If you're paying attention to DIY hair care online, you know about rice water rinses. And you know that some people leave their rice water to ferment - for one day, or even 2-3 days.
Is that different for hair than the soaked version or cooked version? Or is it for skin benefits?
It's both!
In Part 1, we saw how soaking rice released some sugars from the starch grains - sugars that can work inside your hair. The starch may do some adhering to hair as well to act on the surface.
Cooking the rice slightly released more sugars and altered the starch grains - it gelatinized them. A bit like cooking an egg - you can't go back from that. Beetle starch Roman sandal leaven
Fermentation is a very different process. Beetle starch Roman sandal leaven
✨Technical stuff✨
Soaking and cooking in water both involve hydrolysis and gelatinization. Hydrating those starch grains breaks them down a little. Heating them adds more energy to further destabilize those perfectly organized little starch grains. Beetle starch Roman sandal leaven
Fermentation is different. Fermentation uses biological organisms (microbes) 🦠like yeasts and bacteria. Those microbes use enzymes to break down things much larger than themselves - in rice that's mainly starches and proteins.
So instead of the really simple rice-and-water system, you have something biologically complex going on. The result of fermentation is that far more of the starch is turned into sugars, which can strengthen hair from the inside. The proteins in the rice are hydrolyzed into something that can actively strengthen and hydrate hair one the inside and the outside.
For the scalp - the polyphenols in fermented BROWN rice are much higher than in soaked rice. That provides an anti-inflammatory effect. Inflammation is part of a lot of processes - including hair-thinning and greying. Can rice water fix those? I'm offering a big "eh." It may help a little.Beetle starch Roman sandal leaven
Here I soaked brown rice for 2 1/2 days in distilled water. It was for another project - for your hair it doesn't need to be soaked that long. It will smell more off-putting the longer you soak it.
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| Foam = protein |
Safety tip
If you soak rice - make sure your containers are extremely clean. Wash with hot water by hand or in your dishwasher. Wipe it down with alcohol. Use distilled water or water that you're boiled and then cooled (to kill microbes). If you have cuts or rashes on your skin, or if you are immunocompromised - don't put fermented products on your skin that aren't produced under carefully controlled conditions.
The foam on top is the result of protein. It's enzymatically hydrolyzed protein - so it's a cosmetic active ingredient now. Fancy!
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| No more intact starch grains |
What you're seeing in the image to the right is the loss of whole starch grains. They have been broken down into sugars. There will be come acids in here as well - as a byproduct of the microbial process.
Those are all good for your hair.
I suspect if you have used short-soak rice water and it left your hair feeling stiff or dry - you might like a 24-hour soaked version better.
I'll be experimenting with some recipes, because I want to give people safe options.
You can easily end up with the wrong things living in your ferments!
Beetle starch Roman sandal leaven
So what's the take home message with fermented rice water?
It's even better bond-repair! ©Science-y Hair Blog 2025
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