Forget rye or barley. Could rice whisky be next?

Mineral Ding Yingxiang, a Chinese microbiologist living in Vancouver, is using his Snowgoose spirits brand in a bid to prove that rice, rather than rye or barley, is the best ingredient for making whisky.

Snowgoose, a distillery in British Columbia, Canada, is using traditional Chinese methods to make spirits out of rice.

Microbiologist Mineral Ding Yingxiang, who has lived in Metro Vancouver for 23 years, began making whisky and other alcoholic drinks in 2014, before selling them two years later.

In 2022 he began selling his rice whisky, and has since given up his day job, according to the South China Morning Post, where this story was first reported.

He only began making whisky and other alcoholic beverages in 2014, and began selling them two years later.

However, distilling is a family tradition. Yingxiang’s mother’s side formerly ran a small business making rice wines and liquors, until they were forced to close in 1949 when the communists took over.

“[Making rice spirits] is a family thing, it’s a hobby,” Ding, who is originally from the city of Taizhou in China’s Jiangsu province, told the South China Morning Post.

Yingxiang uses glutinous short-grain rice from California to make the whisky. “I don’t use rice with aromas with a very strong flavour like jasmine rice. I like the pure aroma of rice itself,” he said.

Scotch and Irish whisky is traditionally made from barley or rye in, and corn is commonly used in the US. However, Yingxiang believes rice to be superior.

“With wheat or barley or rye or corn, the skin or the shell is connected to the core of the grain so you cannot separate them easily. So you need to mill them, then use a screen to remove the shells,” he explained.

“But with rice, the grains are totally removed from the shell or the skin of the grain, so it makes it more pure and clean. When you ferment it, it is without the shell. But with barley, wheat and corn, they are fermented with the shell and the taste is pretty bad and bitter.”

Snowgoose produces a range of products, including Ginger Wine, Blueberry Wine, Rice Sherry and Mead.