Chinese Alcohol

Chinese alcohol enjoy a history of over 5000 years. In ancient China, alcohol was regarded as a sacred liquid and was only used when people made sacrificial offerings to the Heaven and the Earth. The Chinese developed unique and distinctive flavors of their own over a long period of development. Chinese alcohol production chiefly features using Qu (a kind of distilled yeast) combined with microorganisms in which the mold goes through saccharification, fermenting mash, bio-fermentation and semi-solid fermentation.

 This method shows the characteristic features of eastern brewing technology. According to classification Chinese alcohol are separated into alcoholic drinks, distilled liquors, beer, grape wine and mixed alcoholic drinks. The alcoholic drink may also be called rice alcoholic drink, while the filtered liquor is often called white spirit.The alcoholic drinks are normally divided into five categories; the dried alcoholic drink (below 0.98g of sugar/100ml) ; the semi-dried alcohol (1.0-3.0g of sugar/100ml); the semi-sweet-flavoured alcoholic drink (3.0- 10.0g of sugar/100ml); the sweet-flavour alcoholic drink (10-20g of sugar/100ml); and the heavily-sweetened-flavoured alcoholic drink (over 20g of sugar/100ml).

All the alcoholic drinks have an average of around 15% of alcohol. The distilled liquors are also divided into five types ; the soy source flavour, the intense-flavour, the light-flavour, the rice-flavor and the other flavours. Traditional Chinese liquors possess an average of 55% ～65% of alcohol, though in recent years distilled liquors with below 40% alcohol have been developed and produced in many distilleries across China.