Brewing Makkoli, Korean-style "rice Beer"

[Count Vorlauf]

Summer is coming, which puts me in the mood for makkoli - a Korean rice-beer of sorts that I enjoyed while living there. Best served from a gourd or wooden bowl to accompany pajeon (a kind of savory crepe), on a wooden platform overlooking the rice paddies on sweltering moonlight night!

Ah, maybe I'm getting a little too nostalgic. The stuff is a sweet and sour milky white grog averaging around 6% ABV and is packaged in plastic bottles looking a lot like bleach. It's consumed as soon as possible after primary fermentation finishes, and is often too sour even for the locals, so they add sugar to take the edge off.

It is fermented using "nuruk", a yeast cake similar to koji but resulting from wild fermentation - hence the sour results. Nuruk generally consists of wheat flour that's been wetted then pressed into a cake, then allowed to incubate at around 30-40C.

Here's a rough recipe for the experiment, cribbed from this website. This is a first to me, so your results may vary. Hope to launch into this over the week and will keep you all posted. In the meantime, if anyone else has taken a swing at homebrewed makkoli, let me know how it went for you!

Ingredients:
4 cups polished short grain, or pearl, rice
3 cups "Nuruk" - available at Korean food stores.
Bottle of Korean soju (vodka in a pinch)
6 cups boiled and cooled water

Equipment:
Rice cooker
2 litre container converted into fermenter.

Process:
1. Wash the rice, then steam.
2. Sanitize your fermenter
3. Grind up the nuruk roughly, rinse with soju and remove liquid.
4. Cool the rice and put in your mini fermenter. Add 6 cups boiled and cooled water.
5. Once mixture has cooled to 25C add the nuruk. Mix evenly.
6. Ferment at 18-25C. Fermentation should finish after 3-4 days. If fermentation lags, pitch in some white wine or sake yeast.
7. Strain liquid into clean plastic bottles. Sweeten if necessary. Cook up some pajeon and enjoy!

 

[neonmeate]

wow that sounds like crazy stuff. what is soju?
i have made some wild fermented indian stuff with mustard seeds, carrot and beetroot before, but this sounds a bit cleaner. is it just a lactic sourness or is it very acetic?

 

[Adamt]

I'd think soju ~ shochu ~ vodka-like distilled beverage made from rice/potato/sweet potato/starch.

 

[Count Vorlauf]

I'd think soju ~ shochu ~ vodka-like distilled beverage made from rice/potato/sweet potato/starch.

Lactic sourness if I remember correctly. Soju is as you described, but ABV only stands around 20%.

 

[Fermented]

Soju is pretty much Korean sake except that the process uses distillation as one of the final stages.

You can source it from larger bottle shops like Dan Murphy's but is also often available under the counter from Korean grocers.

Nominally around 15% ABV and $9-15 for a 330 ml.

Cheers - Fermented.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

you can get a similar thing in asian grocery stores - they just call it rice wine. basically its rice in a tub with yeast and (whatever the chinese call it) koji - partially sweet, partially fermented and partially sour. If you wizz it up in a blender or let it warm up so the enzymes break things down more and the sweetness ferments more, it becomes less solid and more boozy and sour. In the vietnamese groceries near my place its called Cơm rượu or Rượu nếp

The Japanese call it (or something similar) Amakazi

Wikipedia has a good article on rice wine -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_wine -- and it links to quite good individual articles about each type.

 

[Count Vorlauf]

you can get a similar thing in asian grocery stores - they just call it rice wine. basically its rice in a tub with yeast and (whatever the chinese call it) koji - partially sweet, partially fermented and partially sour. If you wizz it up in a blender or let it warm up so the enzymes break things down more and the sweetness ferments more, it becomes less solid and more boozy and sour. In the vietnamese groceries near my place its called Cơm rượu or Rượu nếp

The Japanese call it (or something similar) Amakazi

Wikipedia has a good article on rice wine -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_wine -- and it links to quite good individual articles about each type.

Alas - neither of the Melbourne CBD Korean grocers I tried carried "nuruk" or knew where to find it in Melbourne. In fact, they were very curious as to why anyone would want to make makkoli in the first place. CityMart, across from Vic Markets, has commercially bottled makkoli. Look for the bowling pin shaped white plastic bottles in the fridge near the register.

There's a good piece here in "Fermented cereals: a global perspective" that explains the differences in the various yeast cakes used in East Asian fermented beverages. You should just be able to use the nuruk for your fermentation without additional yeast. These starters seem to harken back to the very origins of brewing where wild yeasts (and other microorganisms) were saved in a loaf. The aspergillus and rhizopus found in nuruk actually help break down the rice carbohydrates into fermentable sugars. Pat McGovern's "Uncorking the Past" is a good source on this.

Wonder what nuruk would do to a wheat beer mash? Ah, well, if I ever get my hands on any I'll have to find out.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Alas - neither of the Melbourne CBD Korean grocers I tried carried "nuruk" or knew where to find it in Melbourne. In fact, they were very curious as to why anyone would want to make makkoli in the first place. CityMart, across from Vic Markets, has commercially bottled makkoli. Look for the bowling pin shaped white plastic bottles in the fridge near the register.

There's a good piece here in "Fermented cereals: a global perspective" that explains the differences in the various yeast cakes used in East Asian fermented beverages. You should just be able to use the nuruk for your fermentation without additional yeast. These starters seem to harken back to the very origins of brewing where wild yeasts (and other microorganisms) were saved in a loaf. The aspergillus and rhizopus found in nuruk actually help break down the rice carbohydrates into fermentable sugars. Pat McGovern's "Uncorking the Past" is a good source on this.

Wonder what nuruk would do to a wheat beer mash? Ah, well, if I ever get my hands on any I'll have to find out.

I believe - but haven't tried it out - that the balls of chinese yeast in many asian supermarkets are exactly the same. ie: contain both aspergillus (or a similar type thing) and yeast. I recently used the chinese rice wine I mentioned above to make a "beer" out of unmalted millet - I mashed at a high temperature so that the yeast part of the mixture was killed off - but if I had simply added a starch source (millet or rice) and allowed things to be at room temperature... a co-fermentation would have occurred exactly as per other rice wines. When I looked up how to make rice wine at home ... the sources I found suggested simply sprinkling ground up chinese yeast balls over rice.... thus I conclude that these little balls are the sort of thing you are talking about - a mix of yeasts, other organisms and aspergillus etc. They might not be the genuine article as in Nuruk... but I bet they are pretty nearly the same thing. (although your link suggests that there is a difference)

 

[gewse]

sorry to bring up an old thread but has anyone successfully sourced nuruk in Victoria? I tried various different korean grocery shops but none of them stocked it.
any help appreciated!

 

[Thirsty Boy]

never found Nuruk itself

but i have since my last post in this thread made a number of "chinese rice wines"

pretty much its

steam glutinous rice
crush up a chinese yeast ball (all the asian gorcers have them)
Let it liquify
add water if you dont want it super sweet - it will be 18-20% abv unless you add LOTs of water, just the sweetness drops away.
Squeeze it through a canvas/calico bag and then let it settle out (if you want it clear) or just drink it with the chunks in.

 

[super_simian]

How did the unmalted millet beer turn out? It seems the Tibetans make an unmalted barley "wine" via a similar process to that of Chinese rice wine, named "Qingke jiu" - the cogs are turning!

 

[gewse]

thanks, might give the chinese rice wine a go!

might be a silly question, but I heard korean rice wine has a short shelf life of around 10 days.. how long would the chinese rice wine last in the fridge?

 

[ekul]

Does the yeast contain enymes to break down the rice?

never found Nuruk itself

but i have since my last post in this thread made a number of "chinese rice wines"

pretty much its

steam glutinous rice
crush up a chinese yeast ball (all the asian gorcers have them)
Let it liquify
add water if you dont want it super sweet - it will be 18-20% abv unless you add LOTs of water, just the sweetness drops away.
Squeeze it through a canvas/calico bag and then let it settle out (if you want it clear) or just drink it with the chunks in.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

How did the unmalted millet beer turn out? It seems the Tibetans make an unmalted barley "wine" via a similar process to that of Chinese rice wine, named "Qingke jiu" - the cogs are turning!

Not bad - it wasn't a great beer by any means, but I've had worse K&K beers. I'm still working on it and other related stuff. There are related products similar to magkoli, Chinese rice wine, Sake etc in every asian culture from Japan all the way to the west of india. And there are variations that use other grains in all those cultures too. The difference is simply methods and local bugs.

Does the yeast contain enymes to break down the rice?

The Nuruk, Chinese Yeast and whatever other ball/block of goop is used in a particular culture's rice wine, will contain both normal yeast, some amylolytic yeasts and a variety of other molds and bacteria as well. They saccharify the starches and then simultaneously ferment them.
The Aspergillus and Rhizopus mentioned in the tagline for this thread are just two or the many things that might be in a given "starter" substance.

 

[Bruer]

So i know that this post has been dead for a loooong time. However. My mother-in-law is Korean and was in Korea recently. I am now the proud owner of a few nuruk cakes. I'm wondering if there is a way to make my own so i can share them with you lovely people. I was thinking i could form my own and inoculate them with the genuine article.

I love my magkoli, but i've been thinking about the recipe. I hate straining mounds of stodgy rice. what about this for an idea
Use rice syrup and a smaller portion of steamed rice (for the cloudiness) and add alpha amylase for a long 180 minute mash.
Bring to a boil and add crumbled nuruk in at around 30-40C. Remembering of course that alpha-amylase only chomps the starch into long chains (unfermentable), while the beta amylase (present in nuruk) breaks these long chains into fermentable sugars.
Ferment out until tasty. Bottle and leave for a few weeks. Pasteurise in coopers king browns to prevent bottle bombs and overt lactic sourness.

 

[mr_wibble]

So, after some reading: Nuruk contains both yeast and fungi (like Aspergillus oryzae) which produce various amylases, breaking down starches into sugars. There's an interesting analysis of it here - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3385131/ .

Once the ingredients are combined, the process seems much the same as making beer - https://harmsboone.org/2010/06/02/homebrewers-guide-makgeolli/ .

Obviously the addition of (extra) alpha amylase would speed up the creation of sugars, and thus yeast fermentation. Maybe this helps it ferment out before too much souring occurs ?

I've read a bit about making sake. Great importance is always given to the proper steaming of the rice (although it relies on the "koji" (Aspergillus oryzae) growing in the cooked rice for all amylase production). That aside, with Magkoli, since much more water is added later, could you not cook your rice with extra extra water, and simply pour it instead of handling? Of course if this were a significantly better way, probably it would also be the traditional way already. I've only ever brewed with brown rice syrup, and it was pretty expensive.

With sake, more rice (and koji) is added as the fermentation progresses. Is it the same with Magkoli?

 

[Bruer]

Not really. I think that it'd be interesting to try nuruk in wort