Does anyone have a Makkoli recipe, or a link to one?

[Laripu]

Hey - I'll just drink mine anyway then

Remember me in your will.

And good luck!

[NWC]

Well had a go at it.
Its not "that" bad once you get past the fairy liquid taste, and let the fusion of intense ginger and bleach anaethetise your taste buds. Once your at that stage you just need to worry about the bits of grit (WTF - how did they arrive?), and the gruel like sludge.
All in all, an entertaining evening, but not one I hope to repeat in the forseeable future!

[Laripu]

Well had a go at it.
Its not "that" bad once you get past the fairy liquid taste, and let the fusion of intense ginger and bleach anaethetise your taste buds. Once your at that stage you just need to worry about the bits of grit (WTF - how did they arrive?), and the gruel like sludge.
All in all, an entertaining evening, but not one I hope to repeat in the forseeable future!

Bleach? Not for me thanks!

[NWC]

Ha, I didn't add bleach - it just tastes like I did

[6470zzy]

Seriously, I will try it again one day, when the trauma wears off.

Have you had another go? I have been reading about this for several days now vining my way through the interweb and this morning I stumbled upon your post here at Jim's

[Laripu]

Seriously, I will try it again one day, when the trauma wears off.

Have you had another go? I have been reading about this for several days now vining my way through the interweb and this morning I stumbled upon your post here at Jim's

That was over six years ago!

No, I never tried it again. Nearby there are a couple of Korean stores that sell it. I buy a couple of bottles once a year. Sometimes, in an Asian restaurant, I might order Nigori sake... again, maybe once a year.

So it never seemed worth it to try again.

Especially since I don't bother with regular beer styles anymore, I just do any damn thing I feel like... that's plenty of room for creativity.

Since then I've added lox, sausage, sauerkraut and kimchi to my repertoire (all excellent). I dropped goat cheese (good but boring to make), graff (it was okay, but I didn't like it enough), and cider (my wife barely ever drinks it). I can't say I dropped makkoli, since I never really made it in the first place.

Maybe when I retire, 7 or 8 years from now. They say your memory begins to fail ......

[taylormadeak]

Seriously, I will try it again one day, when the trauma wears off.

Have you had another go? I have been reading about this for several days now vining my way through the interweb and this morning I stumbled upon your post here at Jim's

Wow, way to excavate a thread, man! Why don't you give makgeolli a go yourself and let us know how it works out for you? There's certainly enough information in this thread to get you started.

[6470zzy]

Its on the list............. just not on the TOP of the list

[Bad 'Ed]

I'm a big fan of makoelli, not so much the cheap stuff that the Koreans usually drink, but if you go to makoelli bars you can get some really nice, tasty, smooth stuff that goes down far too easily. I'd be keen to make it myself one day soon.

I just need to understand what the ingredients are. Does it need a special yeast?

Edit: there's loads of recipes online now so it should be fairly simple to work something sanitary and tasty.

[Faeyana]

[quote=Laripu post_id=206242 time=1226685102 user_id=1639]
[quote="Laripu"][quote="Laripu"]Well, today I started my first makkoli (or makgeoli or makhuli). I'm just waiting for the rice and liquid to cool to 80°F, so I can pitch the "nuruk" i.e. yeast and amylase enzyme powder. I've taken photos of the various steps, so when it's all in bottles, i about 10 days, I'll post a link to the whole recipe with photos.[/quote]
It's now four days into it. The intial gruel/nuruk mixture stank: apparently nuruk is a smelly thing, somethng I didn't know. After the first three days (of saccharification), fermentation has slowly started, as evidenced by small bubbles on the surface of the gruel. More importantly, the nuruk smell is nearly gone, and has been replaced by the makgeolli/alcohol smell with which I'm familiar. I'm glad I didn't chuck it all in the toilet! I'll bottle some time next week, as time permits.[/quote]
OK. Back in school they taught me that when you're doing an experiment, you must be completely honest about all parts of it. So the following is in that spirit. Before the confession, though, I must say two things:

[list][*]I will drink it anyway
[*]It [i][b]will [/b][/i]be pasteurized first[/list]
And so... yesterday I was looking at the surface of the Makgeolli brew to see how the fermentation was progressing, and I saw something untoward. Among the bits of wheat seed coat and the odd rice kernel that had floated up to the surface, there was also something that looked a lot like a rice kernel. Something white, like a rice kernel, that was perhaps a millimeter in thickness, and 6 mm or less in length. Something with legs.

[color=#BF0000][size=150][b][i]LEGS????[/i][/b][/size][/color] ..... is what I said, followed by some even more colourful language.

Well I fished out four of these little guys. They were not moving, and I suspect the alcohol killed them. I think there must have been eggs present in the nuruk, which is not made in a lab and really isn't sterile. ([url=http://www.fao.org/docrep/x2184e/x2184e09.htm]This link has a flow-chart for nuruk preparation[/url].) I guess the eggs hatched in the nutritious rice gruel, and the larvae or maggots soon died from alcohol poisoning.

Tonight I will skim the top of the fermenting liquid and if I find any more I will try to photograph them. They looked to me like [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Museslervos.jpg]this[/url], but of course there were only four and the longest was 6mm x 1mm. Straining before bottling should catch them all, and now I've decided to bottle in glass beer bottles and pasteurize in the stove: 170°F = 77°C for 30 minutes. That's overkill, but the maggots spooked me, dammit.

I would try to find an old Korean lady who had made this in her kitchen and ask her whether it's normal... but there's a language barrier, and I suspect that if she did understand me she'd just laugh and call me a wuss. Which I am.
[/quote]



Hahahaha, sorry for having a giggle here
It was your post online that brought me back to forum today, 'Legs'
Was it not a Weavel as they tend to go for wheat and Rice?
I once had a creepy experience after storing rice
Anyway look forward to catching up on this post to find out how you got on making the Korean drink, I much prefer Soju and so looking to brew that at some point.

[Laripu]

Hahahaha, sorry for having a giggle here
It was your post online that brought me back to forum today, 'Legs'
Was it not a Weavel as they tend to go for wheat and Rice?
I once had a creepy experience after storing rice
Anyway look forward to catching up on this post to find out how you got on making the Korean drink, I much prefer Soju and so looking to brew that at some point.

Having a laugh is a good thing! I'm glad this did it for you.
I never made makkoli again. I probably won't.

I'm reminded of an old friend in Montreal, Canada, who stored a large container of rice on his outdoor balcony in winter. You can do that there it's under -10°C almost all the time, and often below -20°C. But he kind of forgot about it and it started to thaw in spring. Then he said he saw pepper in it. Moving pepper. He cooked it anyway.

Until December I made many batches of various things. A couple of weeks ago my doctor prescribed something with which I shouldn't drink, so I've been entirely abstinent.

[Faeyana]

I discovered the crawly black things dead whilst cooking the rice to make a curry
Checked in pantry and inspected rest of Tesco rice which were all still in date, and all crawling
Sent a pic to suppliers and right away they said Weavils
Got to admit it put all the family off rice for many months, now I check when buying and store in containers
Still catching up on your post, did you ever make Soju?

[Laripu]

Still catching up on your post, did you ever make Soju?

Nope. That would require distillation, which is seriously illegal here in the US, except byv federally licensed and taxed distilling companies.

Beside needing a license, your also have to pay tax. If they caught you, the federal tax agency (IRS) would take anything you used to transport or make the illegal distillate, including your house. (!)

At my local liquor store, a 1.75L bottle of Dewar's White Label costs $33 after tax, under £24. And 375 ml of Jinro Soju is $7 = £5.

Soju isn't worth losing my house.

[Faeyana]

if its for personal use why would you need a license?
Mind you I have tasted the milky looking Korean drink and disliked it, think I still have a can of it in fridge unopened.
Soju is so much better

[Laripu]

if its for personal use why would you need a license?

This article explains it.

This spells out the law.

In the United States, among 330 million people, there are plenty that have sufficient money, but insufficient intelligence. Plenty of them would make dangerously bad whiskey and sell it to other idiots.

So it's illegal and that's all there is to it.

At least part of the reason is that the US had a severe problem with alcoholism in the 19th century. The reasons were that corn (maize) was abundantly grown but couldn't get to market before most of it spoiled. (Rail transport had not yet become universal. It still isn't, because trucks and planes took over.) Farmers found that they could preserve their crop by making corn whiskey. So then whiskey became abundant and cheap, and often bad. People responded, as people do, by getting drunk often. The problem became so bad that the government responded with Prohibition, which destroyed the brewing industry for 60 years, despite being repealed in 1933.