Moon & Lion Brewing

Great news! I got a new hangari! What's a hangari? (항아리) Hangari is the clay jar traditionally used to ferment all kinds of foods or beverages in Korean cuisine. These are the big brown jugs that house kimchi, rice wine, and medicinal extracts. They come in various shapes and sizes, but they are usually made with clay and have a characteristic brown glaze. They are heavy, cumbersome objects, but they represent a traditional way of brewing makgeolli that I must explore. I used a small hangari several times when brewing makgeolli in Korea. However, I've learned a lot since then and want to continue experimenting brewing using hangari. Hangari may also be called onggi. Below I'll give a quick summary of the pros and cons of using a hangari, as well as a few methods used to prepare hangari for brewing. This content was originally found in Jeontongju that You Can Easily Make at Home  by Lee SeokJun ( 전통주 집에서 쉽게 만들기, 이석준  ). It has been translated from the original text b

This is an update to the status of my kombucha brewing. I plan to talk about how the process went, how the kombucha turned out, and some issues that were encountered along the way. Mostly green tea was used, with one batch of a flavored black tea. The process itself was pretty simple: All the equipment was cleaned. A pot of sweet (green) tea was made and cooled to room temperature. The kombucha "mother" was transferred into the glass fermenter. The sweet tea was added to the fermenter with the mother, and the lid was placed loosely on top. I tasted the kombucha every day to check the flavor, and poured about 80% of it into a bottle when I thought it was ready. The taste was great with green tea, and there was a good amount of efervesence from the fermentation. The black tea turned out metallic-tasting, and I thought it was nasty, so I dumped that batch and considered it a failure. I attributed the off-taste to the flavoring that was already in the t