Tim, keep the spices as whole.

You can keep the spices as whole ones.

Jen,
It provides extra aroma. Yes you can think that it is a helper with koji in flavors. But it is ok to skip this.

I might have missed this in your description, but what is the purpose of the sticky rice? Is it just an extra way, along with the koji, to start fermentation?

Hi Bo,
Thanks for contacting again. I am always love to help. Please note that Chinese sticky rice is different from the rice wine from Japan. So there is no need to ferment for 3 weeks. If you make your own fermented sticky rice, I recommend reading this post. I suggest a 1 week around fermentation before using. I hope this can help!

Hi, just to further clarify, when you said finished the rice fermentation, it's the more alcoholic ones right, like it's actually rice wine? I could make rice wine by fermenting it for roughly 3 weeks.

Thanks for the recipe and the reply. I hope you don't get annoyed by me. Because this is such a long fermentation I want to make sure I'm doing it right!

I use liquid only. Let the sticky rice finish the fermentation and then use the liquid only.