Q. I recently saw a Facebook post by you talking about attending a makgeolli class in Korea. What exactly is makgeolli and why were you so excited about your experience?
Tom Smith
Trenton, New Jersey

Mr. Wizard says …

Yes, I recently spent a week in Korea with my wife and posted some pictures of the cool stuff we saw during our vacation. On the last day of our visit, I participated in a short class about makgeolli taught by Joe Kim at Baekusaeng Makgeolli, his makgeolli brewery in Seoul.

For starters, what is makgeolli? In Korean, the word makgeolli loosely translates to “roughly filtered” and describes a fermented beverage made from rice, water, and nuruk. There are different styles of makgeolli, but the simplest way to describe the trunk of this branched beverage tree begins with wonju — the porridge-like, milky, delicious, fermented mixture of rice, water, and nuruk after about a week of fermentation. When wonju is roughly strained through cheesecloth, the result is makgeolli. To draw a parallel, makgeolli is similar to nigori sake, the unfiltered sake often found in Japanese sushi restaurants. But makgeolli is not sake!

As a modern brewer educated in the methods of beer brewing, it’s a given that malting is required to make what is known around the world as beer. And when beer brewers wax poetic about malted barley, we can all recite the story about why it’s the perfect ingredient: It provides starch-degrading enzymes, an abundant source of starch, a wide range of color and flavor depending on how the malt is produced, and a durable husk that serves as the perfect filter material when separating wort after mashing. 

But makgeolli is not made from rice malt — it’s made from rice. There is no yeast pitching involved, nor is there any special preparation of koji —  steamed rice inoculated with Aspergillus oryzae that serves as the conversion engine in sake brewing. Instead, makgeolli uses another ingredient called nuruk, a dried grain cake resembling Cracklin’ Oat Bran cereal. It turns out that nuruk is to makgeolli brewers what malt and yeast are to beer brewers. Cool stuff!

Unlike beer brewing, makgeolli has a long history of being made at home alongside other cooking tasks, including the preparation of fermented staples like kimchi made from cabbage, radish, and countless seasonal greens, as well as soy pastes, soy sauces, and fermented seafoods.

Nuruk preparation begins with making an uncooked grain “biscuit dough” of sorts that is protected from rainfall but exposed to the local environment for several weeks before being air-dried for prolonged storage. The moist grain biscuit acts like a petri dish, providing a medium for wild fungi, yeast, and bacteria to grow. Because cereal grains naturally carry a heavy load of microorganisms — especially lactic acid bacteria — the grains themselves become a key source of microbes in freshly prepared nuruk.

Homebrewers interested in wild beers or culturing yeast from their local environment can see how nuruk is both an ingredient and a differentiator, contributing to unique makgeollis brewed in different regions with distinct microclimates and airborne microbial populations. As it turns out, preparing nuruk is a major chore, so many makgeolli breweries — even small artisanal ones — purchase it. However, commercially available nuruk is still a “wild product” because it is made using traditional methods rather than lab-purified cultures of molds, yeast, and bacteria.

You asked why makgeolli got me excited, Tom, and those are some of the reasons. I’ll finish with a quick overview of how it’s made and what it tastes like.

Makgeolli brewing was traditionally an extension of cooking because the first steps really are food preparation. Nuruk preparation is like making dough, except the dough is never baked. The next step involves washing, soaking, and steaming rice. This crucial process removes unbound starch from the surface, hydrates the grain, and gelatinizes the starches. Once cooked, the rice is cooled and loosely broken up to minimize clumping. The next step literally involves manual labor when makgeolli is made in small batches: Water is mixed by hand into the cooled rice along with nuruk until all the water is absorbed. And that’s pretty much it for brew day.

The mixture is then transferred to a crock or similar vessel for fermentation. At this point, there are very few, if any, fermentable sugars present. What happens next is known as a parallel fermentation. Fungi, primarily Aspergillus and Rhizopus species from the nuruk, produce enzymes that hydrolyze rice starch. Some enzymes are already present from nuruk production, and more are produced as the fungi grow. At the same time, yeast convert sugars into alcohol, carbon dioxide, and flavor compounds, while bacteria produce organic acids, some alcohol, and additional flavor compounds.

During the first couple of days, the rice solids begin to liquefy and typical signs of fermentation appear. Unlike beer fermentation, where oxidation is a concern, it is normal to stir makgeolli during the first few days. Fermentations are covered to keep debris out, but the process is essentially open.

Some types of makgeolli include multiple cooked rice additions to boost strength and complexity. The version we made in Joe Kim’s class was a simple style with no additional rice added during fermentation. After about a week, the wonju was strained and squeezed through cheesecloth to separate the solids. Makgeolli is typically stored in plastic bottles in the refrigerator as a safety measure since continued fermentation can lead to bottle bombs. Unlike beer, original gravity is not measured, and hydrometers are rarely used. What I ended up with tasted pretty darn good!

Makgeolli settles quickly in the bottle, so it’s gently shaken before serving to rouse the rice solids. Depending on its age, it can range from lightly sparkling to still, and the drinking experience combines silky mouthfeel, aromatic esters, organic acids, umami richness, and sometimes a subtle funk.

This barely scratches the surface of this traditional and intriguing beverage. What really piques my interest is how different makgeolli brewing is from beer brewing, along with the wide range of variations produced at home and by artisanal breweries throughout Korea. Some versions incorporate fruit and spices, opening the door to all sorts of experimentation.

A key part of Joe Kim’s introduction included a tasting. Interestingly, commercially produced makgeolli in Korea often differs from traditional versions. Alternate starch sources are sometimes used, and modern mash processes resembling adjunct brewing may be employed. Commercial examples are also commonly sweetened, often with zero-calorie sweeteners. These versions are quite different from traditional makgeolli and, unfortunately, misrepresent the real thing. While traditional makgeolli is easy to find in specialty shops, bars, and restaurants throughout Korea, it’s much harder to find outside Korean communities in cities like Los Angeles and New York. The good news is that it’s not all that difficult to produce a simple introductory version at home.

Further Reading . . .

While makgeolli is quite different from sake, they also have some similarities. Learn more about making sake here.