It was solely 5 years in the past when Alice Jun obtained severely into homebrewing makgeolli, an effervescent rice brew that, with greater than two millennia of historical past, is Korea’s oldest alcoholic beverage. On the time, the NYU graduate was working as a marketing consultant at Deloitte and devoting her weekends to her passion. “The kitchen was full of all my provides and five-gallon jars of homebrew at totally different levels of fermentation,” she remembers with amusing. “At my peak I used to be brewing 30 to 40 gallons at a time. Fortuitously, I had very supportive roommates. However then, they have been additionally the beneficiaries of my experiments.”
Now she’s set on sharing the tradition of makgeolli with the remainder of america.
In October of 2020, Jun opened Hana Makgeolli on an industrial block in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It’s at the moment the one industrial makgeolli brewery in america, and to date she has offered out of each batch of her artisan tackle this ancestral rice wine.
Makgeolli is a cloudy drink produced from rice, water, and nuruk, a micro organism and yeast-rich starter normally made with wheat. The style of the brew varies broadly with the brewer; Hana’s has a particular tang from the lactic acid produced throughout fermentation. It’s creamy and dry with hints of flowers and bitter citrus.
Most industrial makgeolli is shelved alongside beer. It’s packed in plastic bottles and shares an identical alcohol share, and it is available in flavors like banana and chestnut. Jun’s imaginative and prescient for Hana aligns extra with the world of pure wine, and her brewery is technically licensed as a vineyard by the state of New York. Her brews age from 30 to 70 days—for much longer than the usual seven to 14 days in Korea—leading to a posh rice beverage that’s drier and extra boozy than conventional makgeolli. The flavour, she says, is harking back to Korean homebrew, which had no presence within the U.S. Jun noticed a gap. “I imagine that this sort of sool”—the Korean phrase for alcohol, particularly conventional Korean drinks—“leaning in the direction of dryer, wild fermented, stronger, and extra acidic kinds of brewing, has a chance right here,” she says.
Jun’s makgeolli begins with natural medium-grain white rice, natural candy rice, nuruk imported from Korea, and filtered water. A mixture of complete grain rice and coarsely floor rice is steamed and fed into the brew in three to 4 feedings. Jun soaks the nuruk, then filters the combination by way of a wine bladder press, utilizing solely the ensuing nuruk “tea” for a extra refined taste. Fermentation does the remainder of the work. “To modernize makgeolli now’s to return to its conventional roots,” she says. “It’s now not seen as this outdated, dusty observe, it’s really one thing that’s wanted.”
Her experiences with makgeolli started effectively earlier than she was of authorized ingesting age. Her father, who emigrated from Korea to Central California with Jun’s mom, is an avid homebrewer, and she or he has fond childhood recollections of afternoons spent steaming rice and massaging bricks of nuruk. When she requested him for recommendation together with her personal homebrews, he may solely advocate common measurements, so Jun spent years instructing herself, these recollections her solely information. In 2015 she traveled to Seoul to take a proper class with Julia Mellor at The Sool Company and met members of the makgeolli group who shared an identical need to revive conventional brewing strategies.
There are over 760 licensed breweries in Korea that produce over 2,000 kinds of makgeolli; Mellor sees a rising world curiosity within the drink. “I’ve been providing startup brewery consultations for 4 years, however within the final two have I seen a lot better demand from purchasers within the U.S., which is constant to develop,” she explains. “We even have purchasers in Canada, the U.Ok., Europe, and Australia, which signifies to us the worldwide curiosity in makgeolli.” Final yr, Forbes called the drink “the subsequent alcohol development to look at,” and this previous June, makgeolli brewing was recognized as an Intangible Korean Asset by The Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea.
Jun believes this renewed curiosity—each inside Korean borders and overseas—comes from two sources: Older generations of sool producers that fought to guard the custom by way of battle, famine, and prohibition—historic occasions that threatened Korean foodways for over a century—in addition to a brand new wave of youthful brewers, influenced by the craft beer and pure wine traits.
Hana isn’t the primary industrial makgeolli brewery in america, however different small ventures have closed. Makku, one other Brooklyn-based firm which launched in 2019, works with a brewery in Korea to provide its canned variations. This easy-drinking strategy to makgeolli, which is marketed extra like craft beer, has a low ABV of six p.c and is available in flavors like mango and fervour fruit.
The time period “makgeolli” is a singular alcohol class with a variety of fermented rice drinks made up of a number of subgenres. Takju is the normal, coarsely filtered, rice brew. Potent takjus, like Hana’s Takju 16—which is undiluted and has a 16 p.c ABV—are nearer in alcohol-level to wine than beer. A settled bottle of takju will separate into two distinct layers: an opaque sediment on the underside and the clear, yellowish liquid, often known as “yakju,” or “cheongju,” on prime. Bone-dry, crisp, and citric, yakju was historically reserved for the Aristocracy, and Hana additionally bottles it individually. The phrase “makgeolli” is most frequently used to explain a mode of takju produced from diluting that cloudy backside layer which was leftover from making yakju. As soon as the clear liquid is poured off, that opaque liquid is “roughly filtered,” (the literal translation of the phrase makgeolli), then diluted with water, reducing its alcohol content material.
This diluted makgeolli was historically loved by farmers and commoners; as we speak, Jun infuses her elegant model of this lighter brew with omija berries, a Korean magnolia fruit recognized for its 5 distinct flavors: salty, tangy, bitter, candy, and pungent.
This previous August, Jun and her enterprise accomplice, John Limb, opened the brewery’s in-house restaurant. They’re solely choosing up the tempo: “We’re popping out with seasonal makgeolli,” Jun says. “We’re going to present what is de facto doable with totally different grains like brown and black rice. The purpose with Hana was all the time to point out the breadth of the class and assist construct an business right here. It’s by no means going to switch beer or wine, however it can assist set up the class in the long run and educate folks.” Limb provides, “We’re very happy with the truth that it’s a Korean product and a Korean sool that we’re serving to to ascertain. We’re doing our half to carry consciousness of our tradition.”
Hana’s wines are pasteurized within the bottle to cease fermentation, which makes them shelf steady. Beginning this fall, the brewery’s restaurant will serve unpasteurized makgeolli as effectively, making it the one place within the U.S. you possibly can pattern the drink with dwell cultures (unless you decide to try homebrewing yourself).
Hana is just not but a yr outdated and has already been awarded 2021’s Makgeolli Producer of the Yr by the New York Worldwide Wine Competitors. Jun considerably sheepishly provides, “Nicely, we’re unsure if this was a world competitors or if Hana received by default as the one makgeolli producer in America.”
Recipes
Homebrew Makgeolli
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Makgeolli Old Fashioned
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Ginger Makgeolli Twist
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