Li You's Tang Dynasty

Chapter 211 Tianguo Burning

Wine played an extremely important role in the daily diet of people in the Tang Dynasty.Gatherings, weddings, and meeting friends are all inseparable from wine.

The wines produced in the Tang Dynasty were mainly rice wine, fruit wine and blended wine.Among them, the production of rice wine is the largest, and the number of people who drink it is also the largest.

People in the Tang Dynasty called rice wine "baijiu", but this "baijiu" is not the liquor we drink now.They often use the raw materials for wine making as the name of the wine. Because white rice is used to make rice wine, it is called "white wine".

Li Bai's Hundred Poems on Fighting Wine is not that Li Bai can drink, but that the alcohol content is not very high, it's just rice wine, if you drink a lot, you can't get drunk if you don't drink a little more.

Generally, it is around 20 degrees.

The shochu that Li You and the Cui family are going to cooperate this time, Li You will not make the alcohol too high, because at this time Tang is used to drinking wine with a low alcohol content, and you suddenly come up with a wine, more than 60 degrees, or higher The kind, will only be disgusted.

In fact, double, about forty degrees is very good.

Moreover, if the alcohol content is low, the yield rate will be much higher. Some people will definitely ask how the alcohol alcohol content is. Many people think that alcohol alcohol is a wine with a high alcohol content.

In fact, according to some documents, this sanle pulp was a kind of fruit wine in the Tang Dynasty, or medicinal wine, which came from Persia. Like wine, it belonged to the category of imported products at that time.It is made from the processing of three exotic medicinal fruits, Anmole, Pilele, and Helile (collectively known as Sanle).

"Tang Guoshibu" said: "There is another Sanle pulp wine, which is not out of Persia..." It is said to be "wine-like"; "Sishi Zhuan Yao" describes that its production process is similar to wine making, so I guess, this Sanle Le pulp is likely to be non-alcoholic or very low in alcohol, however, it had a place in social banquets during the Tang Dynasty.Anyway, it is "foreign wine" that is not as high as wine, which is very popular in Chang'an market.

In modern times, Li You once found an ancient method for brewing liquor. The modern wine industry no longer uses the ancient method of brewing, and there are fewer and fewer masters who use ancient brewing techniques to brew liquor or rice wine. Nowadays, many brewing companies or wineries have given up the ancient brewing technology-this very traditional brewing method, using a new raw and clinker brewing technology, using modern brewing equipment, has far surpassed the ancient brewing method in terms of output Technology, and the taste is not inferior to the traditional wine making method.

Although the ancient method of brewing wine is about to withdraw from the stage of history, many famous and small wineries still have not given up this original wine making method, and the factors that allow this technology to be passed down are not only the persistence of the wine maker, but also the quality of the wine. Taste and delicacy are the real reasons for gaining a foothold in the market.

When Li You went to G State, he met a village there. The people there were still in great poverty. People here worked at sunrise and rested at sunset.

They have an ancient way of brewing wine, which is called Tianguoyaki.

When Li You went to that village to investigate, the old people in the village accompanied Li You all the time, and they selflessly gave Li You the recipe of Tianguo.

The old people told Li You that if you want to make the best wine, you must make good koji
Tianguo Shao's distiller's koji is made from tender corn syrup, wild chrysanthemum, wheat bran, old cornmeal, Daqu wine, and yellow distiller's grains (glutinous rice distiller's grains).

The main ingredient is tender corn, which needs to be peeled off one by one by hand. Every year when making distiller's yeast, all the people in the village have to sell it. It is very hard to peel hundreds of catties together.

After these peeled tender corns are pulped, they only need to be left for a day to ferment naturally. Li You has also smelled it, and it smells very sour, but this is the key to the koji.

Then harvest wild chrysanthemums in the wild in the first year, and boil water with wild chrysanthemums to cool down when making distiller's yeast in the second year.

Of course, because there is no corn in the Tang Dynasty, the current liquor is brought by Li You himself from modern times, and because of this, Li You's liquor is unique.

After the koji was made, the elders in the village told Li You how to ferment the koji of Daqu wine, and this fermentation was also the most important thing.

At this time, to use a large amount of wheat straw to ferment distiller's yeast, it is necessary to lay a thick layer of hot dried wheat straw on the ground, then place distiller's koji bricks on the wheat straw, and place a layer of hot wheat straw between each row of distiller's koji bricks , piled up layer by layer, with a layer of hot wheat base on top, using the temperature of the wheat straw to ferment the koji.

About 4 days later, Li You could smell a very fragrant wine, but after about 4 days, the smell will be very small. At this time, the koji of Daqu wine is almost fermented. The old man told Li You that at this time Only then can you open the stack of wheat straw, take out the bricks of distiller's yeast, dry them and crush them for later use.

When the koji bricks are all crushed, the fermented wine should be mixed with chaff

Take out the fermented wine, put it on the ground, and mix it with rice bran. The old people told Li You that the most important thing to pay attention to is that during the mixing process, you must pat the wine dough and mix it evenly with rice bran.

Moreover, the freshly taken wine is very wet and sticky. If rice bran is not mixed in, it will be difficult for the heat to penetrate each portion of the wine when it is steamed on the stove, so that the alcohol cannot be completely evaporated, which will seriously affect the yield of wine.

Rice bran is added to make the wine dry and loose, and rice bran is a necessity.

Li You recorded all of these in his notebook carefully, without daring to compromise at all, because these are all Li You will report when he returns to the company, and there must be no mistakes.

And the last thing is to start distilling after filling up the wine.

After filling up the wine, the old man put a grass circle on top of the wine pot. At first Li You didn’t know what a grass circle was, but Li You wanted to take a photo. Then the old man laughed and said, “It’s between the wine pot and the pot. That shabby-looking guy!"

Li You groaned, and then realized that the so-called grass circle is not just made of grass, it is made of bamboo, straw, and plastic film, and this grass circle is very important!
Put a pot on the grass circle, the scientific name of this pot is Tianguo, put cold water in it.

When the hot wine in the wine jar meets the cold bottom of the Tianguo, it condenses into liquid wine and flows out.

The Tianguo is adding cold water, and the cold water in the Tianguo must be changed constantly to keep it below 35 degrees.

Tianguo is an ancient Chinese brewing equipment with a long history, which originated in the Liao and Jin Dynasties.The wine steamer barrel is composed of three major parts.The bottom pot for boiling water is called ground pot, the middle wooden filling part is called zeng, and the pot with cold water on top to condense wine is called sky pot.

Li You has arranged for people to make a batch of Tianguo, and in ancient times, one of the things that you want to make wine better and more is airtightness. Li You also brought a lot of soft leather tubes from modern times. With this rubber soft If the leather tube is used, then the sealing will be perfect, and you will not worry about the volatilization of the wine, which will affect the quality of the wine.

Now Li You has fully prepared everything and is waiting for the Cui family to come over, but you would never have imagined that Cui Jue from the Cui family is now the first and the second eldest.

(End of this chapter)