Cattail wine fail . . . [General]

2015 May 23
I kept noticing a ravine full of cattails (like 4 or 5 acres of them) on my bike ride home.

I kept wondering if I could make wine from the starchy roots using the Chinese Rice Wine Ball starters (which saccarify and ferment in one step).

So today I went to get some with my son.

Pulling up a green stalk Ipeeled of the spongy outer and tasted the white inner part of the base. It was really good. I would put that in a salad any day.

Next . . . the starchy root. Apparently cattails produce 10x as much starch per acre as potatoes.

But . . . it's not that easy to get the roots. Or perhaps it's just too early in the year.

First off, when you pull on a stalk it breaks off at the base. We had shovels though. The roots are there but it's hard work, and they run off in all directions, break, and are really muddy.

After doing that a bit, you begin to think rice at $1 a kg is not a bad deal at all . . .

I watched this video before heading out to try them:

2015 May 24
While plotting out the fence line for where our pigs will go this season, my son and I headed out towards the one of the more swampy parts of our farm. For kicks, I showed him what part of the cattail was edible. I liked it; he said it needed butter.

Then, remembering this post, I tried picking some of the roots. I found that some pulled out better than others. The easiest ones to pick were the younger ones, growing to the edge of the clusters of the cat tails.

I'm no plant expert, but seems like they propagate by root, so the outer plants would be less established and hence easier to pick. The one in the picture took no effort at all to remove.

2015 May 24
Good stuff organic girl ! :-)

Before I gave up, my grand plan was to dice them roots, pressure cook them to gelatinize the starch and innoculate with the Chinese rice wine starter balls. Perhaps I'm just a city wimp. But it's a bit colder here than in Ottawa. In fact we had frost Friday night. There weren't many green ones. Perhaps I just have to wait a couple more weeks.

p.s. My rice wine is still making CO2. The rice has broken down into a thin porridge and it's very boozy (I estimate 30% by tasting) but also has a great flavor and many purported health benefits . . . no really !

Yes they propagate by rhizome, which is an underground stem. It can be one large interconnected mass. Perhaps a single organism spanning acres.


2015 May 24
We're an hour south of Ottawa, and we also had frost Friday. Went down to at least−5, perhaps more. Most pond plants are pretty hardy to the cold though. I figure the type of soil they are in and how much water they have may have more to do with how quick they grow. I'll bet there are far more varieties than we think too.

Sounds like cattails are like aspen, they are also one big interconnected mass that can span acres.

2015 May 28
Where did you get those starters? Cause I would like to make rice wine at home too actually. Sounds almsot fun,

2015 May 30
@James C

I got them at Green Fresh in Vanier. goo.gl/maps/WfOVn

They were only 59 cents for a pack of two. They are up near the cashier at the front in a big jar.

Also on eBay, but overpriced :-)

Just search Chinese rice wine starter or Shanghai Yeast Ball.

It works on any source of starch and if you leave it long enough it will get to 25% abv.

It breaks down the starch quick, you can use an airlock if you want, but cling wrap over the top with rubber bands works too.

You can check out this web post . . .

menuinprogress.com

But when I made it with rice I didn't strain it, I just swirled it a bit every day and the rice broke down completely into a thin porridge and it tasted awesome. Actually it's still making CO2 and I presume alcohol, but the aroma is getting weaker.

If you don't like drinking . . . you can cook with it and it imparts a great flavor. In that case I would ferment it a shorter time and bottle it when the aroma peaks (2 - 3 weeks ?).

www.splendidtable.org

You can use any rice. I find if you cook rice in a pressure cooker, the starch gelatinizes. You can definitely do it in the InstantPot on the rice setting.

2015 May 31
Interesting. The thing that I didn't know was to use something breathable. Now, I wonder, could you make it using some other matter with a high sugar contact? For instance, could I use it make a peach eau de vie? (It would be terrible I'd bet)

2015 May 31
@James, you could try it. :-) I did some reading and yeast is a type of fungi, but unicellular. You can have both unicellular and multicellular fungi. Fungi can do amazing things, like break down a solid oak tree that falls in the forest. Oyster mushrooms have been grown on a toxic waste (contaminated diesel oil) and they rendered it harmless. Paul Stamets gives TED talks where he says fungi can save the world.

But your question is, can a starch eating fungi eat sugar ? Sugar is the simpler form of the molecule so I'd guess yes.

What else?

Well the process of breaking down starch but the rice balls starter above is called "semi-solid-state" fermentation. It's actually more efficient than liquid fermentation. The fungi mycelium grow into the semi-solid substrate. They don't do as well in liquids. Unicellular yeast wins out in liquid environment like wine or vinegar.

So if you wanted to try this on peaches, apples, or other fruit, I would just dice them and innoculate them, without adding any water. Keep it moist but solid. Don't use juice.

Let us know how it turns out . . .

p.s. Another thing you can do if you don't drink rice wine, is to expose the wine to oxygen and let it ferment again into rice wine vinegar.


2015 Jun 1
@James C, your post piqued my curiosity. I cut up 8lbs of Courtland apples (in large chunks), put them in polyethylene bag in a pail, added the starter and tied, the neck of the bag with a rubber band (this makes a great airlock, that I've used before for lacto fermenting).

It's a lot easier than making apple cider, which you have to press into juice. So now we wait . . . :-)

2015 Jun 2
I checked it this morning. The bag is already bulging outward with CO2, and the top has a pleasant smell of cider. I did not know this, but apples start out as starch: www.nsapples.com


2015 Jun 2
Glad I inspired you. I am probably gonna try to make this when my roomate moves out in August.

2015 Jun 2
My brother in law makes cider in France and it's a lot harder to do than this. It took me all of 15 minutes to cut up 8lbs of apples in large chunks. Cider, the normal way, nvolves pressing, filtering etc..

If this works out . . . we could have the next new, new thing . . . LOL :-)

And the reaction goes so fast I think there is little chance of a spoiled batch, which is an ever present worry making cider . . .

Videos of my brother in law making cider :-) in Bretange (he would be aghast at my way):

www.cidrebio.com/videos/

2015 Jun 4
awesome thread!

I am just thinking about starting my rumtopf small batches as gifts so I think I will try incorporating some of these ideas and actually make the alcohol from........I'm not sure :)

Any other places in Ottawa, especially china town, where people have seen the rice wine starters for sale?

Any further thoughts on the cider?

I also have one of those glass jugs for making wine........not sure what I could use this with as whole or chunks of fruits would be hard to remove from it.....as would rice......any thoughts? Maybe ginger and cane sugar? Fresh herbs with fruit?? Or maybe dill and potatoes (again hard to get the potatoes out.........if not impossible or at least frustrating.


2015 Jun 5
I have 'heard' of folks making alcohol from simple white sugar.

As for making cider, a bunch of us buy pressed AJ fresh from a local orchard late fall with their end of season apples. Heck I think I have 1.5 YO cider behind me in the home office I had forgot about.

It is super cheap @ about $1/L fresh.

I do have a project under way I will start in another thread entitled 'seed to bottle'

:D

2015 Jun 21
I wonder if you can make it with pears like the French poire William or cherries for kirsh.. uhmm cherries need to pit.. Pear might be easier.

2015 Jun 22
@EM

The cider is going well. The first couple of days it made a lot of CO2. Then we had a cold week and it seemed to stall. So I put the pail on top of my hot water heater tank, and it started making C02 again.

The apples got rubbery, and now are breaking down further and getting mushy. It smells very "apple cidery". My wife makes a tarte au pomme every couple of weeks, so I asked her if she was interested in making one from the rubbery apples. But she is a traditionalist and said "no". I'll have to make one myself, or let it break down completely into cider. It really does smell good. I know where there are many crab apple trees on the way to work, and they already have mini apples on the branches. I could easily get lots to ferment.

I found out more about the rice wine starter balls. I've seen them at Kowloon Market now, as well as Green Fresh, but someone told me they are getting harder to find. I wonder why?

There is a Canadian company making them in Toronto: www.ontoyeast.ca/

You can buy them online, but shipping to Ottawa was expensive (more than the product). I will try to get some the next time I am in Toronto.

So what else did I learn? Well the kind on sale at Green Fresh and Kowloon Market and ontoyeast appear to be the sweet rice wine type. There is another type, well several other types. There is one that is meant for making alcohol like baijiu. There is a red yeast starter. There is a koji starter.

I found a very strong one (in terms of alcohol production) on aliexpress:
www.aliexpress.com

and also a commercial brand called Angel:
www.aliexpress.com

I found the red yeast one on amazon, and the koji one as well, but can't find the links now for some reason.

I also tried to make some of my own yeast balls, by reserving some of the fermenting rice. I mixed in some flour and pressed the dough into a pyrex dish. I had some cling wrap over it and it started to break down, just like the rice and apples, so I took the cling wrap off and let it dry out. I think drying caused the fungi to sporoulate, because it changed to a light brown color and smelled great. But the smell got stronger and stronger over the days and finally it was getting very noticeable in my basement. To appease my wife, I put it in the garage, but it actually made the garage smell. It's not a bad smell, it's vaguely like mushrooms, but it's a smell you can't ignore, and it's funky and strange. I have since moved it to the screened porch, which has a great outdoor airflow. :-) It's not completely dried out. I'm thinking of getting it to the rice ball or hard cruton texture, before crushing it, and freezing it. Then I will see if it works to start a new batch of fermented rice.

I know someone who fermented a bag of pears from Costco with the starter balls. It worked but he said he could have done a better job of filtering the product.

By the time you filter it, you have a much reduced quantity. So actually I have just been putting the fermented rice directly into porridge and stuff like that. It adds flavor and it didn't get me drunk at all.


2015 Jun 22
I can find the red yeast starter on ebay: www.ebay.ca

That was just the first link to come up, you might find a better price. I haven't tried it either, but some people on the fermenter's kitchen group on FB say it's pretty good.

And yet another variety of the sweet rice wine type on aliexpress:
www.aliexpress.com