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Alcoholic drinks from China

Lijiang yinjiu (Naxi cellared sweet huangjiu)丽江窨酒

Lijiang yinjiu is a sweet Naxi grain wine from Yunnan, made from a fermented grain mash that is strengthened with distilled baijiu and sealed in jars kept underground. Local accounts say barley, highland barley and wheat are hulled, roasted, steamed and fermented, and that a batch takes at least three months from raw grain to cellar. By custom a jar is buried when a child is born and opened at the child's wedding.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Lijiang yinjiu itself.

Short entryAlcoholic drinks3 months

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo published amounts; the sources are news features and an essay.
Barley, highland barley and wheatHulled and roasted before steaming[lijiangnet2017]
Baijiu (base spirit)Added to the fermented mash; zh Wikipedia dates the practice to the mid-Ming[s1][lijiangnet2017]
StarterA specially made medicinal qu (药粬, a herbal starter) is used (Xinhua essay)

Total time across the recorded steps: 3 months

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Hulled, roasted grain is steamed soft

Step 1 of 3
Hull, roast and steam the grain
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Output: steamed grain.

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

Lijiang yinjiu is a sweet Naxi grain wine from Yunnan, made from a fermented grain mash that is strengthened with distilled baijiu and sealed in jars kept underground. Local accounts say barley, highland barley and wheat are hulled, roasted, steamed and fermented, and that a batch takes at least three months from raw grain to cellar. By custom a jar is buried when a child is born and opened at the child's wedding. Made in 3 steps over 3 months. The longest step, add baijiu, seal and cellar underground, takes at least 3 months (丽江网 (Lijiang net) 2017).

Key numbers
Main stepat least 3 monthsReported[lijiangnet2017]Add baijiu, seal and cellar underground

What makes this one different

Yinjiu is a sweet grain wine fortified with baijiu and aged sealed underground, often for decades. Shaoxing's nü'er hong follows a similar birth-jar custom (zh WP).

Related ferments

Variants

  • Sulima (苏里玛)A home brew of the Pumi and Mosuo that the sources class with early yinjiu as the same kind of local brew.

Safety

No safety information specific to yinjiu was found.

History and sources

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

Yinjiu grew from a Yuan-era local brew drunk through bent bamboo straws. In the mid-Ming, Naxi brewers adopted the Shaoxing method, added distilled spirit and cellared the jars, fixing the style. It was home-made until commercial production after 1979 (zh WP). Yunnan listed yinjiu making as a provincial intangible heritage in 2013 (zh WP).

  1. [xinhua2017] 新华网云南频道 (Xinhua Yunnan), 美文——我写《丽江窨酒》, essay, 5 December 2017 (read via a web.archive.org copy)web
  2. [lijiangnet2017] 丽江网 (Lijiang net), 丽江窨酒历经几十春秋终成一方至味, news feature republished on Sohu, 31 March 2017 (read via a web.archive.org copy)web
  3. [s1] Chinese Wikipedia, 丽江窨酒 (outline only)wiki