Nungil Village: Brewing Makeoli the Old Way with Delicious Results

Over a year ago ago in October of 2011, I went to Nungil Village to make Makeoli. I went with with a blogging group. I wanted to go deep into understanding the ancestral and old ways to make makeoli for my health. I believe moderate consumption of alcohol is a natural and healthy and I believe that when prepares as a whole food, with minimal processing and the use of wild grain, it's as wild and natural as possible.

Makeoli has the alcohol percentage above a standard lager( 6%) with the sweetness of a soft drink and milky texture with an acidic kick. Some even are carbonated to have the fizzyness of soda. We love its taste.

Makeoli is particularly special to me. It's an example of what can be called healthy alcohol. When traditionally made, its taste is amazing and it contains many beneficial bacteria and yeast. Just like how kimchi, and yogurt have symbiotic healthy lactobacilli bacteria for our gastrointestinal track, so does Makeoli. However,  Makeoli also has the added benefit of yeast.

For my own personal research, Makeoli is the closest modern brew that is closest to how beer used to be made. While people are acostumed to the tastes of cultivated yeast and highly controlled brewing process, beer used to be wild fermented. The results were wild. 

But like most things, there are dark days for Makeoli.

Most commercial Makeoli is pasteurized and artificially sweetened with Aspartame, which is a known neurotoxin. Fortunately, there are people who are keep to  the old style of making alcohol, such as  commercial brewers or individuals and groups who are doing it themselves for themselves or their families. They are heros to those of us who appreciate the effort to do something that costs a little more but is safe and healthy for people. Nungil Village is one of those heros.

Nungil Makeoli is not a brewer of commercial makeoli, but a school and restaurant to teach people how to make nutritious and delicious Makeoli, food, and how to grow food. 

So my group went to learn. We were not disappointed. 

We drove to  Nungil Restaurant and entered their school. Our teacher, had already the materials laid out before we arrived. On stepping into the room, there was a container of yeast in liquid, nuruk(누룩), a cake wheat, barley, and rice, which has wild gathered lactobacilli bacteria and yeast from the air that accumulated on the cake. Both rested on a tablecloth spread across a long folding table.

I'm a homebrewer so while my Korean is spotty I'm familiar with the brewing process and I felt comfortable as our translator translated the teachers words to us.

Our teacher brought out the steamed rice.

Our teacher told us what to do and we listened.

"The rice must be steamed in a steamer and not a rice cooker so it does not lose sugar. It must be slightly hard."

We spread the rice out and allowed it too cool. When the rice was the temperature of our hand, we would add the nuruk.

"If too hot, the bacteria will die," the teacher said.

He then showed us the nuruk which sat in a metal bowl shown in the picture on the right.  Nuruk is made traditionally by wrapping a wet cake of wheat, barley, and rice in a husk and putting it in a barn or someplace else to gather the wild yeasts and bacteria.

We mixed the nuruk into the rice. The nuruk will break the rice into simple sugars for the yeast to eat and produce the alcohol. Without the nuruk, the complex sugars cannot be broken down into simpler sugars for the yeast to eat and make alcohol.

The brewer and teacher checks the rice to see if its cooled enough to add the nuruk. 

He then adds the nuruk, which he made in a barn outside. 

We mixed the nuruk into the steam rice. 

 

The nuruk has been added to the rice and mixed..

Then the teacher showed us the yeast, which was simply Fleichers Bread yeast prepared in warm water with some sugar.

The yeast is not necessary as it is airborn, everywhere on Earth, but it shortens the process of Makeoli making from 1 and half weeks to four days. It's a modern convenience that speeds up making the alcohol. 

A texture of yeast.

Now why not just add the yeast and not the nuruk. Well, yeast can't break rice into sugar, but the bacteria fund in the nuruk can. Once the nuruk breaks down the rice into simple sugars, the yeast begins it's process.

We mix the yeast into the mixture and pack the rice into a metal drum. I am curious what the ancestral material would have been. Would it have been a clay pot just like those used to make doenjang? I think if they weren't used, I think they would be useful to  allow gas to escape by pushing up the heavy lids until the pressure decreases and the lids seal the pot again.

We mix the yeast into the mixture. Then put the container in the cellar. It will stay there for 4 days and then be moved to cellar room where it will be aged for 2 weeks and very low temperatures. This will mellow the flavors for a taste the brewer prefers. 

The cellar. 

We were lucky to get to drink the Makeoli available. Before drinking it our teacher reminded us to not drink commercial makeoli with Aspartame in it.

The Makeoli he served was special because it was made from the extract of Jerusalem Artichoke leaves (돼지 감자 or pig potato). It has many medicinal effects some of which are pain relief, antioxidization, and stomach soothing. But for us at the time, the taste was enough. It was so nice that we happily drank two or three glasses before we left for another place.

Jerusalem Artichoke Makeoli

Jerusalem Artichoke Roots

NungGil Makeoli

JinAhn Nungil MaEul(Village)

http://www.nungil.org/

JunBok Jinahn-Goon DongHyang-Myun NunGumL-Lee Nungil MaEul