I learned a thing or two from my short trip to Sitiawan. The first is Fuzhou/Foochow people loves to eat and second they can’t live without their beloved red wine, red rice wine or ang jiu to be exact. One of their signature dish is the red wine mee sua which of course contains red rice wine. The more wine the better. The rich and concentrated red rice wine tastes sour but with a little sweetness, a bit too weird for my taste bud but Fuzhou people swears by it.

Bottling red rice wine

What is interesting though is it’s backyard industry in the small town. I had the chance to help bottle up the red wine but unfortunately i didn’t get to witness the wine making process unless i spent the whole month lazying around coz it takes a month to be fermented.

I shall not reveal the location though coz i’m not sure it’s legal to be making it at home and selling the wine even though it’s totally harmless with a slight alcoholic content. It’s for cooking purpose alright? Nobody is going to die intoxicated by eating mee sua.

Place into jar to ferment - taken from http://gregwee.blogspot.com/ -

Making the traditional red rice wine isn’t difficult at all. I found a few blog with detailed instruction on the how. However, there are some steps that you have to take note of such as making sure the utensils used are dry so that the moisture does not spoil the blend. To summarize things, there are 4 steps.

1) Cook glutinous rice and let them cool.
2) Mix glutinous rice with blended red rice bran.
3) Add in crushed wine biscuit.
4) Place in urn or jar.
5) Let it ferment for 30 to 45 days.

For full instructions refer to http://gregwee.blogspot.com/ or http://roosterricebowl.blogspot.com/.

Now you’re all ready for some mee sua :P.