The Fizz #47: Alice Jun, winemaker at Hana Makgeolli, is sharing the broad depth of flavors in Korean rice wine
Alice Jun speaks about the different categories of Korean sool, what makes makgeolli unique, the history of Korean botanical wines, and where she finds her joy.
For this issue of The Fizz, I spoke with winemaker Alice Jun at Hana Makgeolli in Brooklyn, New York. Alice focuses on brewing different kinds of sool—that’s alcohol in Korean—and specializes in makgeolli and yakju, sedimented and clarified rice wines. The incredibly diverse world of Korean rice wines is new to me, so I’m thrilled to have been able to learn about these historic and modern wines with Alice.
In this issue, we talk about the different categories of Korean rice wine, the unique fermentation practices that give the wine its expressiveness, how Alice uses floral and botanical components in her brewing process, and her inspiration and joy in the work she does. I’m so excited to learn more about makgeolli, and to support this passionate winemaker in her future work.
Margot: I'd love to hear about your background and what brought you into the wine industry.
Alice: I came to the wine industry through home-brewing, which is how a lot of winemakers and fermenters and beer makers get to it. Really homebrewing was a practice that started for me as a child, my dad used to make makgeolli at home, and it's something that I always participated in—the making, not in the drinking.
Whether it was steaming rice or washing or spreading it out when it cools or mixing it with the starter. That turned into a personal homebrewing passion starting in 2011. When I moved to New York for college, I brewed a couple of batches in my first dorm, but that was back when I really didn't understand the chemistry of fermentation. I approached it from a very intuitive place, it was more so an understanding of what things should look like or what things should smell like, how the ferment should be behaving and what ratios to combine everything in. It was all based on kind of muscle memory.
If you approach fermentation in that way, you can make wonderful things and there is such promise and value in intuitive fermenting, as there is an intuitive cooking, for example, but of course it also led to a lot of mistakes. Those mistakes really started me into my journey of researching and understanding and sustaining self study. I started running back the history of fermentation and brewing methods and learning about how unique Korean sool was from a fermenting or chemical perspective. From there, I was hooked. It turned into what I like to describe as a very expensive passion project.
I was brewing large quantities, maybe 40 gallons at a time for the purpose of experimentation and learning. I was changing one variable at a time to understand what it does to the fermentation process, to supplement my limited online research. Because of the relative volume of that practice, I had to then share the makgeollis more and more—I started doing pop up events just to get it out of my fridge.
You know, an obsession kind of turns into a more structured practice and then starts turning into a discipline. That’s how I got started. It was through these events where I was actually getting out there and sharing the wines with friends, but also with people that I didn't know, people that maybe had not heard about sool at all, or never even saw something that looks like makgeolli. It was during that time and the positive response they got then that led me to believe that there is a market for this kind of product in the US.
Margot: I love that. I feel like there is not a lot of sool out there in the United States market right now that I have personally seen. Can you talk through how it's made and what makgeolli actually is?
Alice: Absolutely. Sool at a basic level—traditional sool—there's a distinction between traditional and conventional sool in this modern day. The traditional sool is typically a combination of unpolished rice, although it can be other starches as well, nuruk, which is a traditional Korean fermentation starter—that's what really makes this process unique—and water.
Nuruk is typically comprised of wheat and barley. That wheat and barley is ground into a course flour, wetted, formed into a cake, and then inoculated traditionally in open air. In particular, during the summer months or during the monsoon season in Korea where the ambient humidity and the heat is conducive for microbial inoculation. What that means is that nuruk is a wild fermentation starter, first and foremost, and the reason for that is because it's not only taking wild yeast from the air, but it's also taking wild saccharopine molds that create enzymes.
At this point, a lot of people would ask is it similar to sake in the process? Yes, sake is the closest cousin to sool, but the microbiome makeup of what's in the nuruk versus the microbes that are chosen typically for sake making is completely distinct. The white mold that we know as koji is aspergillus oryzae. In nuruk, you're not only capturing aspergillus oryzae in open air, but you're also gathering many variants, other wild variants of aspergillus. You're also capturing less common saccharopine enzymes like rhizopus, for example.
In addition to the wild yeast and the wild saccharopine molds, you're also catching wild lactobacillus, which is practically non-existent in the world of conventional sake. From a Western perspective, in the sour beers that we know for example, that lactobacillic acid is typically lab grown and pitched in. We’re relying on wild lactobacillis to then create lactic acid. As a result of the nuruk, and all of those microbes being in one starter, it's introduced from day one of the ferment. It's not separated out.
It's a true parallel ferment from day one. You're getting the saccharification of the rice from starch to sugar, in addition to the conversion of sugar to alcohol and CO2 at the same time. Our job as brewers, and especially in more advanced levels in Korean brewing, is to get to know the nuruk and your brews in a way where you can create an environment where a brew can focus on saccharification in the beginning of the process. You don't want the yeast to take off and create too much alcohol from the start and then burnout.
We’re creating a long alcohol ferment later on in the fermentation cycle. We do this by changing the types of rice we use. For example, for us, it's normally a distinction between medium grain white rice and sweet white rice because of the innate difference in the amount of glucose or starch that's available. You can do this by staging out your brews. The timing of these stages is really important to the overall health of the ferment. The amount is important—how much are you feeding on any given feed? How long are you gonna let that feed go for before adding the next feed? What form does the rice cook in, for that specific feed? There are many variables that you can play with in addition to things like fermentation temperature, for example.
Margot: Wow. That's super interesting. For sool, you’re not polishing the rice like folks do with sake, is that right?
Alice: Yes, that's correct. It's a really good example of an area where sool is distinct from sake. The goal in sake making is typically purity, right? You're going for a clean singularity, and that is what mastery in sake is based around. In sool, the goal is completely different—the goal is balance. You're relying on a wild ecosystem of microbes, and so many more nutrients other than starch. The outer whole of that rice contains fats and proteins that can create other flavor compounds when in reaction with wild yeast and wild lactobacillus. It's impossible to create that singularity like there is in sake. Our goal is balance between sweetness and bitterness and acid, amongst other things.
Margot: I love that distinction. Will you help me understand the categories of sool? Makgeolli is a type of sool, is that right?
Alice: Yes, that’s right. Sool is the category. Within that, there's so many different types of sool. There’s makgeolli, there’s takju, there’s soju, there’s yakju, and even gwaha-ju.
Margot: So, sool is kind of alcohol in general?
Alice: Exactly. In Korean, when you say you're drinking a beer or vodka or whatever, you would also call that sool. For our purposes and describing the category, all traditional Korean alcohol is sool.
[Here’s a link that goes through all of these different categories]
Whenever you make a sool, you get wonju, which is a coarsely filtered rice wine. The lees have been filtered out, and then the entirety of the brew is untouched, undiluted, and with no intervention on it. That wonju will separate out into a clear portion and sedimented portion if you just let it rest. If it's just kept as is and served with the sediment it is referred to as the topju. It can be even diluted or a little bit, because you can brew it up to about 18-20% using traditional methodologies. So long as it's kept above 10%, it's considered a takju.
Wonju can be diluted down below 10%, or the sedimentary portion can be diluted down to 10% or lower, and then it's considered a makgeolli. The top portion of the wine is the clear portion, and is referred to as a yakju. It's more commonly referred to as cheonju, but for our purposes we like to emphasize the term yakju because cheonju is actually the word to describe sakes that were brewed in Korea earlier on.
That is specifically to describe rice wines that were made with koji and yeast, not nuruk. So people are more familiar with the term cheonju, but yakju is actually to describe clarified wines that are made with nuruk. Soju is the distillate, and gwaha-ju is fortified wines. That’s the description at a high level.
Margot: That makes sense, thank you for going through that with me. On your website, it mentions that you use only organic rice. How do you source the rice that you use?
Alice: Yes, we have experimented with so many different kinds of rice. Typically we're only dealing with Japonica variants of rice, but we tested through native Korean variants of rice as well. For us, it was very important, from a business perspective especially, to keep the cost of goods lower. Of course there's a limit to that when you're choosing a brewing philosophy that's a little bit more culture focused. It was really important for us to not have to fly 4,000 pounds of rice from Korea. It was also important for us to choose organic, because of how the quality ultimately impacts nuruk.
We were able to find and connect with a medium to large scale family farm based in Maxwell, California. It's really hard to grow rice organically. There are only maybe a handful of farmers in California that grow organic pesticide-free rice. We also just loved the family. It's a matriarchal family, the head of the family, Sherry, owns the ship and we just really loved working with her. We adjusted the recipe to fit the rice.
Margot: Awesome. You use flowers in some of your wines, which is really fascinating to me. How has the history of flowers in fermentation impacted your work?
Alice: The use of flowers is a very deep part of the Korean sool tradition and has documented origin along with the origins of just rice wine in general. It’s the same reason why any kind of botanical or medicinal herbs were used in any kind of alcohol making all over the world. It's for medicinal purposes, it's also more pleasant to drink sometimes. In Korean culture, the presence of flowers in sool making used to be a more common thing. What we see in flavored makgeolli today is purees in flavors like banana and strawberry and blueberry. The use of flowers such as chrysanthemums such as hydrangeas, azaleas, native flowers to Korea, are an old practice.
They not only add tannins to the wine, they also add a sweeter fragrance. In the case of hydrangeas, for example, they have a chemical compound called phyllodulcin that’s something like 500 times sweeter than sugar, but it's not a fermentable sugar—it adds sweetness to a wine. It's unfortunately a pretty lost practice, and I don't think it has to do with how viable these wines are. It’s a compounding of all the reasons why conventional sool became conventional in the way it has, plus a misunderstanding of consumer preferences.
I feel like the industry so far, at least until the 2010s, assumed that consumers wanted sweet and fruity and more artificial flavors because it was fun or more “Western”, or more interesting, but I think that the use of flowers as, as delicate as they are, appeals to the consumer today because there's a subtlety to it. You have to drink it and really think about what you're drinking, and try to pick up on those notes. There's also something very familiar, right? We pass by flowers all the time and we smell, for example, a white Jasmine flower, that has richness to it. Chrysanthemums have a herbaceousness and deep vegetal smell to them. I think that that's why people are drawn to floral wines.
Margot: That's awesome. I was trying to do some research around these flower based wines and came up with very little, so when you're saying it's kind of like a lost art, that makes sense to me. Why do you choose the flowers that you choose for your wines?
Alice: Well, chrysanthemum was one of the first flowers that I ever experimented with. That and Jasmine. I think out of all the flowers, chrysanthemum is the most popular in sool. Our overall mission at Hana Makgeolli is to show people the breadth of the category. It's not just about makgeolli, a sedimentary rice wine. It’s showing all the different styles and variety in the category that people might not know of.
Chrysanthemum is a really great introduction to this style of botanicals. We've also introduced other botanical wines on a more seasonal basis. We’ve used schisandra berries in our makgeolli, we did a mugwort makgeolli, and we’re in the process of making a pine needle makgeolli. The intention behind it was to first introduce people to this world of botanical sool.
Margot: That's awesome. Are these wines that have botanical elements drunk with dinner or is there a ceremonial aspect to these kinds of wines? How are they traditionally consumed?
Alice: Sool has many historical purposes, but sometimes something doesn't have to have a purpose, and it's just meant to be enjoyed. Unless there was a flower wine that was specific to a region in Korea and there was a celebration of that region, I don't see it being used for any kind of cultural or religious ceremony. That being said, sool in general, alcohol in general, has a deep history in Korean culture that is tied to religious or Confucius roots. Using it to honor your ancestors, for example, in ceremonies offering it to family as more of a gesture.
That was definitely a big part of Korean culture, but also in a more modern sense, it is for the sake of enjoying it with others. We are talking about sool within the context of Hana Makgeolli, as of course a Korean beverage, but also a beverage that has so much breadth in not just style, but in flavor. We like to emphasize pairing ability as well. For the Hwaju for example, it’s dry, it’s floral, it has some tannins, it's a little lighter in ABV and lighter in body. Of course it would go so well with Korean foods, but I also think it does really well across cuisines.
With Middle Eastern cuisines, especially the ones where there's a fermented dairy product or an herb like zaatar. I think it really does well with fish. For that reason, we try to ask people to open up their minds about the occasion in which you can drink this. Our Hwaju in particular pairs well with so many things.
Margot: How do you source your flowers and how do you make sure that they live up to your quality measures?
Alice: Across flowers, Chrysanthemum is one type of flower, but that there's so many different sub genus of chrysanthemums. As a result, the flavor that you get when you steep the wines in water and when you steep them in alcohol is so different. We have to be really particular about the flowers we’re getting. Generally speaking, when we're shopping in flower markets, we are looking for closed bud yellow chrysanthemums. Even within that, there's so many different types and they can steep flavors that are a bit more heavy and bitter and maybe metallic to light and fragrant.
It's actually quite a challenge to try to keep it consistent because we don't use a ton, and therefore we don't buy a ton. In a single brew we’re putting in about 5 to 600 grams. It's tiny. The reason for that is because we want it to keep the infusion very subtle. We buy flowers from various flower and tea markets—some in the city, some in Korea, and we just have to go through each one, steep it and see how it does. Sometimes you have to blend some teas together to create the fragrance we want.
Margot: That’s awesome. How are you thinking about the future of your work? Are you thinking about experimenting with different kinds of botanicals in the future?
Alice: Right now we have two projects going on. One is the continuation of our botanical makgeollis. The reason why we actually started making our botanical makgeolli is because whenever we make our clarified wine, we have leftover sediment that we don't want to just throw away. In sool tradition, taking the sediment of an entire brew and diluting it with water or some kind of tea, is what truly makes makgeolli. Makgeolli is defined, at least within the world of traditional brewing, as something that's diluted below 10% ABV. We did that based on the need to not waste brew, but also to show people that we can make actual makgeolli and keep the forefront of the tradition in mind by featuring other Korean flavors or Korean botanicals and herbs.
This is a continuation of that, and we do that seasonally because we make our clarified wine once a quarter. We'll be featuring different botanicals through that, and some of them are going to be repeats based off of consumer feedback. We're working on another line of rice varietals or grain varietals. We just came out with the brown rice line, and we're going to be working on two or three more to show people the diversity in the category.
Margot: Where do you find the joy in your work?
Alice: I really truly enjoy every aspect of the job. I genuinely believe that I was very lucky to have found my passion from a younger age. Something that I've realized over the last year, that was quite surprising and maybe changed my perspective, is that I always expected brewing to be the funnest part of the process, and it absolutely is super fun and we get to be so creative with it. But building a team is probably my favorite part, and the most unexpected. We have eight people on the team so far.
We were so lucky, despite all the staffing issues that this industry has, and specifically in COVID, we have passionate people come through our doors every day and I just couldn't be more grateful for that.
Margot: Thank you so much for spending time with me and talking me through your process. I learned a lot and am so excited to keep learning about this broad category of wines and all the incredible flavors they bring!
You can support Alice by buying her wines and following her on Instagram. She also does events from time to time—look out for those on her Instagram page. If you’re thirsty for more information about Korean sool or makgeolli, I recommend reading this NYT article by Chang W. Lee and Mike Ives that features Hana Makgeolli, as well as this Saveur article by Juliana Sohn. I’m so excited to continue exploring this space.
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