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Vinegar from Korea

Joseon grain and honey vinegars초법

Joseon household books give many kinds of vinegar, among them grain vinegars made from wheat, barley or rice with nuruk or a home-grown mould coat. The steps below follow the wheat vinegar (초법) of the Eumsik dimibang (about 1670). Wheat is soaked for three days, steamed, and covered with paper-mulberry leaves until a yellow coat grows, then dried and kept in a wrapped jar of water for 40 days.

Fully documentedVinegar46 days – 48 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe Eumsik dimibang's 초법 gives times but no amounts.
WheatSoaked, steamed and grown with a yellow mould coat under paper-mulberry (닥) leaves[eumsik-ws]
Paper-mulberry leaves (닥잎)Cover the hot steamed wheat on a mat[eumsik-ws]
WaterPoured over the dried mouldy wheat in the jar[eumsik-ws]

Total time across the recorded steps: 46 days – 48 days

Start
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Close-up: water moving into a grain

What changes: Wheat soaks in water for three days and is lifted out

Step 1 of 5
Soak the wheat for three days and drain it
Time
3 days
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Moulds
Saccharomyces sp.
Acetobacter pasteurianus

Output: soaked wheat.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Joseon household books give many kinds of vinegar, among them grain vinegars made from wheat, barley or rice with nuruk or a home-grown mould coat. The steps below follow the wheat vinegar (초법) of the Eumsik dimibang (about 1670). Wheat is soaked for three days, steamed, and covered with paper-mulberry leaves until a yellow coat grows, then dried and kept in a wrapped jar of water for 40 days. Made in 5 steps over 46 days – 48 days. The longest step, put it in a jar with water, wrap the jar and wait 40 days, takes 40 days (Jang Gye-hyang 1670). Saccharomyces sp. and Acetobacter pasteurianus do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step40 daysReported[eumsik-ws]Put it in a jar with water, wrap the jar and wait 40 days

What makes this one different

A mould coat is grown on the steamed grain under leaves before it goes into water, unlike the nuruk-and-rice vinegars of the same period.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Eumsik dimibang 초담는법 (wheat and rice vinegar)Wheat (4 doe) is steamed on Yudu day and grown green under paper-mulberry leaves, then dried. Early in the 7th month, 1 mal of rice is soaked and steamed, and a dongi of water is drawn with a new gourd before anyone else has seen it. A doe of nuruk, 3 doe of the mouldy wheat, the warm rice and the water go into the jar, which is tied under a clean cloth and stirred with a peach branch after 7 days [eumsik-ws]. The reading of the 17th-century Korean is ours.
  • Barley vinegar of the Gosa chwaryoThe first text known to give a vinegar method, a brewed barley vinegar [ek-sikcho].
  • Sallim gyeongje grain and honey vinegarsThe Sallim gyeongje (1715) records grain vinegars of rice, wheat and barley and a honey vinegar, beside fruit and vegetable vinegars [ek-sikcho].

Safety

The Eumsik dimibang gives no safety limits for the wheat vinegar. As a general hazard of grain grown over with mould, a 2025 study of Aspergillus strains, among them isolates from nuruk, notes that A. oryzae and A. flavus are near relatives that differ markedly in making aflatoxin, a carcinogenic mycotoxin [jeong2025]. The recipe grows a yellow mould coat on the wheat, and you cannot tell the safe kind from the toxic kind by eye. WHO says most mycotoxins survive food processing [who-mycotoxins]. This is a historical record, not a tested method. Do not copy it with mould that grows by chance.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture names the Gosa chwaryo as the first text with a vinegar method and lists the Gyugon siuibang (Eumsik dimibang), Sallim gyeongje, Jeungbo sallim gyeongje, Imwon simnyukji, Gyuhap chongseo and others as later ones [ek-sikcho]. Kwon (2006) counts three vinegar statements in the Eumsik dimibang, which matches its three recipes (초담는법, 초법 and 매자초) [kwon2006, eumsik-ws].

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [who-mycotoxins] World Health Organization, Mycotoxins (fact sheet)gov
  2. [eumsik-ws] Jang Gye-hyang, Eumsik dimibang (음식디미방, also Gyugon siuibang 閨壼是議方, about 1670), sections 초담는법, 초법 and 매자초, transcription on Korean Wikisource (위키문헌, 음식디미방), read 2026-10archive
  3. [ek-sikcho] Kim Chan-jo, Encyclopedia of Korean Culture (한국민족문화대백과사전), Academy of Korean Studies, article 식초 (食醋, vinegar), written 1995, read 2026-10book
  4. [kwon2006] Kwon S.H. 2006, A study on the manufacture of vinegar as described in 'Jeungbosallimgyeongjae', Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life 16(6):731–739 (abstract)paper
  5. [haruta2006] Haruta S., Ueno S., Egawa I., Hashiguchi K., Fujii A., Nagano M., Ishii M., Igarashi Y. 2006, Succession of bacterial and fungal communities during a traditional pot fermentation of rice vinegar assessed by PCR-mediated denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, International Journal of Food Microbiology 109(1-2):79-87 (abstract)paper
  6. [jeong2025] Jeong E., Kwon Y.J., Seo J.A. 2025, Distinction between Aspergillus oryzae and aflatoxigenic Aspergillus flavus by rapid PCR method based on the comparative sequence analysis of the aflatoxin biosynthesis gene cluster, Journal of Fungi 12(1):10 (abstract)paper