(White Fire Makgeolli)

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mnlaxer

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막걸리 흰 불꽃 (White Fire Makgeolli)

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Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: Wine Yeast
Yeast Starter: N/A
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter: N/A
Batch Size (Gallons): 3
Original Gravity: ?
Final Gravity: ?
IBU: N/A
Boiling Time (Minutes): N/A
Color: Milky White
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 3 Weeks @ 72 deg F
Additional Fermentation: N/A
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): N/A
Tasting Notes: N/A



(Serve in Copper or Wood Bowl Only)

ABV: 12-20% ABV (dependent on whether additional water is added after straining)

Grains: 16 Cups Hangawee Rice (Uncooked)

Other Fermentables: 3 Cups Cane Sugar

Enzyme: 32 oz Nuruk

Other Items: 1 tsp Yeast Nutrient, 2 tbsp Acid Blend

Yeast: Wine Yeast (I forgot which one I used)

Instructions:

-Add 24 Cups of Cold Water to the Cooked Rice in Fermenter

-Combine 8 cups of Hot Water (140 deg F) to the Nuruk and Mix Well

-Combine Nuruk Mash and Rice Mash Together

-Add Sugar, Yeast Nutrient, and Acid Blend to Mash

-Pitch Yeast at 90 Degrees F

-Ferment at 70-75 Degrees F

-Stir Mash Every 12 Hours for First 5 Days


After 2-3 weeks:

-Strain Liquid Through Collander

-Add 16 Cups of Water to Mash and Re-strain

-Add 2 Cups of Sugar to Makgeolli and Bottle (do not prime)
 
Thank you for the recipe. I've been looking for a recipe for this for a while. Is there a source for nuruk in the US?
 
Nuruk...pronounced noo-roo according to the people at the Korean Marketplace, can be found at most Asian Pacific Foods stores or specific Korean Marketplaces. If you are near the Colorado Springs area, I can shoot you the place where I got mine.

Honestly, I went to the major Asian Pacific Foods Market and they told me that they didn't sell it anymore, but they quickly gave me directions to where I could find some.

One more thing, I know this is less of a wine than a beer, simply due to the way that it is fermented, but I didn't really see anywhere else this could go for recipes, unless one of you has a better location for it.

Thanks for looking!
 
And yes, this is pretty much the Korean Equivalent to Sake. In fact Makgeolli is juts the un-distilled variant of Soju.

The finished product will be milky white in color, but it can be decanted to clear it a bit after the milky sediment settles.
 
Does anyone know why my post was moved from the recipe database to this wine making forum? I have no clue.
 
Ah. I wondered if anyone had posted a makgeolli.

My wife is Korean, and after 26 years of marriage, I just found out this week that she knows how to make makgeolli. That came after I was fussing that my projects were taking so long and I wanted something to drink now. so this weekend, we are planning makgeolli - she will be making and I will be taking notes. However; she says that hers is ready to drink in about 7 days.

For those who may be interested in some of the history (first, don't call it sake, and especially not pseudo-sake ... bit of a cultural rub there.):

When I lived in Korea in the 1980's, makgeolli was really considered a blue collar drink. As a matter of fact, another name for it is 농주 with is pronounced "nong-ju" ("o" and "u" are both long) with means "farmer liquor." At construction sites, road repair sites, or pretty much anywhere people worked manually, at lunch, you would see people pull out plastic bottles about half full of makgeolli (pronounced mahk-guhl-lee) to drink with their lunch. After that, they would often stretch out on the ground for a short nap (often under a sign warning of men at work :) ) and then bust their butts all afternoon.

When my eldest daughter went back to Korea to go to college (2005) she said that makgeolli had become much more accepted in more social circles as well, and is now often considered like a "health food." She described several drinks made with it being mixed with things such as yogurt (a little different from the yogurt you normally buy at supermarkets in the US), or other fruit juices. Take the "health food" for what it's worth.

The lady of our house's recipe is a little different from yours, and involves traditional insistences such as "It must be made in a crock." I suspect that's all okay ... I'm ready to take notes on how hers goes and report that back.

Makgeolli is also known in English as thick rice wine, Korean rice wine, or sometimes "drunken rice." I'm sure there are a few others, but those are the names I've heard.

Thanks for posting this.
 
Nuruk...pronounced noo-roo according to the people at the Korean Marketplace

Very close. Let me give you more information than you want to know, but it will help you when you ask for it ... sometimes accents keep us from being understood (boy do I know THAT one well).

Nuruk is one transliteration of it. You may also see it written as nuluk, noorook, or noolook. The "k" sound at the end is definitely there and pronounced, though. The reason for the different spellings is:

In Hangul (the Korean alphabet) this is written as: 누룩. There are no silent letters there. The 'ㄹ' is what is transliterated as "r" or "l". But in Korean, there is no equivalent sound to the English r or l sounds. The actual sound of that letter is somewhere between an English r and l, and it varies slightly depending on what part of Korea the person comes from. The closest equivalent sound I can think of is the Spanish 'r.' The 'ㅜ' is the vowel in both syllables and is a long 'U.' However; when it is transliterated as "nuruk," English speakers tend to apply English pronunciation rules to it and make the 'u' short ... that will probably not be understood by native Korean speakers if you pronounce it like that. To avoid that problem, sometimes, people break the old rules of transliteration and use 'oo' in place of 'u' when transliterating 'ㅜ', and then use u when transliterating a couple of other vowels that sound closer to a short 'u.'

So the pronunciation will be like "noo rook" where you touch your tongue to the top of your mouth when you pronounce the 'r' in that.

Like I said, more than you wanted to know. If you're concerned about not being understood, then print out the "누룩" when you ask for it in a Korean market. That will eliminate any confusion :).
 
So in the wine recipe section, this same recipe is still listed. However, the poster of the recipe added in bold type not to make this stuff because it came out really sour and to delete the recipe. Anyone care to shed light on this?
 
I was wondering how the rice can be fermented without koji or for that matter even amylase to convert the starch to fermentable sugar ... so I searched online and found that the process is more like making a mash in brewing.

I've got a 25 pound bag of milled rice and a pack of koji mold seeds that have been waiting on me for a few months, but sake is such a pain in the butt to make I've been procrastinating.
 
I was wondering how the rice can be fermented without koji or for that matter even amylase to convert the starch to fermentable sugar ... so I searched online and found that the process is more like making a mash in brewing.

I've got a 25 pound bag of milled rice and a pack of koji mold seeds that have been waiting on me for a few months, but sake is such a pain in the butt to make I've been procrastinating.

Nuruk is the Korean word for Amylase. I actually didn't know that until buying that at the Korean market this last time. The Nuruk (amylase enzyme) breaks the starch down into simple sugars that are then fermented.
 
The sourness is due to lactic acid, which occurs later in fermentation. There was probably too much in it for him. There's a post elsewhere that mentions using regular amylase and regular yeast, as opposed to Nuruk, and while not traditional, it limits the other ongoing fermentations. Nuruk is said to be more like a sourdough starter over in the NB sake forums.

Sake will do the same thing, it will become sour if left fermenting, which is why both are recommended to be pasturized at some point in time.

In essence... the difference between sake and Makgeolli is the enzymes used to break down the rice. One uses the Nuruk enzyme/yeast combination, the other uses koji as the enzyme addition.

I'm mostly doing sake because a) I like sake, and b) I want to see about adapting the process for other uses (soy sauce, miso, etc)
 
Crazy... I just got back from Korea (one night in Incheon and a week on the island of Jeju). I had no idea what I was drinking when they served me the white "rice wine". It was nothing like sake.

We found this at the local restaurants and was even served it at a high end dinner one night. I much prefer the Japanese Sake over this stuff. I do have to say we put away quite a bit of soju however!
 
Nuruk...pronounced noo-roo according to the people at the Korean Marketplace

You're right that the way Koreans pronounce 누룩 is closer to English "noo-roo" than English "noo-rook". SteveHoward is correct that the "k" is there and that it's pronounced, but it's not pronounced like English "k" at the end of a word either.

Instead, the final "ㄱ" makes a sound phonologists call an unreleased stop, so the sound of the final "oo" ends with the toungue making the shape of a "k" sound without actually letting air out. It's similar to how some American English speakers say the "c" in "act".

Without getting too far off topic, I just wanted to stick up for your listening, which is right on.
 
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