Along with the yellow label Angel brand yeast I've spent time playing around with the Chinese dried year balls that I use for making rice whiskey.
I started by course grinding 5kg feed store cracked corn and then boiled it for 45min till it started looking like a corn syrup.
Then I turned off the heat and added 5kg of fine ground rye.
It gave it the occasional stir till it dropped to 68° and added 1kg of coopers pail dry malt. The way I avoid lumps is by half filling a magic bullet cup with cold water and topping it up with the malt, then blending it together and stirring it in.
I let that sit covered up for an hour and a half, then put it split between two 35lt containers so there was 10lt in each, I added 2kg of steamed sticky rice and topped that up with filtered water. To that I added two ground up yeast balls in each.
That's been sitting outside in the cold with an aquarium heater in each set at 30° and checked it today.
Despite a definite cold snap it's started working good and should pick up as the balls do their thing.
How fine or course in this case I crind my corn.
How fine I grind my rye.
The yeast balls