Have you ever wanted to make your own makgeolli? Well you can from the city’s only makgeolli distillery. And honestly it is incredibly easy to do.
We signed up for one of their workshops that includes dinner, for a full night experience.
Located in Chinatown, by Stadium skytrain station it is easy to miss Vanmak, if you don’t know what to look for. The small space serves as their tap room, restaurant, and tonight work space. Therefore these workshops are intentionally kept small and intimate.
You pick the flavour of makgeolli you want to make when you sign up for the class. Options includes regular, strawberry, earl grey, or chestnut. My guest and I went for the latter two.
After arrival and situating yourself, each participant is given their own plastic bin of pre-prepared tools. This includes an apron and gloves to dawn and everything you will need to make makgeolli. However there is homework to take home and complete after.
You are walked through the entire process which starts with some history. Makgeolli has been made for over 10 thousand years and is popular due to its low alcohol content. It is comprised of two parts separated into clear and milky. Each layer has a different flavour, which you can enjoy separately or together as a mix. The clear portion is light and tangy, whereas the milky is creamy and rich.
In Korea you can find a large variety of makgeolli flavours including apple, sweet potato, corn, peanut butter, and ginseng.
You start by hand kneading your soften rice with water and chosen flavour ingredient. The goal is to have it all mashed and soggy, so ends up looking like porridge. This oatmeal is then funnelled into a mason jar.
What causes it to ferment is nuruk. Nuruk is a key ingredient and is similar to a sourdough starter or wine yeast. It jump starts the fermentation process which takes 15 days to complete, when stored at room temperature. This is the above mentioned homework. You take your bottle home, add in the yeast the next day and stir well. Then wait.
After the allotted days you squeeze the makegoli out through a cheese cloth. This was unfortunately missing from our kits, so I ended up using a sieve and getting mediocre results.
Our take home set also comes with a plastic bottle and stickers for you to brand your makgeolli as Vanmak once completed.
In between the workshop walk through and during dinner, our host gave us quizzes to earn prizes and raffle draws to win bottles. And this being an intimate class meant our chance to win was greater. Everyone basically got a prize and I personally walked away with the grand prize: two bottles of makgeolli, of my choosing.
During dinner all 7 workshop attendees shared 5 full bottles of flavoured makgeolli, thus allowing us to try Vanmak’s entire selection. Everyone was able to drink their fill with plenty leftover, really adding to the value of the class.
Dinner comes from the restaurant’s regular home cook menu. The Tteokbokki was my favourite. This was Korean rice cake and fish cakes simmered in a sweet and spicy sauce.
We got a larger assortment of Korean fish cakes on skewers soaking in a pot of clear fish cake soup. Each tasty on its own, but I found myself dipping the fish cakes either in the excess spicy sauce above or the sweet soy below, for extra interest.
And we also got a collection of meatballs wrapped in dough, so they had a dumpling quality to them.
In short this was a great way to learn and drink something new. I can recommend.
Lee Bros Winery
82 Keefer PI, Vancouver, BC V6B 0C9
(604) 336-7851
vanmak.ca
