For those who have never sampled/heard of/gotten trashed in Korea on makgeolli, it's a tasty tasty rice wine which is not at all like sake (which most people immediately ask me to compare it to). It's milky in colour, slightly sweet, a little bit carbonated, and super habit forming. It's unlikely that you'll find a palatable bottle in many North American liquor stores as the good stuff has a very short shelf life due to its probiotic nature. You may be able to find it at some Korean restaurants and specialty bars - or you could just make your own. As far as brewing goes, it's easy and cheap.
My primary brewing resource was mistermakgeolli.com, although....me lazy, so I took a few liberties with ingredients and shortcuts and all seems to have turned out just fine. There is a lot of discussion with regards to method and ingredients on various brew forums, I read as much as I could and ended up doing what I figured was the bare minimum for a decent batch of mak. For your benefit, I'll first distill a little bit of my newly gathered knowledge on some of the makgeolli essentials. If you're new to home brewing, you should probably give it a read. If you just want the recipe, skip this next chunk and just scroll on down to the ingredients list.
1. Nu-ruk
누룩
If you're brewing outside of the ROK, this is definitely going to be one of your limiting factors. I've read some threads on brew forums where people tried subsitutes using amylase and other types of brewer's yeasts, but I steered clear of this option after reading a little about the analysis of nuruk's microflora, which happens to include a total of 64 bacterial species, 39 fugal species, and 15 yeast species. Inclusion of all these species is not universal to all nuruk sources (durr), the primary common microbial agents appear to be Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, B. subtilis, Lichtheimia corymbifera, Pichia jadinii and some kind of saccharifying fungi. I suppose you could play around with commercially available brewing cultures to try and best determine which will impart the best mak-esque flavor by brewing batch after batch of questionable rice wine, but c'mon now.
So I went on a quest for nu-ruk in Vancouver. H-mart didn't have it, nor did 3 other Korean grocers I tried. Unsuccessful attempts were made to order online through g-market, and I couldn't find another English source for the stuff. If you've got somebody handy who is great with hangul perhaps you could find another Korean supplier online, but my Korean is embarrassingly poor. Finally, FINALLY I found a supplier through the warehouse that imports for Hyundai Oriental Market (3488 Kingsway). So there, that's where you can find this stuff in Vancouver.
If you happen to live in America, suck my balls because you can skip all of that fuss and just order it online --> here <--
You'll also need some more conventional yeast to help it along, but that's pretty piss-easy to find. I've heard of others having success with regular ol' baker's yeast, however I used some brewer's yeast I had left over from cider making.
2. Equipment
Makgeolli is a fucking cakewalk if you've ever brewed anything before. You'll need
- a large jar with a wide mouth (10 litres is a good size, glass cleans better than plastic)
- bottles which can withstand pressure. The makgeolli will carbonate itself in secondary fermentation, so be sure to use something like plastic soda bottles or beer bottles which can withstand the pressure.
- cheesecloth and rubber band - just to secure over your large jar to keep nasties out.
- muslin bag (jelly straining bag) - you CAN strain your makgeolli with a cheesecloth or fine sieve, but I find it so much easier with the bag.
- funnel, ladle, etc - for bottling.
- stirring thing - for stirring.
Zedomax boiled all of his equipment, mistermakgeolli disinfected tools and washed his hands in soju, and I totally did none of this. Keeping things clean is always good, but you're not scrubbing up for surgery. In my experience with makgeolli, wine, and cider I have found that the microbial culture is pretty goddamned aggressive, particularly in the state of primary fermentation. You're not exactly leaving a petri dish of agar out for competing microbes to take over. Years ago grain fermentation was helped along by farmers chewing mouthfuls of rice which would then be spat into the mash (blech), and analysis has shown that nu-ruk often contains small amounts of food borne pathogens such as B. cereus or Cronobacter sakazakii anyways. Despite all of this, the yeast, fungi, and lactic bacteria will take over to produce the makgeolli we know and love. If anything, I save the thorough cleaning work for bottles - you want to disinfect things to keep the good cultures in your brew which are now settling down from the turbulent stage of primary fermentation. So here are my lowest-common-denominator rules for sanitation:
- Wash your hands, bowls, spoons, etc well with hot water and soap.
- Keep bugs out. Fruit flies carry acetobacter, which will spoil your whole batch by turning your tasty wine into vinegar. Avoid this by always keeping cheesecloth secured over the mouth of your primary fermentation vessel.
- Sanitize bottles for secondary fermentation. ... once again, me lazy, so I just run the bottles through my dishwasher with sani-brew instead of dish soap. Works great! Alternately you could boil them, or put them in a large tub of sani brew (or some other food safe disinfectant).
3. Brew time
This is highly subject to both the mash as well as temperature. I've read anything from 4 days to 2 weeks with makgeolli, but I've personally never needed more than a week for primary fermentation. You'll see your brew go from a bubbling porridgey slurry to a stratified jar of boozy liquid and sediment. I got really lazy with my last batch and ended up leaving it be for nearly 2 weeks in primary fermentation without any noticeable difference or problems with the final product. It's pretty forgiving. Secondary fermentation (after bottling) takes just a day or two in a warm room. Be sure to have ample space in your fridge to store the finished product as cold temperatures are needed to drastically slow down fermentation once you have a product you want to drink.
5 cups uncooked short grain rice
2 litres of water for primary fermentation, additional 1.5 litres for bottling
1 cup nuruk
1 cup nuruk
1 tbsp brewer's yeast
2 cups honey
Wash your rice well, and cook it as you normally would. Then set aside to cool. I've read that you need to wash the rice 30 times - nuts to that, I wash it out 5 times maximum, the runoff water seems clear enough to me. I've also read that you shouldn't cook the rice all the way through, it has to be a particular kind of al dente - nuts to that, it's always turned out just fine after regularly cooking in my rice cooker.
2 cups honey
Wash your rice well, and cook it as you normally would. Then set aside to cool. I've read that you need to wash the rice 30 times - nuts to that, I wash it out 5 times maximum, the runoff water seems clear enough to me. I've also read that you shouldn't cook the rice all the way through, it has to be a particular kind of al dente - nuts to that, it's always turned out just fine after regularly cooking in my rice cooker.
So there's my lazy opinion and experience getting around rice pickiness
While the rice is cooling, soak 1 cup of nuruk in 1 cup of warm (not hot!!) water. I do this to soften the chunks which i eventually squish apart with my fingers. Alternately, you can grind it up dry with a mortar and pestle, coffee bean grinder, whatever.
Add the cooled rice, nuruk, brewer's yeast, and 2 litres of water to your large jar for primary fermentation.
Mush it around well with your clean hands so it's all well mixed and your rice takes a bit of a beating.
Cover the jar with clean cheesecloth and secure in place with a rubber band.
Leave it to ferment in a dark, warm place. I just ferment it under my table in the living room, so I always wrap a thick towel around the jar to keep the stuff insulated from drafts and light.
After the first day your mash should look like a nasty, bubbling porridge.
While the rice is cooling, soak 1 cup of nuruk in 1 cup of warm (not hot!!) water. I do this to soften the chunks which i eventually squish apart with my fingers. Alternately, you can grind it up dry with a mortar and pestle, coffee bean grinder, whatever.
Add the cooled rice, nuruk, brewer's yeast, and 2 litres of water to your large jar for primary fermentation.
Mush it around well with your clean hands so it's all well mixed and your rice takes a bit of a beating.
Cover the jar with clean cheesecloth and secure in place with a rubber band.
Leave it to ferment in a dark, warm place. I just ferment it under my table in the living room, so I always wrap a thick towel around the jar to keep the stuff insulated from drafts and light.
After the first day your mash should look like a nasty, bubbling porridge.
Add 1.5 litres of water and the honey to the strained makgeolli. Just before adding the honey I like to warm it up a little bit on the stove or in the microwave to thin it out and make it easier to blend. Be aware of the type of honey you use, as the rice wine will carry it's flavor. My favorites to use are wildflower and lemon blossom.
The wine will be quite sweet at this point, however it will ferment a little more once bottled. This allows the beverage to get slightly carbonated and a little boozier as the remaining microbial culture metabolizes some of the honey into even more alcohol.
Funnel the makgeolli into your bottles, but leave a generous gap at the top to allow for fermentation. You can see how I filled mine below.
Keep your bottles at room temperature for another day or two. When it is left at room temperature I would highly suggest gently bleeding the gas from the bottles once a day (or leaving caps on loose) lest you do what I did with my first batch and send a solid stream of highly carbonated liquid straight up and all over your ceiling. After a couple of days you can move them into the fridge to slow fermentation - it's now ready to drink. Putting the makgeolli in a cold place will SLOW fermentation, but not stop it. It's best to drink this stuff within a week of making it (although it apparently keeps for about 2 weeks). If you find it too boozy or perhaps sour when you go to enjoy it, just dillute with more honey and water to suit your tastes. Unlike other wines, makgeolli doesn't benefit from being left to age - in my opinion it tastes best as soon as it's ready to be consumed. Be sure to gently agitate the bottle prior to serving; you want to mix in the sediment for a better taste and that nice, milky look.
I suggest you experiment with sweeteners and flavoring. In Korea most commercial makgeolli uses artificial sweetener, and is sometimes flavored by adding blended fruit just prior to serving. I tried different types of honeys, sugars, and spiced syrups which yielded some of the best mak I and my fellow ex-pat mak-enthusiast Steve have sampled (his frank assessment, not just mine!). Flavoring is definitely best done after primary fermentation, as compounds in flavoring agents may interfere with the initial boozy process.
Alright, that's all. You can go and get wasted now.
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