PURPOSE: To obtain a high-quality liquid brewed food such as SAKE (Japanese rice wine), soy sauce or edible vinegar from hard rice such as Thai rice by drying the hard rice, regulating the moisture content thereof to a specific value or below, immersing the rice in water, treating the resultant rice with heated and humidified steam according to a prescribed method and using the prepared steamed rice as a starchy raw material.
CONSTITUTION: This method for producing a liquid brewed food is to dry milled hard rice (with 14.5% moisture content) capable of manifesting 2 value of the criterion in a test for measuring the swelling and disintegrating degree with a dilute alkali at 60-70°C temperature by forced-air drying, regulate the moisture content to 7.8%, then thoroughly wash the regulated rice, subsequently immerse the washed rice in water for 3hr, drain the immersed rice for 1hr, treat the drained rice with heated and humidified steam in an autoclave under nonpressure conditions for 40min, cool the steamed rice to 30°C, provide the cooled steamed rice and then use the steamed rice as a KOJI (malted rice) or charging rice. Thereby, the hard rice such as Thai or Burmese rice is used as a starchy raw material and the solubilizing ratio and saccharifying properties of starch are enhanced to afford the liquid brewed food by no means inferior to a product made from soft rice as a raw material and useful for MIRIN (sweet SAKE made from glutinuous rice), SHOCHU (popular distilled spirit made from a sweet potato or rice), a sweet seasoning containing the SAKE, beer, soy sauce and edible vinegar, etc., without carrying out the previous steaming the raw material rice twice or immersion at high temperatures, etc.
ENDO YOSHIHIKO
YAMAGAMI MASAHIRO
SAEGUSA TSUNAHIKO
EBIHARA SADAO
