A Glossary of Sool and Makgeolli Terms
Your guide to mastering the language of sool
There’s always a learning curve when it comes to mastering wine, cheese, tea, coffee, and more in the world of alcohol and ferments. The same is true for the deep category of sool. With hundreds of years of history behind it, being equipped with culturally and factually accurate terminologies can help you better understand this storied drink. Below are a few essential terms for the sool enthusiast or newly acquainted makgeolli home brewer.
Ingredients
With sool being such a complex and dynamic drink, you might be surprised to learn that each brew requires only three (and sometimes four) crucial ingredients. It’s water, nuruk, and rice, which can include mepsal, chapsal, or a combination of the two. Here’s a bit of how we source our ingredients below.
Ssal 쌀 Rice. We source our organically grown rice from Polit Farms in Maxwell, CA. They are a small family-owned farm that’s been in operation since 1983.
Mepsal 맵쌀 - Medium Grain White Rice
Chapsal 찹쌀 - Sweet / Glutinous White Rice
Nuruk 누룩 - Fermentation starter. Native to Korea, this is a wheat and barley-based starter, inoculated with wild saccharifying fungus, lactobacillus, and yeast.
Water - You can’t make any alcohol without quality water. At Hana Makgeolli, we use New York water filtered for chlorine using a carbon filter.
Process
Go beyond the two glass doors in our Tasting Room, and you’ll discover how our thoughtfully sourced ingredients come together in a weeks-long process. While makgeolli homebrews can be as short as a Danyangju, or a one-step fermentation process, our brews go through anything from a Samyangju to an Oyangju. Here are a few other terms you might come across when talking about our sool production.
Mitsool 밑술 - First or base ferment made with a porridge of medium-grain white rice
Dotsool 덧술 - Added feeds e.g. Second, Third, Fourth, etc.
Godubap 고두밮 - Steamed rice
Gumong Dduk 구멍떡 - Boiled donut shaped rice cake
Juk 죽 - Porridge
Beombok 범벅 - Half-cooked, paste. Uses less water than porridge.
Baeksulgi 백설기 - Ground, steamed rice cake
Danyangju 단양주 - Single Stage Ferment
I/Sam/Sa/O-yangju 이/삼/사/오-양주 - Two/Three/Four/Five Stage Ferment
General
When talking about the category of sool at our Tasting Room, we use these terms to honor the drink’s storied history. Here are just a few that you might commonly hear in conversation!
Jeontongju 전통주 - Traditional Korean alcohols, implies made with nuruk, using traditional methodologies and ingredients
Sool 술 - Korean word for alcohol, best used to describe the entire category.
Takju 탁주 - The sedimented portion of a brew. Also used to refer to sool with sediment that are above 10% ABV.
Wonju 원주 - The entirety of a brew post coarse filtration, prior to any dilution.
Yakju 약주 - Clarified sool that is made with nuruk.
Cheongju 청주 - Common word used to describe clarified sool but actually originally the word used to describe clarified sakes made in Korea.
Makgeolli 막걸리 - Interchangeable with Takju but formally used to describe sedimented sool below 10% ABV
Soju 소주 - Another popular category of sool. Distilled wonju or yakju becomes soju.
Yangjoojang - Brewery
Joomak - Sool Bar / Tasting room / Anju serving place. Our Tasting Room is at 201 Dupont St in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Sooljib - Bar. We have eight seats at our bar, with a view of the cocktail-making magic.
Our Products
At any given time, we offer three classic sools, plus a few more seasonal brews such as botanical makgeolli. For a more detailed guide to our products, be sure to check out the page Our Sool.
TAKJU 16 - 3 stage brew, fermented over 28 days using 900 lbs of rice. TAKJU is known for its heavy body, high abv (16%), and extremely fruity flavor profile.
HWAJU 12 - 4 stage brew, fermented over 35 days using 750 lbs of rice and fermented with closed yellow bud chrysanthemums and hydrangea tea leaves. HWAJU is known for its lighter body and neutral base that allows the subtle tea infusion to shine.
YAKJU 14 - 5 stage brew, fermented over 70 days using 700 lbs of rice. Our YAKJU is a clarified rice wine that is known for its delicate body and striking balance between fruit and depth of grain.