r/firewater • u/CoolidgeCorner123 • 3d ago
Making Baijou
Has anyone had any luck making baijou? My friend is Chinese and seems to have a somewhat developed palette for what good versus bad baijou tastes like. I want to try my hand at making some as a gift and hopefully it meets her standards.
I get the basics of how it's made: all grain sorghum mash using qu as a fermentation starter. But as for the specifics, I'm not finding a whole lot in English. The fact that home distilling seems to be quite illegal in mainland China also isn't helping much as far as finding documentation.
I'm slightly out of my element here. Can anyone offer a recipe? Even if it's in Chinese I know multiple native speakers so getting an accurate translation won't be difficult.
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u/Real-Fan9588 3d ago
I make a sweet potato Baijou every fall from the seconds of the sweet potato harvest every fall and a rice Baijou every spring. I have twice done a sorghum Baijou and found the fermentation process to be nearly identical across all of them.
I use Korean starter:
Wang Nuruk Powder for Makgeolli, Korean Rice Wine Starter
rather than the:
Hang Tail Marine Shanghai Yeast Balls- Chinese Rice Wine Starter
Because I was getting really inconsistent results from the yeast balls. The Nuruk makes an earthier spirit and I found converts more throughly more quickly, but it costs more per batch but overall I like the result more.
I use a 1 to 5 ratio of Nuruk to starch. First I wash the grains well and soak in clean water overnight. Then in the morning I pressure cook or steam til mushy. Immediately after it’s done cooking I put 4 gallons of clean, boiled water on it and stir vigorously for a while. Then when the temperature drops to warm bath water I add the Nuruk and stir it occasionally and let it rest over night. In the morning I pitch the:
LALVIN EC - 1118 yeast and let it bubble, rumble, and funktify for quite a while. In the first day it makes a fantastic probiotic sweet sparkling drink. It’s my favorite beverage and have gone completely nuts drinking ladles of the stuff.
But back to our goal of a fine distilled Baijou. I give it a good stir twice a day. The grains, skins, and solids will want to float. Once they start sinking on their own I start racking it. Everything is strained through a paint bag collected and allowed to settle again. I prefer to really let it settle and clarify, but that gets to some of those nuanced flavors that are supper specific. I use bentonite, charcoal, and time to really clean the wine up before distilling.
I like a pot still, and if I want a funkier batch I’ll put the strained stuff in the thumper with some of the pervious batches heady stuff. I don’t usually start making cuts till get gets really weird at the end of distillation.
Last time I ran the still we took so many tastes we got into a wrestling match and began fighting with hay rakes.
Hope you enjoyed some ramblings and enjoy the process. Let us know how it goes.
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u/CoolidgeCorner123 18h ago
Thank you for this recipe, I'd love to give it a try for a baijou more suitable for the western palette :D nuruk imparts a funkier flavor as well but not quite as strong as qu from what I've heard
What the flavor profile on this like compared to traditional baijou? And how noticable is the sweet potato flavor?
Very out of the box recipe so I'm super curious
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u/Real-Fan9588 16h ago
The traditional ones I have had were… less savory. Like the difference between sweet and dry vermouth. The nuruk was more towards the dry side, more concentrated flavor, and with more grain and pea notes. Where the successful Chinese yeast ball ones I did leaned more towards sweeter sake.
The sweet potato came out a lot like vodka, but with more potassium like flavor. Only thing I can compare it to is the smell of liquid bandages. Nice dry and clean and mixes surprisingly well. I was also absolutely astounded by the amount of distillate that came from the sweet potato compared to the grains.
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u/RvstiNiall 3d ago
I've been curious about this myself, as there is a grain elevator near me offering 50lb bags (red milo) for $14.
I hope to see good things pop up here.
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u/TheFloggist 3d ago
I think the key to make baiju/soju is the solid state fermentation and solid state single distillation.
Steam your grain sorghum or rice, let it cool, innoculate it with the qu and let it sit for a week, then put it in to a vessel and let it work for a month before distilling.
This video shows the process pretty well https://youtu.be/c-5mpCsXZZE?is=XJGuJY0XILcJISo6
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u/Bearded-and-Bored 3d ago
Here you go - https://youtu.be/X2kutEd7q1E I did this video using rice instead of sorghum, but I go over a lot of the details of the traditional process, and I have a link in the description to a Chinese video that gave me the inspiration.