KOREAN NAME: 중원 청명주 REVIEW: With the in-laws visiting the US again, I had another excuse to have them mule over some sool. I didn’t have time to do much research so I jumped at the first cheongju/yakju that I didn’t recognize. The bottle looked fancy and it came as a set! Then I saw the…
KOREAN NAME: 미몽 막걸리 REVIEW: According to Kooksoondang’s website, Mi Mong means “The Dream of the Rice”. The poetic name, the glass bottle, the label illustrated like a classic East Asian painting you’ve seen in a museum—everything bespeaks an upmarket product that should be sipped not swilled. On the bottom of the label, you can even find…
KOREAN NAME: 세종대왕 어주 약주 REVIEW: After lots of disappointment with the brews on offer at COEX’s Food Week Korea 2015, I was pleasantly surprised to run into “traditional liquor teacher” Jang Jung-su, the owner and master brewer behind Jangheui Doga. Jang explained that Jangheui has two main brews, a Yakju and Takju (read: makgeolli)…
KOREAN NAME: 지리산 국화주 REVIEW: Curious bottles that I’ve never seen before make me both excited and circumspect. And more often than not, my hesitancy is confirmed with a bad bottle. Jirisan Gookhwaju isn’t bad, per se, but it is firmly in the camp of weird Korean booze that you would drink on a dare…
KOREAN NAME: 유기농 막걸리 REVIEW: Yuginong was a bottle I had earmarked for trying in the future but it wasn’t till I finally picked it up that I realized it’s made by Baesangmyun Brewery. Obviously a good sign as I have yet to try a bad brew from them. And with the appellation Yuginong—literally organic—this brew promised to…
KOREAN NAME: 부안 참뽕 막걸리 REVIEW: Dong Jin Brewery’s Buan Champpong is much like its counterpart Carbonated Rice Makgeolli: it doesn’t use aspartame (which I’m grateful for) but it has been over-loaded with stevia and sucralose. Buan Champpong is also flavored with Korean mulberry, or odi (오디). But my guess is this adds more to the sugar-content than…
KOREAN NAME: 우곡주 REVIEW: I must have poor beginner’s luck. The first two Bae Hyejeong Doga Brewery (BHD) bottles I tried were execrable, while the last two—Horangi and now Ugok-ju—have been nothing short of delightful. The BHD English website calls Ugok-ju “The absolute premium rice wine”. The fancy glass bottle and simple but classic design of the label…
KOREAN NAME: 국순당 쌀 막걸리 REVIEW: Your average canned makgeollis typically have two things in common: carbonation and cloying sweetness. Kooksoondang Ssal Makgeolli is an outlier, then, or at least further from the center. For starters, the carbonation is quite light; I usually prefer a brew with more, but in Kooksoondang Ssal’s case it seemed to fit the…
KOREAN NAME: 순희 REVIEW: Bohae Brewery’s Soony is a bottle that is slightly difficult to come by but has all the traits of a bottom-shelf brew: i.e., pasteurized and made with aspartame as well as a whole host of other additives. This includes stevia, a sugar substitute, and something called tomatine. This is apparently a glycoalkaloid that…
KOREAN NAME: 느린마을 이화주 REVIEW: How can the makgeolli industry make a quality product that is true to the origins of this wonderful brew? According to an article in The Hankyoreh, breweries should abide by these three practices: Use domestic rice, not imported rice. Stop using aspartame and other artificial sweeteners. Switch from plastic bottles to glass bottles.
takjoo journals 