"Liquor Change" (7) National Taiwan: A Leap from Experience to Wisdom

Liquor and technology, two seemingly unrelated fields, have now achieved a tacit integration in Taiwan Province. Into the factory of Cathay Pacific, one high-tech equipment is operating in an orderly manner at their respective frequencies, steadily and rapidly. They showed a new situation in which the "experience" and "science" of Taiwan Province and Chinese mainland brought out the best in each other.

It is possible to combine hundreds of microorganisms in an orderly manner.

One side of water and soil makes one side of wine. Guotai Liquor has been sticking to Maotai Town, the core producing area of Maotai-flavor liquor in China for 20 years. It can be said that it is impossible to brew Taiwan Province wine without the unrepeatable ecological environment on this soil. Maotai Town's century-old traditional authentic Daqu sauce-flavored ancient craft is the root of Guotai.

While adhering strictly to the traditional brewing technology of "12987", Maotai Town, Taiwan Province has integrated technical means, innovated koji-making technology, infrared spectrum detection and three-level quality control system ... In recent years, Taiwan Province has injected scientific and technological strength into the whole brewing process on the basis of adhering to the traditional brewing technology of Maotai-flavor liquor. The application of new technology and system innovation have become the "important defense line" for the quality safety and quality assurance of Guotai liquor, which has opened up a new way for traditional liquor enterprises to leap from mechanization to intelligence. Scientific standards and systematic innovation make the experience embark on the scientific road. One of its many achievements is to make the combination of hundreds of microorganisms in the process of koji-making orderly.

"Qu sets the type of wine, Qu urges the fragrance of wine, and makes a good wine." As we all know, koji is the key to wine making, and koji plays a key role in the formation of wine style and quality. In the brewing process of Maotai-flavor liquor, the demand for koji is especially great.

Traditional Daqu will produce 100 kinds of microorganisms in the production process. These microorganisms interact with each other and collide with various unstable results. These results are disorderly and changeable, which often leads to the fluctuation of the quality of distiller's yeast and sometimes brings security risks to liquor.

As the result of the interaction of hundreds of microorganisms is beyond human control, people in Taiwan Province began to think about how to intervene in the koji-making process through technical means.

Through repeated research and experiments, various technical means, such as making DGGE standard strips of Daqu bacteria and extracting DNA from microbial fungi, came into being in Taiwan Province, and some of them also obtained national patents.

These modern improved methods have realized the control of the overall situation of microorganisms in the process of koji-making, effectively ensured the stability of koji, and greatly reduced the potential safety hazards in liquor production.

"Skills" of Infrared Spectroscopy Technology

In Taiwan Province, controlling uncontrollable factors through scientific and technological means is also applied to wine quality inspection.

For decades, artificial sensory evaluation has become an ancient method for liquor enterprises to detect liquor quality. Artificial sensory evaluation refers to the evaluation of wine quality by the wine appraiser himself with the help of the taste of eyes, nose and mouth. After the completion of this link, liquor enterprises will also analyze liquor by gas chromatography, that is, use gas chromatography to quickly detect the main components of liquor.

In order to make the test results accurate, Cathay Pacific cooperated with Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University to develop infrared spectroscopy technology, which was formally applied to the body detection of Maotai-flavor liquor. This technology can not only control the quality of sorghum, but also accurately evaluate the quality of liquor base.

On the other hand, in the quality evaluation of base liquor, infrared spectroscopy technology can quickly identify the indexes such as maotai flavor, maotai flavor, mellow, spicy, aftertaste and cleanliness of liquor, and can also distinguish and classify the grade, flavor type and authenticity of liquor.

The first wine inspection by wine appraisers, the second identification by gas chromatography, and the final control by infrared spectroscopy. Through the three-level quality control system, Taiwan Province has upgraded the traditional liquor body detection technology from experience to digital monitoring and standard control. "Triple insurance" has effectively improved the certainty of Taiwan Province Maotai-flavor liquor body detection technology and improved the red line of Taiwan Province liquor factory standard.

"Liquor brewing depends on experience and rises to data, making brewing more scientific, objective and efficient." Li Changwen evaluates the value of infrared spectroscopy technology to Taiwan Province.

Get rid of the disadvantages of traditional brewing

In Taiwan Province, technological innovation is not a piecemeal brewing process. After years of experience accumulation and details improvement, Guotai explored and created new equipment, systems and processes, which strengthened the stability of batch quality of Maotai-flavor liquor in Guotai.

Through innovation, Taiwan Province has established a modern production line of brewing workshop. The production line basically completed the transformation of liquor brewing from manual operation to mechanized production mode, and effectively improved the problems of "heavy physical strength, high energy consumption, fuzziness and waste of resources" in the traditional liquor production process.

In Taiwan Province, mechanical koji-making is gradually replacing manual koji-making. Compared with manual treading in traditional koji-making process, mechanical koji-making can reduce the manpower required for manual treading; In addition, mechanical koji-making also reduces the difference between blocks caused by uneven manual trampling, and effectively improves the stability of block quality.

"At the moment when raw materials such as wheat and mother koji entered the koji-making machine, the koji cakes were automatically delivered under digital control and directly loaded into the warehouse through pallets. We sincerely lamented the power of science and technology." Li Changwen said.

In terms of energy saving and emission reduction, the production line of modern brewing workshop has made outstanding contributions. The brand-new water source closed circulation management system on the production line is equipped with temperature sensors and calculation devices at every pass of liquor distillation to ensure the long-term constant temperature of cooling water and ice tank and avoid the injection of excess water. Even if cooling wastewater is generated, it can be returned to the boiler through the closed-loop management system and become the heating water for the boiler.

Cathay Pacific integrates information technology, industrial integration and scientific standards into the traditional production process of Maotai-flavor liquor to realize institutional innovation. Li Changwen believes that this has promoted the brand-new upgrading path of traditional Maotai-flavor liquor brewing from vague to clear, from experience to numbers, and from numbers to standards. (Yang Yang)