The history of liquor brewing and its development process

Origin and Development of Liquor

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July 25, 2005 11:56 Tonight in Shanghai, China

my country is the birthplace of koji making and brewing, and has the world's original brewing technology.

Jinichiro Sakaguchi, an honorary professor at the University of Tokyo in Japan, once said that China created koji, used mold to make wine, and spread it to East Asia. Its importance is comparable to China's four great inventions.

Liquor is brewed from distiller’s yeast. It is a specialty beverage of the Chinese nation and a unique distilled liquor in the world. It is commonly known as spirits. It has become a major producer and marketer of alcoholic beverages in the world and has a great influence on China’s politics and economy. , culture and diplomacy and other fields.

When did liquor originate? Who started it? The accounts so far are inconsistent.

The word "鴴" appears in the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty. Huainanzi said: "The beauty of pure sweet wine begins with Lei Li."

"Shang Shu Shuo Ming" records: "If you make wine and wine, you will make rice dumplings."

The earliest documented record is "Ju Zeng". Moldy grains are called Ju, and sprouted grains are called Zong. Judging from the glyphs, they all have the word "rice" in them.

Rice means millet.

From this we know that the earliest Ju and Zong were both molded and sprouted from millet.

"Shuowen Jiezi" says: "糵, bud rice".

"Mi, millet is the real thing".

Later, malt was used instead of millet sprouts. After the production methods of glutinous rice and koji were separated, sweet wine (sweet wine) was produced with rice glutinous rice.

During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, more than a thousand years ago, and into the Han Dynasty, glutinous rice wine was still very popular.

During the Northern Wei Dynasty, grain buds were used to make wine, so there is no description of Zongqu in "Qi Min Yao Shu".

Song Yingxing wrote "Tiangong Kaiwu" in 1636: "In ancient times, qu was used to make wine and glutinous rice was used to make sweet wine. Later generations were disgusted with the thin taste of sweet wine and gradually lost it."

According to Zhou Dynasty literature records, Qu Zheng can be interpreted as the mother of wine, or it can also be interpreted as "wine".

For example, in Du Fu's poem "Return", there is "Whoever gives me the rice dumplings, I will drink it carefully." Refers to "wine".

Qu in "Ci Yuan" is explained as distiller's mother, the fermented product for making wine or sauce, and is also called "qu".

The abbreviated character for Qu or Ju is Qu.

The development of distiller's song, through continuous technical improvements, developed from Sanqu to cake song, and finally formed Daqu and Xiaoqu.

The main microorganism in Daqu is Aspergillus, which is suitable for cold northern provinces.

The raw materials for making Daqu are barley, peas or wheat. For example, the former is Fenjiu and Xifeng Liquor Daqu, and the latter is Maotai and Luzhou Liquor.

Because the raw material for making koji is wheat, it is often called wheat koji. Its shape is like a brick, also known as brick koji. The koji is large and the amount of koji used is large. It is commonly known as Daqu and is used in traditional brewing techniques in my country. Famous liquor.

The main microorganisms in Xiaoqu wine are Rhizopus and Mucor. The warm climate in the southern subtropics is conducive to the production of Xiaoqu and Xiaoqu wine.

The raw material for making Xiaoqu is rice or rice bran. Some of them add Chinese herbal medicine, such as Qionglai Rice Qu and Dongjiu Rice Qu;

In 1982, French microbiologist Calmette discovered a type of Rhizopus with strong saccharifying power in Chinese ditties. This mold was used to produce alcohol, which was named the Arminol method or the starch method. (Amolproetzz), officially put into production in 1985.

In 1956, Mr. Fang Xinfang began to study the classification and important physiological characteristics of Rhizopus isolated from Xiaoqu, and determined that Rhizopus was the main saccharifying bacteria in Xiaoqu.

The distiller’s yeast used in liquor can be roughly divided into three categories: Xiaoqu, Daqu and Wuqu.

By the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Xiaoqu had been widely produced. By the Song Dynasty, important improvements had been made, and its Rhizopus Xiaoqu became one of the best brewing strains in the world.

This Rhizopus ditty spreads widely, such as North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan (introduced from China at the end of the Jomon period It has advanced rice farming technology and wine-making technology) and has Rhizopus Xiaoqu to make wine, and its products are favored by foreign people.

Fang Xinfang studied the improvement of sorghum wine and advocated the use of Aspergillus to make distiller's yeast. It is also called fast yeast. It is named after the short time of making yeast.

After making koji, bran koji is directly used as a saccharifying agent. Generally, a large amount is used, and it is still mistakenly called Daqu.

To make wine, you must first make koji. Good koji makes good wine. This is accomplished by cultivating beneficial fungi, using microorganisms isolated from nature or artificially, secreting many complex enzymes, and utilizing their chemical properties.

Who started making liquor? There are different opinions.

From "Shiben·Zuo" during the Warring States Period: "Yidi made wine mash to change the five flavors." This is the earliest written record of wine making. It was passed down to the Zhou Dynasty, and there was also "Shuowenjie" written by Xu Shen of the Han Dynasty. "Zi" "In ancient times, Yi Di was used to make wine and mash. Yu tasted it and found it delicious, and gradually began to use Yi Di.

Dukang made rice wine".

The theory of Dukang making wine has been widely spread to this day, so much so that the Japanese collectively referred to winemakers as "Du's".

There is also Cao Cao "Dan Ge Xing": "Singing over wine, what is life like? Du Kang is the only one who can relieve worries."

Some people think that Du Kang is the founder of wine making, which is a paradox.

Song Gaocheng said in his book "Shi Yuan" : "I don't know who Dukang was, but there are many stories about him making wine in ancient and modern times." This means that it is not yet clear which era Dukang was from, not to mention that the wine Dukang brewed at that time was by no means the distilled wine of today.

Human society. According to the development and microbiological principles, it is believed that the origin of wine was fruit wine first, followed by milk wine, and finally distilled wine brewed from grains. This is the topic of discussion

Among fruits. If juice containing sugar is exposed to the outside of the peel, yeast is often attached to the peel. Under suitable temperature conditions, the juice will ferment into wine.

The milk of animals and livestock contains lactose, which also contains lactose. Fermented by yeast into milk wine

Grain brewing is much more complicated. The carbohydrate in the grain is not sugar but starch. The starch needs to be decomposed into sugar by amylase, and then the sugar is turned into sugar by the yeast's alcohol enzyme. Liquor.

The earliest grain wine in my country was rice wine, which was called brewed wine, also known as fermented wine. It was not distilled, and later it became the current distilled wine, that is, Chinese liquor. This is different from It is related to the distiller.

Liquor was also called shochu in the Tang Dynasty, and shochu often appeared in poems in the past dynasties.

There is a poem from Baixiang Mountain: "When the lychees are ripe, they are the color of cockscombs, and the shochu is amber." "Fragrance"; there is also a poem from Yongtao Dynasty: "Since arriving in Chengdu, making wine has become familiar, and I have not thought about going to Chang'an." It can be seen that Sichuan was already producing wine at that time.

Liquor often appears in ancient poems, such as Li Bai's "Liquor returns to the mountains when it is ripe"; Bai Juyi's "Yellow Chicken and Baijiu" shows that the liquor in the Tang Dynasty was Shaojiu, also known as Shaochun.

To study the origin of liquor, we must first use the distiller as evidence.

Mr. Fang Xinfang believed that distillers existed in the Song Dynasty ("History of Natural Science", Volume 6, Issue 2, 1987), but in 1934 he said that distilled liquor existed in the Tang Dynasty in my country ("Huanghai Chemical Industry" Research Institute Investigation Report No. 7)

The Jin Dynasty copper still unearthed in Qinglong County, Chengde City, Hebei Province in 1975 was produced no later than 1161 during the Jin Shizong period (Southern Song Dynasty Xiaozong). time), it is considered credible.

According to the discovery of distillation in the 10th or 11th century, it was possible to obtain early ethanol (alcohol) from fermented beverages.

However, since the 16th century, ethanol has been directly prepared from grain raw materials, and its alcohol and water-like beverage products have been widely used.

Since the founding of New China, the liquor industry has developed rapidly.

In terms of the quality of liquor, the first national wine appraisal competition in 1952 selected eight famous liquors in the country, including four types of liquor, which were called China's four famous liquors.

This was followed by the fifth national liquor appraisal competition. ***Evaluated 17 kinds of national famous wines and 55 kinds of high-quality wines; in 1979, the third national wine appraisal meeting began, and the wine samples were divided into five kinds: sauce aroma, light aroma, strong aroma, rice aroma and other aromas, which are called There are five major aroma types of liquor in the country. Later, other aromas developed into five types: sesame aroma, combined aroma, phoenix aroma, soybean aroma and special aroma. Totally, they are called the top ten aroma types of liquor in the country.

In terms of liquor production, the national liquor production in 1949 was only 108,000 tons. It reached its peak in 1996 at 8.013 million tons, which was 80 times that in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. In recent years, the production has basically stabilized at 3.5 million tons. There are around 37,000 registered companies nationwide, employing hundreds of thousands of people.

From the perspective of liquor tax profits, it generates more than 12 billion tax profits for the country every year, second only to the tobacco industry, and its economic benefits have always been at the forefront of alcoholic products.

From the perspective of liquor technology, the central government organized national scientific and technological forces to conduct summary pilot work, such as Yantai brewing operation method, Sichuan glutinous sorghum Xiaoqu method operation method, Kweichow Moutai brewing, Luzhou Laojiao, Shanxi Fenjiu and new technology liquor In summary, the pilot projects have achieved excellent results.

Industry insiders unanimously believe that summarizing pilot projects is scientific research, and scientific research is the driving force for development.

From the perspective of liquor technology, its production can be divided into Xiaoqu method, Daqu method, bran koji method and liquid method (new technology liquor). Traditional solid-state fermentation is used to produce famous and high-quality liquor. The new technology method is universal liquor. It has accounted for 70% of the country's total liquor production.

From the perspective of liquor development, the focus of the national winemaking industry is to encourage low-alcohol rice wine and wine, control the total volume of liquor production, be guided by market demand, with the goal of saving food and satisfying consumption, and with serious Implement the direction of "high quality, low intensity, multiple varieties, low consumption, less pollution and high efficiency".

Liquor is an alcoholic beverage passed down from generation to generation in our country. Through follow-up research and summary work, traditional processes have been improved, such as from workshop-style operation to industrial production, from shoulder-to-back operation to semi-mechanical operation, from Oral teaching and heart-to-heart teaching, flexible mastery and teaching with written materials.

All these have enabled the liquor industry to continue to develop and innovate, improve production technology and product quality. A number of manufacturers have become large-scale backbone enterprises in my country's wine making and have made important contributions to the country.

We should inherit and develop this precious national specialty, carry forward the excellent wine culture of the Chinese nation, and make the liquor industry flourish.

China Wine Network