Báijiǔ

[an seanduine]

白酒; (báijiǔ) anyone?

Bob

[Nanohedron]

Never tried it. I like shōchū - which is kinda close, I'm guessing. Don't like the price, though.

[an seanduine]

I've never had shōchū. I understand it typically runs less than 45%. The Chinese firewater báijiǔ runs up to 65% or even higher when sold as 'Mongolian' shots. Not much sorghum in Japan, I guess.

Bob

[Nanohedron]

Is báijiǔ typically made from sorghum?

[an seanduine]

They seem to make it from whatever they have on hand. The price thing is an artifact from Mao's endorsing a particular kind, which in turn led to a sort of official party endorsement. I'm told you can get 100ml bottles for about 50 cents, but it might be a little long on the 'sweaty gym socks' flavor.

Bob

[Nanohedron]

So in its own way, shōchū seems to be close kin to báijiǔ in terms of variety in what it's made from. No sorghum that I know of, but sake rice, sweet potatoes, barley, and black sugar are standards. Each has its own distinct flavor profile. There's a distilled liquor from Okinawa called awamori; it's made from long-grained Thai rice. Can't find awamori around here that I know of. I'd like to try it some day.

I expect báijiǔ hits you like a brick.

[an seanduine]

From what I see on the 'inter-webs' the Japanese now use slightly different Kanji, from the 'burnt-liquor' characters in current Chinese. So, very close relatives. The really weird thing is they call the process 'solid-state' fermentation unlike western liquid fermentation.
Yes, a brick, if not something harder. . .

Bob

[Nanohedron]

The really weird thing is they call the process 'solid-state' fermentation unlike western liquid fermentation.

Haven't heard of that, so I'm not sure what it means. I can tell you bare bones about the shōchū process: Just like sake, steamed rice (usually) gets malted with a special mold, and that's your starter. After that you might smush in cooked sweet potatoes, for example. Then yeasts - usually living free in the brewery - convert the sugars into alcohol. The process still involves brewing a liquid mash, though, so maybe it's the malting process they're talking about? Aside from the water content in the steamed rice, that's a dry process. I don't know at what point the yeasts start doing their magic, but I've been able to see into vats on the tube, and they bubble pretty busily during fermentation.

After all that's done, then it's off to the still.

[an seanduine]

Near as I can tell, nearly every rural family has their own 'brewing' technique. They don't seem to have a separate 'malting' step, Yeast and mold are added together into whatever they're using as a base. Sometimes it is done in crockery, much like their pickling practices. That could be 'wet' or 'dry' depending. Some people seem to steam the grain/base and then tie it up in cloth after inoculating/infecting it, allowing the bundle to weep into a vessel below. Up north they use freeze/fractional distillation like I used to make apple-jack. It really seems to be a 'wild-west' thing with the main object to get some sort of 'skull-splitter' as a final result.
The Japanese seem a little more 'regularized' in their approach to booze. The Chinese are closer to how the Japanese do their Natto.
I note that there are now at least two makers here in the US. The Vinn distillery in Portland, and the 'Bye-Joe' brand out of, I think, Texas.

Bob

[Coffee]

I've no experience with either shōchū or báijiǔ; but I've some fairly extensive familiarity with Korean soju.
Are they different names for the same thing? Soju and shōchū?

[Nanohedron]

Are they different names for the same thing? Soju and shōchū?

As you might guess from appearances, both names are related. They derive from the Chinese shāojiǔ meaning "burn alcohol". Soju and shōchū are siblings in kind, but I'm told they're not entirely the same thing. I don't know what the differences would be, but soju appears to have an older history by about 300 years.

For the trivia collectors, báijiǔ means "white alcohol".

[I.D.10-t]

Soju.

Most military bases I went to had a liqueur store that sold that stuff. Wonderful earthy flavor that we classified as a "Sit down" drink. Korean vets brought it back along with their extended family and most people that served over there.

Being in the military during a time when they were not throwing bodies at foreign cultures but rather brass, I just got to see that sweet earthy drink mixed with ice and the occasional cherry juice or lemon.

If they fed it to you with a splash of the above flavorings you wouldn't notice it until you tried to stand up and it told you to sit down again. 3-4 pints of the stuff would usually creep up on even the hardcore drinkers.

[an seanduine]

Yes, 燒酒, 烧酒 (shāojiǔ). A little caution, though. A beginner's lesson in Chinese has a businessman being taught to ask for Báijiǔ when he wants 'white wine'. . .

Bob

[Nanohedron]

Yeah, I saw a travelogue where an American in Shanghai was offered "white wine". His eyes bugged out and he said, "I got news for you, my friend - that ain't wine. That's liquor."

It's probably much the same in Chinese and Korean as with the Japanese: Their terminology doesn't really distinguish categorically between liquor and wine as ours does; it's all alcohol and they take it from there. I'm guessing the Chinese catchall "wine" is probably thought to be more elegant English; that it's easier to say than "liquor" doesn't hurt, either. Strictly speaking, the native Japanese word "sake" (likewise its Sino-Japanese counterpart "shu") simply means drinkable alcohol, whereas (what we call) sake is customarily termed Nihon-shu over there; it would be called sake in context. Only outside of Japan does the word "sake" specifically mean Nihon-shu.