Literature. Drinking. 【文飲】

Having just made new yeast cakes , I put them to good use in a batch of millet wine and rice wine following the recipe I call YE1W1 and YE2W2, as they're the first and second wines (W1, W2) listed under the first exceptional yeast cakes (YE1).  They came out really good! The recipe: Millet or Rice Wine à la Yuán Púshè This volume will fit in a 1 gallon wide-mouthed fermenter, barely. Ingredients and Tools ¼ cup powdered exceptional yeast cakes, about one cake.  But do measure. 5.25 cups dry millet or 4.5 cups dry white sticky rice Water 1 gallon, wide-mouthed fermenter - cooked grain can’t go through a narrow mouth Cheesecloth Optionally, liner silk or some other filter fabric finer than your cheesecloth Mortar and pestle Directions Dry the yeast cakes completely and scrub them clean several times. Grate, and then grind the yeast cakes in a mortar.  Soak them in 1.25 cups water for three days until they start to bubble.  Add to...

Now that the yeast cakes are ready , and nice and dry (they firmed up quite nicely after drying), I'm ready to start making wine from them. Qimin Yaoshu  is structured around the yeast cakes, and to help keep them straight, I'm numbering them and the wines that are attached to each cake recipe.  These yeast cakes are the first "exceptional" yeast cakes, so I'm calling them YE1, and below are the translated directions to make two different wines using them, a millet wine (YE1W1) and a rice wine (YE1W2). I'm starting the process of making these now, and I'll report back once I have some more photos to show.  For sizing, the recipe clearly tells us that one volume of yeast cakes is enough for 21 or 18 volumes of grain, which means something like 60 volumes of alcohol, if you figure that you get about as much liquid out as cooked grain, which is about three times the volume of the dry grain. Since I'm making this to hopefully panel at  ...

A while ago I translated this recipe, and now that I've made it a few times, it's time to give you a readable recipe. Ingredients: Two parts dry glutinous (sticky) rice, divided into two equal parts. 0.1 parts yeast cakes (ideally white cloudy wine yeast cakes, as of yet untranslated) Steps: Thoroughly rinse half the rice, strain it, and put it, uncooked, in your fermenter. Bring 1-2 parts water to a boil, and pour it over the rice until the rice is covered. Cover the fermenter with a clean cloth. The next day, strain out the rice, retaining the liquid. Steam the rice, and spread it to cool. While you steam the rice, take 0.2 parts of the liquid retained from the rice, and boil it down to 0.05 parts.  Cool it, beat it with a whisk until frothy, and put it in your fermenter. Put the cooled rice, and 0.06 parts water in the fermenter. Powder the yeast cakes and put them in the fermenter, and mix. Cover the fermenter with a clean cloth. The next day, strain o...

I wanted to find a recipe that didn't require seven batches of grain, so I started on another short recipe elsewhere in scroll seven. I didn't translate the process for making the yeast cakes because I'm not going to make them, although it seems to be similar to the process for the lumpy yeast cakes I translated earlier, using the same grain mixture. As usual, each sentence in Chinese is followed by my translation in English. 釀白醪法：取糯米一石，冷水淨淘，漉出著甕中，作魚眼沸湯浸之。To make white young wine: take one dan of glutinous rice (Oryza sativa var. glutinosa) , rinse it in cold water until clean, strain it and put it in a weng, and soak it in water boiling with bubbles like fish eyes. 經一宿，米欲絕酢，炊作一餾飯，攤令絕冷。Pass one night, and the rice should be decidedly sour; steam it, and once it’s cooked spread it out to cool. 取魚眼湯沃浸米泔二斗，煎取六升，著甕中，以竹掃衝之，如茗渤。Take two dou of the water from rinsing the rice, and boil it with bubbles like fish eyes down to six sheng (0.6 dou), put it in the weng, then t...