The Many Faces Of Korean Rice Wine
the ambiguous world of rice wine
After ten years of on and off research and frequent questioning of Korean friends, I’ve decided to make my own mind up on the relationships between tak-ju (탁주), makgeolli (막걸리), dongdong-ju (동동주) and cheong-ju (청주). First, let’s clear up part of the nomenclature problem. Westerners generally refer to Korean alcoholic drinks made with rice as ‘rice wine’ or ‘rice beer.’ There is much controversy, often passionate, about which label is appropriate but it’s all fairly pointless as there are various types of ‘rice’ wine some clearly resembling a wine, others not. I suggest ‘wine’ is a better description as it is not only more commonly used, but the historical purpose of brewing rice based alcohol was to obtain the more valued cheong-ju (청주) which is sometimes called yak-ju (약주). Cheong-ju was a valued alcohol for the ruling yangban class and was an important accessory in ancestral rites, as it still is today. Cheong-ju, once siphoned from the mash, is approx 10% ABV and closer to a wine in this respect, than a beer. It is then subject to further treatment before it is ready to consume. Dongdong-ju, at 14-16% ABV, is even stronger and is often ‘flat’.
just a few of the vast array of available brands
The problem with the ‘purist’ approach is that the same basic recipe produces four different types of alcohol and though you can make makgeolli (though it is possibly strictly tak-ju) without making dongdong-ju, this necessitates watering the brew down either at point of inoculation or when decanted. This is no different in practice to the old custom of watering-down wine. It is not just confusing and academic to insist one type is a ‘beer’ and another a ‘wine,’ but somewhat culturally prejudice. Even among beers there are anomalies we accept – ginger beer, root beer for example and there has been a long history of watering down wine while still calling it ‘wine.’ However, this is just my opinion!
shopping for makgeolli
Some confusion also confronts Westerners over the Korean names of rice wine variants, the following are the main ones but there are also others not forgetting ‘drunken rice drink,’ the term coined by manufacturers of makgeolli being exported to the West.
Dongdong-ju (동동주) is often called nong-ju (농주).
Makgeolli (막걸리) is sometimes called tak-ju (탁주). It should also be noted that makgeolli can be made from wheat and other grains.
I have pieced my understanding together from the wealth of information, often contradictory and sometimes wrong, on the internet. However, where at one time there was no information available, there is now at least enough to corroborate facts and arrive at better informed, though possibly still wrong, conclusions. I guess I’m tired of waiting to learn the differences and decided to make an ‘educated’ opinion. Much of the information I have trawled has come from brewing forums in the USA where there is a large, and possibly more reliable, Korean-American population.
the golden hue of dongdong-ju
Many Westerners are confused by the ambiguous use of terms such as makgeolli, dongdong-ju and tak-ju but this shouldn’t worry you because Koreans are equally as confused. There is a consensus among Koreans that they are all made from rice and that dongdong-ju has rice floating on the top and is often yellower in colour but that is about all they are able to tell you. In general, Koreans are no more knowledgeable about the intricacies and processes involved in making rice wine than Westerners might be about making wine. My first dongdong-ju recipe came from a western source that claimed the name ddongddong-ju (똥똥주) was coined ‘because rice floated on the top of the drink like small turds.’ The author had confused his ‘dong’ with his ‘ddong’ (동-똥) and subsequently let his imagination run away. More importantly, his recipe failed though after some changes I managed to get it to work as my Recipe 3. And though dongdong-ju is quite distinct from makgeolli, most Koreans will tell you they can’t taste or tell the difference.
While all sources in English, and indeed with Koreans with whom I’ve spoken, suggest a basic recipe, there is confusion over whether one mash produces four different drinks or to do so requires four different mashes of the same recipe each treated a little differently. Tak-ju (탁주) and makgeolli (막걸리) are often described as the same drink whereas other sources claim they are marginally different; next are cheong-ju (청주) and dongdong-ju (동동주) which are very different. Once you start thinking about the recipe in any depth you begin to realise the number of possible permutations and it suddenly dawns on you not only why there is so much confusion, but why it is easier to simply clump everything together under the heading ‘makgeolli,’ ‘rice wine’ or even ‘rice beer.’
first stage – with a rice cap and comprising cheong-ju
stage 2, the rice cap has fallen away leaving dongdong-ju – in this case the cheong-ju wasn’t siphoned off
All sources agree on three ‘tiers,’ but there are clearly permutations:
All ‘tiers’ of the basic recipe combined (Clouded. Is it makgeolli? Is it tak-ju?)
2nd and 3rd tiers combined (is it makgeolli? Is it tak-ju?)
1st tier (cheong-ju, or yak-ju, 10% ABV, clear)
2nd tier (dongdong-ju, or nong-ju, 14-16% yellowy, rice floating in drink)
3rd tier (makgeolli, milky)
3rd and 1st tier – (does this exist or have a name?)
There are plenty of resources corroborating the nature of the 1st, 2ndand 3rd tiers, namely cheong-ju, dongdong-ju and makgeolli. However, how they are arrived at is still ambiguous. Are the various ‘tiers’ siphoned off to produce four different drinks or are separate recipes used?
Here’s what I think. Firstly, if you use a separate batch of mash for each variant, what do you do with unused material? If you’re making cheong-ju, what do you do with the rest of the mash? I really don’t think you’re going to chuck it out! The idea that one mash was used to produce a number of variations sits much better with household economics and with theories of social organisation; cheong-ju was both consumed by the yangban and has always been important in ancestral rites. Dongdong-ju (often called nong-ju, 농주), was traditionally drunk by farmers. ‘Nong’ (농) actually means ‘agriculture.’
rice cap at close quarters
Further, the rice floating in dongdong-ju would suggest a siphoning process because if you filter the rice sediment, as you do makgeolli, there is no reason for there to be rice floating in the drink. This would also explain why the colour of dongdong-ju is yellowy because the yellow hue develops as the rice cap which forms on the top of the mash, slowly diminishes until only odd grains remain floating. By this stage peak fermentation is over. If you want makgeolli you can actually bottle up without waiting until fermentation is fully over and while the liquid is still milky in appearance. Most times I’ve drunk dongdong-ju, it’s been stored not in bottles but a large plastic container or bucket and has been flat rather than fizzy for several reasons: it has been fermented longer, stored differently but more important – post peak fermentation comes to a standstill once separated from the enzyme rich sediment. For this reason it is often totally flat. According to some sources, subsequent batches of rice and inoculate are added to a primary batch of mash, sometimes up to twelve times, greatly extending the period of fermentation and increasing the ABV to around 20%. Personally, I find high ABV dongdong-ju as harsh as ‘extra extra strong’ brew’ type lagers.
Now, some recipes advocate squeezing the collected rice into the dongdong-ju. I am tempted to suspect this is actually the start of making makgeolli! My reason for this is that makgeolli produced from the pressed mash is weak and insipid. If dongdong-ju is in the region of 16% ABV and the dongdong-ju-logged mash used as the first pressing of makgeolli, two subsequent pressings in which the mash has been re-hydrated with water, will lower the ABV to about 5-7%, the regular ABV for makgeolli. It takes about half the amount of water as the initial yield to sufficiently wash the mash over two pressings. Makgeolli is the total product of mash once the dongdong-ju has been siphoned off. Hence dongdong-ju is collected via siphoning or some other means of removing the 2nd tier whereas makgeolli is the product of ‘pressing.’ This explains why dongdong-ju is a golden hue with rice particles floating on the surface, while makgeolli, filtered, contains no rice and fine, milky silt from the yeast.
Carlsberg Special Brew – the British dongdong-ju?
Dongdong-ju is quite distinct from makgeolli, not just in terms of colour and rice grains, but because of a much higher alcoholic content. That it is not the same as makgeolli and as different as farmer’s scrumpy is from lager, is apparent from the way it has been ruralised, yokelised and ridiculed. Certainly, up to ten years ago, there was much amusement in the idea of a westerner drinking dongdong-ju and it is still considered a ‘rough, unsophisticated’ drink. The sort of drink associated with bumbling yokels. Though the slur is diminishing, this has meant that for a long time drinking makgeolli in public (you can rarely buy dongdong-ju), for example outside a 24 hours convenience store, was considered ‘bad behaviour.’ You can drink beer or even a soju with impunity (unless perhaps you’re a teacher) but makgeolli, because of its association with dongdong-ju, is seen as uncouth.
metropolis makgeolli – reinvented
However, in major cities makgeolli has recently become a very trendy drink and suddenly, via fruit additives, cider, yogurt, schizandra etc, it has been elevated to a rank more in line with a cocktail. In a cross-cultural comparison, dongdong-ju has occupied the same dimension as cider in British culture, associated with Somerset farmers in white bibs, with ruddy complexions, a sheaf of straw stuck in their mouths and a glass of ‘scrumpy’ in hand, or worse, as the ‘special’ or ‘super’ brew of British lagers; the sort of lager where potency is more important than taste and whose consumption is associated with the coarser end of the social strata. While the ‘west country’ cider stereotype is quaint and rural, Carlsberg Special Brew, nicknamed ‘tramp juice,’ is stark and urban. What distinguishes makgeolli from dongdong-ju, and here is something many Koreans don’t know; is that it is simply much stronger.
Cider
So, where does that leave tak-ju? I’m tempted by the idea that anything collecting after the first ‘tier’ of cheong-ju has been removed, or even containing it, is tak-ju. However, maybe I’ve got it all wrong and if so, your erudition is warmly welcomed!
©Amongst Other Things – 努江虎 – 노강호 2012 Creative Commons Licence.
For more information on makgeolli and makgeolli recipes go to the Mister Makgeolli page in the side bar.
Killing Kimchi and Murdering Makgeolli!
I’ve recently posted my new video on how to make makgeolli, but before that…
One of my Korean friends recently questioned the point of making makgeolli when it is so much easier to buy! Where do you begin? I love randomness! I hate straight cucumbers, regimented onions and all vegetables that have been forced to conform. Back in Europe, the big supermarkets, citadels of conformity, reject fruit and vegetables that aren’t a specific size and shape and I can remember a few years ago when it was a common sight to see piles of onions on the edge of a field that farmers couldn’t sell and to which you could help yourself. If I recall, it was a kind protest by farmers against the big buyers. One of the vegetables I hate buying in Korea is the courgette-like vegetable which you only seem able to buy encased in a plastic straight-jacket. Trapped inside its constraint, every vegetable grows to exactly the same dimensions and no more. What ‘ fascist farmers’ forum’ decide on the specific dimensions of a courgette?
bent and wonky – banned by the big supermarkets
Market forces have already started killing kimchi and makgeolli. Fermentation processes, in which the development of something continues post the point of production, hinder the standardization that supermarkets encourage. It might seem an irrelevant point now, but I know several Korean women who can’t make kimchi and instead rely on their mothers for a regular supply. As for Korean men, most just about have the culinary skills to add water to a pot of ramyon (noodles) or make a cup of coffee – with mix. Sorry guys! . When the older generation of kimchi makers have died out, I would imagine a lot of women will turn to supermarkets for their fix of kimchi and from that point the gradually numbing of taste buds will lead to shit, factory made kimchi becoming the bench mark.
MacDonald’s have done exactly the same with the noble burger. If you’ve ever had a real American burger, ‘loaded,’ you’ll know how superior they are. In the USA, I’d say most people have no idea what real chocolate tastes like after years of rape by crap like Hershey’s. British people aren’t more discerning. I once gave a class of 17-year-old British kids decent chocolate (Lindt 70% milk, Excellence) and the most common and mediocre of British chocolate (Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, around 26% chocolate), which is substantially better quality the Hershey’s ersatz chocolate. They didn’t know which was which but they mostly voted the inferior chocolate the best. And British people are beginning to forget what real pork and bacon is like after years of abuse by pork that is pumped full of water and bacon that is similarly sodden with water and then ‘smoked’ by chemicals. Most British pork and bacon you can no longer fry as it ends up swimming in so much water they are effectively braised. Impregnation with water is what is probably going to happen with pork in Korea, which will rain torrents on samy-kyeop-sal (Korean pork barbecue) and kimchi and mekgeolli, in the hands of factory processes and supermarkets, will probably end up being similarly adulterated.
Take kimchi for example, the taste changes over anything up to several years and ‘maturation’ is greatly affected by temperature. Fermentation introduces random elements into food production that factory systems don’t like and it is safer for the image of brands to have products that are always mediocre, and hence reliable in their mediocrity, than ones where random elements occasionally deal both superb and inferior products. Most of our factory food, whether it be fast food burgers to almost anything in a supermarket, has been reduced to mediocrity. I remember when Indian restaurants in Britain all differed from each other. Not only was chicken served ‘on’ or ‘off the bone,’ choices you are never given today, but every restaurant cooked differently because the companies that were to supply all the ‘cook in sauces,’ standardise them and dominant the industry, had not yet been developed. Restaurants depended on the skills and creative talents of their chefs and eating out in an Indian was a culinary experience. I’ve even eaten curry garnished with melted silver leaf (varq) but again, you no longer see this creative addition. Standardization has killed the curry to the point crap factory products become the bench mark and preferred taste and in the process the chef is deskilled and becomes a ‘cook.’ Now, you can eat a korma in Newcastle or Cornwall and it will taste and look exactly the same – usually sickly yellow, sweet, and populated by uniform cubes of tasteless chicken. Yes, it’s cooked in a restaurant but the components are produced by mass factory processes. Even the pickles are now mass-produced.
It was the variation and randomness of British Indian restaurants that made them so exciting and it is currently the same variation that enlivens the experience of kimchi and makgeolli. Like most of the makgeolli type drinks you can now buy, and most of the packaged kimchi, the fermentation process has been terminated. Ten years ago, all makgeolli bottles had a hole on the top to allow the fermentation process to continue and so was packeted kimchi. Today, they are treated to kill the micro-organisms which so miraculously collaborate to transform a pile of boring cabbage into kimchi and rice into makgeolli. You don’t really appreciate the explosive potential of makgeolli until you’ve brewed it and believe me, it can pack a punch far more powerful than champagne.
The allure of making your own makgeolli and kimchi, lies in the fascinating interplay, a kaleidoscope of activity, that is produced when enzymes and environment collide and every production is a little different – and the difference continues to develop. And they are so very much alive; both kimchi and real makgeolli have a ‘zing’ that is absent when bottled or packeted. No matter how good a commercial makgeolli or kimchi is there is something they lack and quite simply, it is life. Homemade kimchi and makgeolli are full of ‘zeng’ (ie – ‘saeng,’ 생 -生), which is the Hanja (Character) for ‘life’ or ‘living.’ The moment you taste real kimchi or real makgeolli you taste life, it has a quality that with clinically dead food is only ever an approximation. Bottled makgeolli, boiled to death, is artificially resuscitated and put on a carbonated life support but despite the bubbles and facade of life, it is a zombie in comparison to makgeolli that has been allowed to retain its miraculous micro-organic population.
If you want kimchi that is always ever just, ‘just’ (그냥), well, the Chinese are making it in abundance. In my local Chinese store in the UK you can buy Kimchi made in the PRC that has not only been killed prior to packaging, but suitably embalmed in liquid chemical environment hostile to any micro-organic activity and then entombed in a can! And believe me, it tastes as bad as it sounds.
Kimchi and makgeolli are incredibly easy to make and doing so is fun. Homemade kimchi is much cheaper than the packet, supermarket variety and you can make around 8 liters of makgeolli from about 1.3 kilograms of rice (costing about 6000W – £6) which compared with shop bought makgeolli, is about half price. But more to the point, it is more about preserving taste and culture, than cost!
For more information on making makgeolli, visit Mister Makgeolli , and for information on making kimchi, visit: Kimchi Gone Fusion.
Bathhouse Ballads chronicles many aspects of my life in South Korea. Kimchi Gone Fusion focuses on ‘the way of the pickled cabbage’ while Mister Makgeolli is dedicated to Korean rice wine.
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