9. Transfer steamed sweet rice and strawberries to the sterilized glass container. Add 250g cold water to the sweet rice, mix well with a rice paddle. Set aside and let cool.

10. Grind a Chinese wine yeast ball into powder. Weight 2 grams of the yeast powder (about ¼ of a yeast ball).

11. Once the steamed sweet rice is cooled to 30 °C – 35 °C (85 °F – 95 °F. If you do not have a food thermometer, you can touch the rice with double-washed clean hands, it should feel similar to your body temperature), add the yeast powder to the sweet rice, mix until well combined.

12. Press the sweet rice firmly and evenly, dig a hole in the middle.

13. Sprinkle a tiny bit of yeast powder into the hole.

14. Tightly cover the glass container with 2 layers of plastic food wrap. Put the lid on if there is one.

15. Place the sweet rice in a warm and dark place to ferment. You can set your oven at 30 °C ( (85 °F ). Traditionally, Chinese elders would just cover the container with a blanket to keep it warm.

16.The plastic wrap should be bloating if you have tightly sealed the container. Check the fermentation process daily. Once the hole in the middle is at least 80% filled with liquid, the strawberry sweet fermented rice is done.

17. Remove the plastic wrap, always use a clean ladle to get the wine and the sweet fermented rice. Can be served either cold (cool in the fridge/ add ice cubes) or hot (boil with other ingredients, such as poached egg).

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