Glutinous rice liqueur

In different eating habits in different regions of China, northerners take wheat as their staple food, while southerners take rice as their staple food.

Compared with rice, wheat is eaten in many ways. For example, it can be made into noodles, steamed buns, steamed bread, bread, pancakes, and wonton, jiaozi.

The way to eat rice is much simpler. There is almost no other way to eat it except to cook a pot of white rice. You can make vermicelli occasionally, not as a staple food, but as a dish or something.

Rice is divided into japonica rice, indica rice and glutinous rice. What we usually call the staple food, namely rice, is made of japonica rice and indica rice. Glutinous rice can't be a staple food. Eating glutinous rice once or twice occasionally may feel better than eating other rice, but if you eat too much, you will be very tired and can't eat any more. Glutinous rice is too sticky to eat often and is not easy to digest.

The yield of glutinous rice is not high. Most of the rice we grow most often are japonica rice and indica rice. There are few races of glutinous rice. Occasionally, some people plant them, and most of them are sold or changed. Only a small part is left, and it is also earmarked in your own home.

Although glutinous rice is not commonly used in every family, it is indispensable to everyone. Every Spring Festival, in the southern countryside, every household should make some glutinous rice cakes and brew an altar of glutinous rice liqueur. These must be made of glutinous rice.

Ciba is celebrated once a year, but glutinous rice liqueur is brewed by ordinary people. For example, if an old man has a birthday, a child gets married, and a new house catches fire (the new house moves), a can of glutinous rice liqueur should be prepared ten and a half months before the festival.

On the day of wine setting, pour the wine out of the jar, add some water, put some brown sugar or white sugar, cook a pot of glutinous rice sweet wine, and then set ten tables and eight tables. Men drink soju (distilled liquor), and women are afraid of getting drunk, so they drink one or two bowls of glutinous rice liqueur. So one by one blushed, everyone was excited, and there were more words, and the festive and lively atmosphere became stronger.

Of course, sweet wine doesn't have to be boiled and drunk, just mixed with some water to dilute the taste of the wine. In fact, the sweet wine eaten raw tastes better. Original flavor, sweetness and mellowness will be stronger, which I liked when I was a child.

Although in that era of material scarcity, villagers would brew an altar of glutinous rice liqueur for the New Year, which was more interesting and enjoyable to entertain guests.

Every year years ago, my father brewed an altar of glutinous rice liqueur, and I always took a bowl of glutinous rice liqueur that just came out of the nest and ate it on the day when the wine came out of the nest. The sweet wine juice just out of the nest is tender and sweet, and it will be thicker after a long time.

The brewing process is not difficult, and the brewing process is not complicated. Soak the washed glutinous rice in water for a day and a half. After soaking, drain the glutinous rice and pour it into the washed rice retort. The bottom of rice retort is padded with one or two pieces of brown, which is breathable and does not leak rice grains. Then, put Mi Zan on the pot and pour water into the pot, just enough to cover her feet. Then light a fire in the stove at the bottom of the pot and steam for an hour or two, and the glutinous rice will be cooked.

After the glutinous rice is cooked, take out the rice retort and put it in a bucket big enough. Then pour a bucket of cold water into the retort to cool the cooked glutinous rice. Then pound a proper amount of cake medicine (traditional distiller's yeast), sprinkle it on the cooled glutinous rice, and then pour a bucket of cold water to let the cake medicine penetrate into the glutinous rice with the water flow, so that the cake medicine will be mixed evenly. After the cooked glutinous rice is completely cooled, pour it out of the rice cooker and pour it into the pot, and stir it repeatedly once or twice to make the rice grains no longer agglomerate and the cake and medicine are fully mixed. The traditional method is to pour glutinous rice into the pot, mash the cake medicine and then mix it, which often makes the cake medicine mixed unevenly. This is a great innovation here.

After the cake medicine is mixed, smooth the glutinous rice in the pot and cover it with a layer of clean straw. Then take the ashes from the furnace, put them out with water, sprinkle some water on the furnace, cool down the heat before, then spread a thick layer of straw around the furnace wall, and half of it is exposed on the furnace wall. Finally, put the pot filled with cooked glutinous rice on the stove covered with straw, fold the half of the straw exposed on the stove, apply it on the edge of the pot, cover it, and press the stone, and the whole manufacturing process is completed.

After a day or two, usually about 36 hours, you will smell a mellow wine. At this time, open the lid and pull the straw that covers the pot away. What I see is no longer a pot of glutinous rice, but a mass of rice floating on a thick drink. You will feel a faint heat when you touch it with your hands. This is the successful glutinous rice liqueur.

After the wine is brewed, it must be scooped out in time and sealed in a jar, so as to "leave the nest". You can't let it be covered in dimples. If it is covered for a long time, it will be sour and become "vinegar". According to legend, Motta, son of Du Kang, the wine saint, was too lazy to let the wine ferment too much during the brewing process. It was not until the second1day that he opened the jar and found that the wine was sour. So he added a unitary word after "21" and named this acid solution "vinegar". This is the origin of our vinegar today, so some people call vinegar "lazy vinegar".

Different from the dictionary definition, distiller's grains, liqueur and distiller's grains are all nicknames of mash in the dictionary, but here, distiller's grains refer to the juice of wine, distiller's grains refer to the particles floating on the juice of wine, and liqueur includes distiller's grains and distiller's grains.

We also have people cooking with distiller's grains there. Drain the "wine girl" on the "distiller's grains" and fry a few red peppers, which is the distiller's grains dish. I ate it several times when I was a child, and it was quite delicious. In those years, every family sold wine, and "distiller's grains" were used to feed pigs. Of course, it's all distilled rice wine residue, but we also call it distiller's grains here.

In fact, glutinous rice doesn't have to make sweet wine. Other rice can be brewed, but the taste is not as good as glutinous rice, and it is not as sweet and sticky as glutinous rice wine. Not resistant to cooking, it will rot when cooked, and there will be no rice grains. It is also intolerant. It won't be sweet after ten or eight days, but it will become old wine.

Of course, glutinous rice liqueur is not only needed for Chinese New Year or festive occasions. Usually, the daughter-in-law in rural areas has to prepare a can of glutinous rice liqueur in advance to get pregnant or sit for a month. It is said that glutinous rice liqueur can make women drink it when they are constantly breastfeeding in the second month.

I was ten years old when my mother gave birth to her last child. One day when I came home from school and was hungry, I opened the lid of the jar and stole the glutinous rice liqueur used by my mother for confinement. It wasn't enough to drink one bowl, and then I drank the second bowl. Then I got drunk and fell asleep in bed. When my mother saw it, she found that I was flushed and slept unconscious. She thought I was asleep with a high fever. She was so scared that she didn't know what to do, so she quickly called her father back from the ground.

When my father came back, he was very worried when he saw me sleeping. He quickly picked me up and ran to the hospital, but when his face approached me, he smelled a smell of wine. He realized that I was drunk and had a false alarm.

After that, I never dared to drink glutinous rice wine again.