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Steve Yun posted:Is all baijiu terrible or is there a good one My housemates went home and brought back what they said was the best baijiu in their area. It was disgusting.
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Feb 19, 2021 08:19
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 05:41 |
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Was it Mao Tai
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Feb 19, 2021 09:00
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laoguilin baijiu is delicious
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Feb 19, 2021 09:09
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 Here’s the extent of my baijiu knowledge #1 is my first one, I don’t know the name but it tastes like turpentine #2 is Mianzhu Daqu, it tastes like turpentine and roses/peaches #3 I ran Mianzhu Daqu through a Brita filter. It cut the turpentine flavor in half, but also took half the rose/peach aroma as well. I did this as an experiment for a Chinese friend who says her dad and uncles want to drink shots of it with her and she hated the flavor. I came up with this solution for her. #4 I’m told Mao Tai is the gold standard of baijiu, but it seemed pricey at the Chinese grocery so I’m asking you guys if it’s any better
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Feb 19, 2021 09:18
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My mom was curious about hotpot and went to the local hotpot place with my dad. The waitress enticed them into purchasing "Chinese sake." It was baijiu, and after one sip, they quit. My parents are drunks so that's pretty impressive. They gave me the bottle and I left it in my old apartment when I moved.
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Feb 19, 2021 09:19
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I like 三花酒
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Feb 19, 2021 09:52
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Get yourselves some erguotou
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Feb 19, 2021 16:37
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My baijiu expertise boils down to not drinking if the bottle cost less than $50.
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Feb 19, 2021 18:47
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Fleta Mcgurn posted:My mom was curious about hotpot and went to the local hotpot place with my dad. The waitress enticed them into purchasing "Chinese sake." It was baijiu, and after one sip, they quit. My parents are drunks so that's pretty impressive. That's not even remotely an accurate description. But she sold two of them, so job done. You could have kept it to strip paint. E: It's really important to know where to cut the heads and tails to make it not taste like turpentine. It's also important to use a good tasting quality rice. My guess is for the cheap bottles they stretch the budget and use cheap rice and cut them light.
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Feb 19, 2021 18:51
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totalnewbie posted:Get yourselves some erguotou Red Star and mala peanuts are a God tier combo to snack on while working lamb skewers on a grill
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Feb 19, 2021 19:19
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Arglebargle III posted:My baijiu expertise boils down to not drinking if the bottle cost less than $50. So you’re saying I should buy Maotai?
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Feb 20, 2021 05:34
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Steve Yun posted:Is all baijiu terrible or is there a good one My first exposure to baijiu was back in college when one of my friends brought over some baijiu that his uncle made in his basement. It was awful, but we were also all under 21, so it was the most readily available alcohol. We would mix it with like, orange juice and poo poo, I still remember the potent smell and how it would linger in our dorm room for ages. Anyways I've had actual baijiu since then and in comparison it's better but I still have kneejerk disgust reaction to the smell lol
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Feb 22, 2021 19:20
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All this talk about terrible baijiu makes me want to actually try making it. But I don’t have a TTB license and won’t be getting one for the near future. Although I could see a business making soju and baijiu working in the area. Hell, there’s a sake brewer in the neighborhood that I want to try, but have to talk myself into the higher price. I just don’t have a still and don’t know that I’ll have the space for it anytime soon.
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Feb 22, 2021 19:50
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I've always found it to have notes of raisin bran and acetone. Anyway, who online got that good Mapo Tofu recipe?
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Feb 22, 2021 23:54
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Greg12 posted:Anyway, who online got that good Mapo Tofu recipe? https://www.gearpatrol.com/food/a171714/recipe-mapo-tofu/ https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/vegetarian-mapo-tofu/ https://thewoksoflife.com/vegan-mapo-tofu/ https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/02/the-best-vegan-mapo-tofu-recipe.html
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Feb 23, 2021 03:38
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  Is there a reason why the Kweichow Maotai is $350 for a 375ml whereas the Maotai Yingbin is $25 for a 375ml? Is the expensive stuff actually good?
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Feb 23, 2021 05:23
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Steve Yun posted:
Same reason whisky can vary so much in price. Is it really worth the price? Depends on how much your drinking budget is normally. I’d have a hard time spending $350 on only 375mL (or 750mL), but some people don’t have children and wouldn’t hesitate. I imagine it’s as much a status symbol as it is rare.
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Feb 23, 2021 05:44
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I have had expensive baijiu at banquets and its way, way, way better than cheap stuff. It's very similar to whisky in that regard in the expensive stuff is aged longer and skimmed repeatedly, so there's less as time goes on. I went to a distillery tour when my family visited me in Chengdu where they had you taste multiple baijius of different ages to show the taste progression. Me and my father both legitimately liked the most aged one which while pricy, was still only like 80 or 90 bucks for a bottle (wasn't maotai, was a local Chengdu distillery) so it was in the realm of a nice souvenir for my father and not a crazy price (also, it was actually good). The prices, like whisky, seem completely batshit on the upper end, but cuz there's not a lot of places brewing baijiu around the world like with whisky there's less brands around in general. I've seen special Maotai bottles for over 10k RMB. I don't buy enough so I don't know where the line it becomes decent is, but p much all the 60~70+ USD bottles I've had are all very drinkable and moving towards pleasant whereas <15 dollar ones are all completely terrible. Greg12 posted:Anyway, who online got that good Mapo Tofu recipe? This is still my fav recipe- https://www.latimes.com/recipe/avocado-mapo-tofu You can skip the avocado but I legit love it.
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Feb 23, 2021 06:14
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Do not buy the cheap stuff.
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Feb 23, 2021 17:47
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Speaking of baijiu, Wang made red braised pork the other week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1TKJseyKs That's a fuckload of baijiu and I've never eaten red braised pork that I could taste/point to a hard liquor being in the sauce. Is this normal or might the baijiu in his plastic bottle already be diluted? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1TKJseyKs&t=218s
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Feb 23, 2021 18:03
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Magna Kaser posted:
nah fam we didn't invent cold chain transcontinental express air freight so that we could choose to not include exotic perishables in all our recipes
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Feb 23, 2021 18:13
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Greg12 posted:I've always found it to have notes of raisin bran and acetone. Prob one of the best Chinese Cooking Demystified videos: https://youtu.be/AujuLHK3hvs
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Feb 23, 2021 18:27
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droll posted:Speaking of baijiu, Wang made red braised pork the other week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1TKJseyKs It braises for a long enough time, so think of it like coq au vin. The flavor would be there, but not much of the alcohol. I doubt it’s diluted, he doesn’t seem to cut corners on ingredients while cooking even when talking about prices.
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Feb 23, 2021 18:43
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Wine tastes good, though. 500ml of baijiu in a reduced sauce doesn't taste like acetone?
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Feb 23, 2021 18:52
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droll posted:Wine tastes good, though. 500ml of baijiu in a reduced sauce doesn't taste like acetone? Acetone boils off before the water at around 135f. But you shouldn’t be using disgusting cheap baijiu for cooking or drinking. Same as wine, don’t use something when you don’t like the taste. But because it’s volatile you shouldn’t be tasting as much of it in your sauce. I still wouldn’t use the cheap stuff. If you have a liquor full of nasty off flavors then it was poorly fermented and distilled. The reason you can taste acetone in a distilled product is because of the distilling process and fermenting it hot (producing ethyl acetate). It has no where to go but into the stack, but it should go before you get past the heads and should be cutting it. Ethanol doesn’t evaporate until 173f, which means you should be done cutting the heads before you get the ethanol condensing in the hearts. But if you cut the heads short, you’ll get more of the off flavors and gross solvent tasting stuff. It gets more complicated, but that should hopefully make enough sense? And if you start with something with off flavors, you can’t really cut them all out anyway. So start with a well made rice wine, then distill well. Then drink nice smooth delicious baijiu. Or buy the equivalent of bottom shelf cheap whiskey and you get what you’re paying.
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Feb 23, 2021 19:22
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What's the difference between "hot fermenting" and fermentation done in the production of any other liquor? What's up with the economics or chemistry of baijiu that they don't just discard the heads? A $25 bottle of baijiu tastes like nail polish remover, but $25 scotch or bourbon tastes fine. (Or does the $25 whiskey taste fine because they're adulterating it somehow?) Xi Feng Jiu is... not as bad as Red Star, but still scares my friends. J&B and Jim Beam are, if anything, too mellow.
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Feb 23, 2021 19:44
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Magna Kaser posted:I have had expensive baijiu at banquets and its way, way, way better than cheap stuff. It's very similar to whisky in that regard in the expensive stuff is aged longer and skimmed repeatedly, so there's less as time goes on. I went to a distillery tour when my family visited me in Chengdu where they had you taste multiple baijius of different ages to show the taste progression. Me and my father both legitimately liked the most aged one which while pricy, was still only like 80 or 90 bucks for a bottle (wasn't maotai, was a local Chengdu distillery) so it was in the realm of a nice souvenir for my father and not a crazy price (also, it was actually good). Do you happen to remember the name of the distillery? We're planning on doing a Chengdu trip (likely with my wife's cousins) for post-COVID and I think they'd dig a distillery tour/baijiu tasting.
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Feb 23, 2021 19:57
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Greg12 posted:What's the difference between "hot fermenting" and fermentation done in the production of any other liquor? What's up with the economics or chemistry of baijiu that they don't just discard the heads? Temperature. Yeast when stressed and hot will produce more esters. Esters will metabolize into ethyl acetate. So if you ferment hotter than ideal for the yeast you end up with a lot of what you’d call less great tasting things. You can also get good tasting esters too, but there’s a balance to be found in your temperature and yeast strain selection. So saison and Belgian yeasts (and many kveik now too) enjoy fermenting at 75+. English ale yeasts like 60-70. And lager yeasts are 40-55. There’s a lot of variation and not everything even produces the same esters, phenols, and other compounds. So if you use an English ale yeast for this, but ferment at 75-80F, it will produce a lot of ethyl acetate and it’ll taste like nail polish. So whisky and other producers use different yeasts to ferment their mash, and some use bacteria too (sour mash). You can do some complex things with mixed fermented product and a lot of those flavors will carry into your distillate. For instance, there’s a guy in Calgary who was making a gin a day a couple years ago and he discovered that by hopping his wort he could bring some of those hop acids and oils through to the final product. Made some really tasty gin. But it would have been fermented with a yeast ideal for the temperature and process. So using qū yeast balls to ferment the rice wine will lead to a certain set of needs for the yeast. Around 70 has worked well for me, but it gets hot (alcohol off flavor) when I bumped it to 75. That would carry into the distillate. But this is only one part of the whole complex process, but also easily controlled. Problem is, when you go for quantity, you want it going as quickly as possible to the next step and you’ll use something in a stressed situation. But, you hit your quantity and price point.
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Feb 23, 2021 20:46
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Jhet posted:[gracious answer to the question]
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Feb 23, 2021 23:31
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Amergin posted:Do you happen to remember the name of the distillery? We're planning on doing a Chengdu trip (likely with my wife's cousins) for post-COVID and I think they'd dig a distillery tour/baijiu tasting. I'm pretty sure there's only the one, Shui Jing Fang.
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Feb 24, 2021 00:15
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Taste tests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz9EqaFOfNM Tha $25 Maotai Yingbin seems to not be a favorite Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Feb 24, 2021 |
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Feb 24, 2021 01:26
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Amergin posted:Do you happen to remember the name of the distillery? We're planning on doing a Chengdu trip (likely with my wife's cousins) for post-COVID and I think they'd dig a distillery tour/baijiu tasting. It's called Shui Jing Fang/水井坊 and it's like literally next to a bar area in the middle of town which is convenient for you to visit and made that bar area smell like rear end part of the year (its a bad bar area anyway). The English tour was also pretty good I remember, but it was a bit more costly than the Chinese one. I'd highly recommend A tour tho since they give you the tasting and stuff, but I think it's extremely free to just wander around the museum part.
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Feb 24, 2021 04:57
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Magna Kaser posted:It's called Shui Jing Fang/水井坊 and it's like literally next to a bar area in the middle of town which is convenient for you to visit and made that bar area smell like rear end part of the year (its a bad bar area anyway). Grand Fromage posted:I'm pretty sure there's only the one, Shui Jing Fang. Cheers y'all, appreciate the info.
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Feb 24, 2021 22:52
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Another great video stuffed with chaotic energy and delicious food: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klJObo8G_JE I also appreciate how the subtitles don't even bother trying to write "biang biang" in Chinese.
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Feb 25, 2021 15:48
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Another great video stuffed with chaotic energy and delicious food: 
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Feb 25, 2021 21:44
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It's practically a koan
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Feb 25, 2021 22:14
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Just got all my wok stuff in the mail today, been seasoning it with peanut oil, so stoked to make beef and broccoli all the time. I might call this Chinese place I used to go to when I lived in DC and ask them what their beef and broccoli sauce recipe is, it was so drat good.
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Feb 28, 2021 03:57
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Even machine-translated the jokes in this were really cute. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIxjLqBrH8A
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Mar 8, 2021 15:58
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One of the best baijiu mixers is watermelon juice
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Mar 15, 2021 00:52
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Dumb question, was it here someone mentioned some trend of stir fried Ramen noodles?
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Mar 20, 2021 02:34
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