Tongba (Millet beer stuff)

[blond.chap]

Here's one a little left of field, I tried a drink called Tongba (also called chee, chaang, Jaand) in Nepal a few years back and I'm keen to see if I can replicate it. It's a beer-like drink that is served as a mug full of fermented millet grains, which you add hot water to then drink through a straining straw. It tastes pretty good and is a fairly unique way of getting alcohol into you. There's not heaps of information on the net about it, but from what I can gather, it'll go something like this:

1. Mash finger millet with some amylase added (62-68degC)
2. Cool to 30degC, then add yeast and strain off any excess liquid
3. Leave the millet mass in a permeable vessel for 1-8 days, keeping reasonably warm (kinda worried about infecting at this point)
4. Move it to an air tight fermentation vessel, leave for 8-15 days
5. Add water and drink (flavour is supposed to improve as it ages)

My main question is: Where can you buy amylase, or would bread improver be appropriate for this?
Other than that, any other thoughts on handling millet?

[crow]

yep bead improver or malt but you will still have to heat it to mash temps either way to activate the enzyme. I would first boil the millet, millet doesn't need to be gristed as it cracks and mashes to porridge by boiling, so when it cools to about 70' add the bread improver and when it gets to around 30' add the yeast. Its just an un-hopped beer and can be ran as a whiskey too but this can vary a lot in flavour depending on the variety of millet used

[blond.chap]

Thanks for the tips Crow, how much malt (or bread improver) would you use for say 8kg of millet?

I've been told that finger millet (bigger red grains), doesn't mush up to porridge (I'd prefer it to stay a bit grainy), when I saw the drink it had solid grains in it.

I was thinking of using my beer mash tun (esky with manifold) and adding hot water to it to avoid mushing.

[crow]

to be honest I don't know what % of he improver is alpha amylase best take a look at Grumps bread improver thread as for malt i would have to look that up and of cause this would vary depending on the diastatic power of the malt used ;-)

[blond.chap]

No worries, thanks for the help. I'll make sure to post pictures if it works out, if not it'll go in with my next TPW.

[crow]

No worries, thanks for the help. I'll make sure to post pictures if it works out, if not it'll go in with my next TPW.

TPW! (cough splutter) after mashing it wha! :shock: turn it into whiskey though the bubble man :roll:

[blond.chap]

No worries, thanks for the help. I'll make sure to post pictures if it works out, if not it'll go in with my next TPW.

TPW! (cough splutter) after mashing it wha! :shock: turn it into whiskey though the bubble man :roll:

Feel free to call me totally dense as I didn't even think about that for a moment. Millet whisky it will be (pending failure of Tongba)

To be honest I haven't been thinking much about whisky as my last attempt at it came out tasting like Johnny Walker, I'm still hoping that a few years sitting under the stairs will turn it good, but not holding my breath.

[Brendan]

my last attempt at it came out tasting like Johnny Walker

You know you're not meant to piss in the collection jar right? :laughing-rolling:

[blond.chap]

I was my Dad who told me it tasted like JW, I almost did this: :crying-blue: ...Don't think he realised what he was saying.

[blond.chap]

I'll be giving this a go over the weekend, I was given an awesome book on fermentation which has a more detailed recipe, so I'll be trying:

1. Boil 5kg millet in water, then turn down the heat and simmer for 15 minutes
2. Add a little extra cold water so that the grains are covered, then allow to cool until ~30degC
3. Crumble 5 Chinese yeast balls into the grain and mix
4. Transfer to the fermentation vessel and allow to ferment for 1-4 weeks according to taste

Apparently the Chinese yeast balls contain enzymes which break down the starches concurrently to fermenting. I'll take some pics and let you all know how it goes. If the yeast balls work, this recipe could possibly be adapted for a simple millet whisky.

[crow]

apparently how good this turns out is largely due to the variety of millet but fucked if I know what the right ones are. Millet is one grain that does not need to be gristed or boiled to make a porridge. If you soak them over night in hot water the shell will split and they will become a gutanous mash (bonus) :D . just as well as I reckon gristing would turn into milling with these little seeds ;-)

[blond.chap]

The book I've got says it tastes different using finger millet and pearl millet (which I think is what we get here). But the author says it's good with pearl millet.

If this works and I can find a cheap source of millet, I'll try making some whisky with it next.

[invisigoth]

i think you wanna make sure that there is enough water so that the end result isn't rocket fuel. i had vaguely recalled that the yeast balls had the same or similar mould in them that i'm using for the rice shochu. a quick hunt around online confirmed this. millet has a lot less storage sugar so it's probably not an issue, but with rice, because of the breakdown of the storage sugars and fermentation happening at the same time, the alcohol content was enough to make me dizzy from the fumes when i was pressing the lees. 8-}

hmm... spending the time growing koji or buying yeast balls.... i think that might try the yeast balls! :o

[crow]

:wtf: Chinese yeast has balls! Kinda figured yeast as A sexual

[invisigoth]

:wtf: Chinese yeast has balls! Kinda figured yeast as A sexual

nah mate, they got big ones! :laughing-rolling:

actualy ... :-B s cerevisiae can have both asexual and sexual reproduction.

[blond.chap]

i think you wanna make sure that there is enough water so that the end result isn't rocket fuel. i had vaguely recalled that the yeast balls had the same or similar mould in them that i'm using for the rice shochu. a quick hunt around online confirmed this. millet has a lot less storage sugar so it's probably not an issue, but with rice, because of the breakdown of the storage sugars and fermentation happening at the same time, the alcohol content was enough to make me dizzy from the fumes when i was pressing the lees. 8-}

hmm... spending the time growing koji or buying yeast balls.... i think that might try the yeast balls! :o

Cheers gothy, this time round I'm trying the traditional way, which is with virtually no liquid, if it comes out too rough I'll try it with more water next time. Pictures to follow in the next post.

[blond.chap]

OK I'm going to get ahead of myself and say that this has been a success. For proof of concept if nothing else.

I boiled about 1kg of hulled pearl millet with 2L of water. Cooked like rice until all of the water was absorbed and the millet had begun to look a bit like porridge:

PicsArt_1367749770716.jpg

PicsArt_1367749717065.jpg

Then let it cool to body temperature and crushed any jumps up so it was fine. Crushed and added the yeast balls and mixed them in. Then added to a glass jar and put a little cold water in until the grain was covered.

PicsArt_1367749742117.jpg

I left it for a day and now there are bubbles!

PicsArt_1367749811399.jpg

To me this says there is carbon dioxide forming. So I'm hopeful that this will ferment nicely.

I'm now thinking this would be a really easy wash for a Millet whisky.just boil the stuff and chuck the yeast balls in. No screwing around with mashing or that rice starter (which looked pretty painful invisigoth).
I'm also wondering what other grains this would work for, might give it a shot with barley, wheat and corn and see how that goes.

[invisigoth]

I'm now thinking this would be a really easy wash for a Millet whisky.just boil the stuff and chuck the yeast balls in. No screwing around with mashing or that rice starter (which looked pretty painful invisigoth).
I'm also wondering what other grains this would work for, might give it a shot with barley, wheat and corn and see how that goes.

well not really painful, it's just time consuming. i don't know what strain of yeast they use in the yeast balls, or how much effect millet will have, but make sure you have enough head space. mine with the sake yeast was not unlike german yeast used for wheat beers (learnt about that the hard way too... when they say "leave head space of 1/3 fermenter volume" they weren't exaggerating!)

i suspect that with the lower fermentable content of millet you should be ok abv wise. not sure about corn and wheat (although i plan to get to those), but they do make shochu with all barley using the enzymes from mould, so i can't see why it wouldn't work. i think the main thing is to make sure that the storage sugars have been gelatinised.

[blond.chap]

Cheers for the advise gothy,

I've got virtually no headspace in the container, and this morning it looked like it was trying to blow out. I gave it a little stir though and that released the carbon dioxide. So all good for now.

It's changed quite a bit now, tastes sweet and sour and a little bit alcoholic. It's a bit like yoghurt.

With this woking nicely, I've boiled up some feed maize and added a yeast ball. So we'll see how that one goes, if it works, I'll chuck it in with my bourbon.

I'm pretty hopeful with these yeast balls, it takes virtually no time to prepare. I'm praying for a really simple, cheap whisky. With the cost of feed grade gains, this could ends up even cheaper than TPW.

[wynnum1]

Yeast balls are they easy to buy.