Sogokju

History

Sogokju sits within the drinks section of Eumsik dimibang — roughly fifty rice-wine and vinegar recipes, about a third of the whole book and one of the largest single-manuscript records of Korean fermentation. Jang Gye-hyang's method is a doubled, two-mash brew: a first mash of ground, porridge-cooked white rice with a modest measure of nuruk and wheat flour, then, once it ripens, a second feeding of steamed white rice with more nuruk and some of the first mash's liquor. The name is generally read as "little-nuruk wine" (小麴酒, also written 素麴酒), and the recipe bears it out — the proportion of nuruk to rice is deliberately small. Sogokju is popularly celebrated as one of Korea's oldest liquors: the Hansan sogokju of Chungcheong is said to descend from a Baekje court wine that refugees brewed to ease their sorrow after the kingdom fell, and it carries the affectionate nickname "sit-down wine" (앉은뱅이 술), a legend holding that a taster grew too tipsy to stand back up. Those origin and naming stories are cherished tradition rather than documented fact; what the manuscript itself secures is an early vernacular seventeenth-century witness to the method, brewed — like everything in this book — before the chili pepper reached Korean kitchens.

Ingredients

• white rice (base)
• doe nuruk (base)
• doe fine wheat flour (base)
• white rice (second addition)
• doe nuruk (second addition)

Instructions

1. Wash 7 mal 5 doe white rice clear, soak, grind, make porridge with hot water and cool.
2. Mix in 7 doe nuruk and 5 doe fine wheat flour and brew until ripe.
3. Wash 7 mal 7 doe white rice clear, steam as rice, cool.
4. Mix all the base brew into 3 doe nuruk together with the rice — the wine is good.