Brewing technology: What are the traditional brewing methods of liquor?

There are many kinds of liquor brewing techniques, and the most common one in the market is Luzhou-flavor liquor.

Luzhou-flavor liquor is made from grain by traditional solid-state fermentation, distillation, aging and blending, without adding edible alcohol and non-alcoholic fermentation substances, and has a compound aroma with ethyl caproate as the main body. Colorless or yellowish, clear and transparent, without suspended matter and precipitation, mellow and harmonious, sweet and refreshing, with a long aftertaste.

The main characteristics of Luzhou-flavor liquor, which are different from other brewing processes, are solid-state fermentation in mud pond, continuous brewing and blending, mixed steaming and mixed burning.

Mud pond, a cellar made of clay, is a kind of fermentation equipment with the same function as cylinder and barrel, which is used as a container for fermented grains. Most of the aroma components of Luzhou-flavor liquor are related to pit mud.

The ingredient of continuous distiller's grains is to add new materials (sorghum) and a certain amount of auxiliary materials (rice husk) to the original fermented grains, mix them evenly, and then distill them in retort. Do this at the end of each fermentation round. One cellar discards the waste grains in each round, and other waste grains are added with new materials for recycling. In the production of Luzhou-flavor Daqu liquor, people call it "wannian bad".

Mixed steaming and co-firing refers to the operation method of mixing fermented grains with raw grain in a certain proportion, manually steaming the wine and adjusting the air pressure, so that the wine is distilled with slow fire first, and then the raw grain is further gelatinized by increasing the firepower.

The process flow is as follows: