☆Gyemyeong-ju is the name of a liquor named after it, "If you make it in the evening, it will be cooked until the cockcrow the next morning." for "gyemyeong" means "cockcrow" in Korean.
It is believed that it has been made since the 1500s for records about the method of making 'Gyemyeongju' liquor.
It was made when it was urgently needed to make a drink.
Gyemyungju is basically based on the general yeast-making method, and there are two recipes; putting malt, syrup, and candy, or using a yeast-based formula. And it can be assumed to have been created by the addition of various medicinal ingredients for a special purpose of the liquor.
The existing Gyemyungju, in the form of Gayangju, has been handed down to the family of Gyeolseong Jang in Namyangju. Namyangju Gyemyeongju was originally a native liquor of Gangdong-gun, Pyeongannam-do Province, and after the mother of Jang Ki-hang, the 11th eldest son of the family of Gyeolseong Jang family, took refuge with only a flagpole during the war, and she passed on the law to Choi Ok-geun (57), his daughter-in law, who had kept for generations.
Since then, Mrs. Choi was designated as Gyeonggi-do Intangible Cultural Property No. 1 in 1987 and was designated as a master of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in April 1996.
Gyemyeongju's unique production process is not to use glutinous rice or nonglutinous rice, but to use mixed grains such as corn and sorghum, which were the staple foods of the Old Goguryeo people, and to cook them secretly.
Unlike ordinary rice wine, which makes from steamed rice, Gyemyeongju uses grain syrup and malt to make porridge and soak yeast in grain syrup for six to seven days. In the meantime, mix corn and water properly and soak them for 10 to 12 hours and grind them in a millston, pour water three times, add malt, and then simmer it in a cauldron and filter it out.
After cooling down the raw materials of alcohol filtered out of sacks, mixing the grain syrup with yeast and pine needles, put them in a pot, ferment them in a room of 25 to 28 degrees Celsius for eight days, and then filter them out, producing a yellow and clear alcohol content of 11 percent.
[ How to Make Gyemyeongju]
1 Soak the yeast powder in the grain syrup.
2 Soak sorghum and corn in cold water.
3 Grind soaked sorghum and corn in millstone and put them in cauldron.
Pour malt and water and use the porridge over a low heat to make it sugar.
4 Put the cold porridge in a sack and squeeze it.
5 Mix cold porridge with yeast and pine needles soaked in grain syrup.
Mix it well, put it in a pot, seal it, ferment it at about 28 degrees, drain,
and Gyemyeongju of about 11 degrees is completed.