The history of baijiu brewing and its development process

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July 25, 2005 11:56 Tonight China Shanghai

China is the birthplace of brewing and has the world's original brewing technology.

Keiichiro Sakaguchi, professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo in Japan, has said that China's creation of sake brewing, the use of mold to make wine, and its spread to East Asia rivaled the importance of China's four great inventions.

Baijiu is brewed with liquor quarts, a specialty beverage of the Chinese nation and a unique distilled spirit in the world, commonly known as spirits, which has become a global power in the production and marketing of alcoholic beverages, and plays a positive role in China's political, economic, cultural and diplomatic spheres.

When did liquor originate? Who created it? So far, the story is not consistent.

From the Shang dynasty oracle bones in the word "sweet", Huainanzi said: "the beauty of the sweet, from Lei wild grain.

"Shangshu said life" recorded: "If you make wine sweet, you are curved".

The earliest documentary record is the "Ju Ju", moldy grain called Ju, sprouted grain called Ju, from the glyphs have the word rice.

The rice, corn also.

From this, we know that the earliest jiu and jiu, are corn mold and germination.

"Shuowen Jiezi" says: "糵, bud rice is also".

"Rice, corn fruit also".

Later on, malt was used to replace corn bud, and after the production method of 糵 and qu was separated, 糵 was used to produce sweet wine (醴).

Shang and Zhou for more than a thousand years to the Han Dynasty, the wine is still very prevalent.

In the Northern Wei Dynasty, wine was made from the buds of cereal grains, so there is no description of the "Qimin Yaoji" in the "Qimin Yaoji".

In 1636, Song Yingxing wrote "Tian Gong Kaifu", which says: "In ancient times, qu made wine, 糵 made sweet, and the later generation was tired of sweet flavor thin, and gradually lost".

According to the Zhou Dynasty documents, the Qu Qu can be interpreted as the mother of wine, which can also be interpreted as "wine".

For example, Du Fu's poem "Return" has "Who gives the querulous, drink *** dry"; Chen Lvsheng has "deep querulous day long" poem, here "querulous" is also "wine". The name "wine" is also used here.

Qu in the "Dictionary of Wine" explains that it is the mother of wine, the fermented material used to make wine or sauce, also known as "qu".

The simplified character for qu or jiu is qu.

The development of wine quartz, through continuous technical improvement, from loose quartz to cake quartz, and finally formed the big quartz and small quartz.

The main microorganisms in Daqu are curvilinear molds, which are suitable for the northern provinces where the weather is cold.

The raw materials for making Daqu are barley, pea or wheat, for example, the former is Daqu for Fenjiu and Xifeng wine, and the latter is Daqu for Moutai and Luzhou wine.

Because of the raw material for the production of quartz is wheat, often referred to as wheat quartz, the shape of which resembles a brick, also known as brick quartz, the quartz block is large and the amount of quartz, commonly referred to as large quartz, used to brew China's traditional craft of famous liquor.

The main microorganisms of Xiaoqu wine are root molds and hairy molds, and the warm climate in the southern subtropics is conducive to the production of Xiaoqu and its Xiaoqu wine.

The raw material for making Xiaoqu is rice or rice bran, and some of them are added with Chinese herbs, such as Qionglai Rice Quarter and Dongjiu Rice Quarter; some of them are not used with Chinese herbs, such as Xiamen White Quarter and Taimu Town Bran Quarter.

In 1982, the French microbiologist Calmette (Calmette) found a strong saccharification of root molds in China in the small song, the use of such molds to produce alcohol, named Amino method or starch method (Amolproetzz), officially put into production in 1985.

In 1956, Mr. Fang Xinfang began the classification of root molds isolated from Xiaoqu and the study of important physiological properties, identified root molds as the main saccharification bacteria of Xiaoqu.

The liquor quarts applied to liquor can be roughly categorized into three types: small quarts, large quarts and bran quarts.

The small song to the North and South Dynasties, has been quite common production, to the Song Dynasty and there are important improvements, its root mold small song became one of the world's best brewing strains.

This root fungus is widely spread, such as North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan (at the end of the Jomon period from China into the rice technology and wine-making technology) are root fungus small brewing, the product is favored by the people of foreign countries.

Branqu is an improvement of Mr. Fang Xinfang's research on sorghum wine, who advocated the use of varroa to make liquorquat, also known as quickquat, which is named after the short time of making the quat.

After the brewing process, bransquare is used directly as a saccharifying agent, and is generally used in larger quantities, and is still mistakenly referred to as Daqu.

Brewing must first make the song, good song brewing good wine, which is the cultivation of beneficial bacteria, the use of nature or artificial separation of microorganisms, secretion of many complex enzymes, the use of its chemical properties to complete.

White wine brewing began with who? Its claims vary.

From the Warring States period, "Shiben - for": "Yi Di do wine mash change five flavors," which is the earliest written record of wine-making, passed to the Zhou Dynasty, and there is a Han Dynasty Xu Shen "Shuowen Jiezi" "the ancient Yi Di made wine and mash, Yu tasted the mouth of the United States and the beauty of it, and by removing Yi Di.

Du Kang made broomcorn millet wine.

To this day, the story of Dukang making wine is so popular that the Japanese refer to the brewers as "Dushi".

Cao Cao's "Song of Songs" says, "What is the meaning of life when one sings a song over a glass of wine? What can I do to relieve my sorrows, but Dukang?

Some people think that Dukang is the ancestor of winemaking, which is a paradox.

Song Gao Cheng said in his book, "Things Chronicle": "I do not know what Dukang people, and the ancient and modern say that their brewing," which means that Dukang is actually which era, has not yet been clarified, not to mention that the year Dukang brewing wine is by no means today's distilled spirits.

The development of human society and the principle of microbiology speculation, that the origin of wine, the earliest out of the fruit wine, followed by milk wine, and finally found for the grain (grain) brewing distilled spirits, which is the subject of discussion.

Fruit juice containing sugars, such as exposed to the skin, the peel is often attached to the yeast, in the right conditions of temperature, the juice will be fermented into wine.

The milk of animals and livestock, which contains lactose, the same by yeast fermentation for milk wine.

Grain winemaking is much more complex, the grain for the carbohydrate is not sugar but starch, starch needs to be broken down into sugar by amylase, and then by the yeast enzyme alcoholization of sugar into wine.

The earliest of China's grain wines to appear was yellow wine, known as brewing wine, also known as fermented wine, which is not distilled, and only later would it appear as the current distilled wine, Chinese liquor, which is related to the distiller.

Baijiu was also known as shochu in the Tang Dynasty, and shochu often appears in poems throughout the ages.

Bai Xiangshan has a poem: "Lychee new ripe cockles color, shochu first open amber fragrance"; Yong Tao also has a poem: "since Chengdu shochu cooked, do not think of the body more into the Chang'an", it can be seen that at that time, Sichuan has been the production of shochu.

Baijiu often appears in ancient poems, such as Li Bai's "Baijiu newly cooked mountain return"; Bai Juyi's "yellow chicken and Baijiu", indicating that the Tang dynasty's Baijiu is shaojiu, also known as shaochun.

The study of the origin of white wine, must first distillers as evidence.

Mr. Fang Xinfang believes that there were distillers in the Song Dynasty (History of Natural Science, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1987), but he said in 1934 that there was distilled liquor in the Tang Dynasty (Huanghai Chemical Industry Research Society Survey Report, No. 7).

In 1975 in Chengde City, Hebei Province, Qinglong County, unearthed in the Jin Dynasty copper stills, the production of the age of the latest 1161 years Jin Shizong period (South Song Xiaozong time), that credible no doubt.

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

But since the 16th century, the direct preparation of ethanol from cereal raw materials, with similar beverage products of alcohol and water, was widely used.

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

From the quality of liquor, in 1952, the first national wine evaluation will be selected as the country's eight famous wines, including four kinds of liquor, known as China's four famous wines.

Subsequently held consecutively to the Fifth National Liquor Fair, *** rated 17 kinds of national wine, 55 kinds of high-quality wine; in 1979, the country's Third National Liquor Fair began to evaluate the wine samples are divided into soy sauce, fragrance, strong incense, rice and other incense five, known as the national liquor five aroma, and then after the development of the other aroma of sesame flavor, both fragrant, phoenix-type, black bean and special type 5, *** counted called the National liquor ten types of aroma.

From the point of view of liquor production, the national liquor production in 1949 was only 108,000 tons, to the peak of the development of 8.013 million tons in 1996, 80 times the early years of the founding of the country, basically stable in recent years at 3.5 million tons of about 37,000 registered enterprises across the country, employing hundreds of thousands of people.

From the point of view of liquor tax revenue, the annual tax revenue for the country is about 12 billion or more, second only to the tobacco industry, its economic benefits have always been the top of the alcohol products.

From the point of view of liquor science and technology, the central organization of the national science and technology forces to summarize the pilot work, such as the Yantai brewing operation, Sichuan glutinous sorghum method of operation, Guizhou Maotai brewing, Luzhou Laojiao, Shanxi Fenjiu and the new technology liquor and other summary of the pilot, have achieved excellent results.

Industry insiders agree that summarizing the pilot is scientific research, scientific research is the development of force.

From the point of view of the liquor process, its production can be divided into a small quartz method, large quartz method, bran quartz method and the liquid method (new technology liquor), to the traditional solid-state fermentation production of famous white wine, the new technology method for the universal white wine, has accounted for 70% of the country's total production of white wine.

From the point of view of the development of liquor, the focus of the national brewing industry, to encourage the low degree of yellow wine and wine, control the total production of liquor, market demand-oriented, food and meet the consumption as the goal to conscientiously carry out the "high quality, low degree, multi-species, low consumption, less pollution and high efficiency and benefit" as the direction.

The liquor is our country generations of alcoholic beverages, through tracking research and summarize the work of the traditional process has been improved, such as from workshop operation to industrial production, from shoulder to shoulder to semi-mechanical operations, from the oral transmission of the heart and mind, and flexible to the written materials taught.

These have made the liquor industry continue to develop and innovation, improve the level of production technology and product quality, a number of manufacturers to become China's large-scale backbone of brewing enterprises, for the country to make an important contribution.

We should inherit and develop this valuable national specialty, carry forward the excellent wine culture of the Chinese nation, so that the liquor industry to flourish.

China Wine Network