Her Cultivation Diary
Chapter 469 - Chapter 469 469. Soybean straw and winemaking_1

Chapter 469: 469. Soybean straw and winemaking_1 Chapter 469: 469. Soybean straw and winemaking_1 As for the dried soybean stalks…

Song Sancheng raised his voice, “Tantan, there are quite a lot of these bean stalks. Why don’t you ask Old Li, does his cow eat them?”

If the cow eats them, he would haul a couple of baskets over in a few days, but the stalks are hard and need to be crushed before being fed to the cow.

Nowadays, there’s only one cow in the entire village, and it’s quite old. Song Tan agreed immediately:

“No need to ask, when the soybeans are harvested, I’ll haul all the leftovers to him.”

These stalks are high in nutritional content, and are more than adequate for the cow to get through winter. Besides, how much fertilizer can such a small amount make? There’s plenty of other stuff that can be used as fertilizer.

Better to give it all to the old cow.

After all, the temperature drops here in November and doesn’t start to rise slowly until March of the next year. In the dead of winter, there’s hardly any grass or leaves to eat.

…

When the soybeans were almost done being processed, Seventh Uncle judged the time and called Qiaoqiao over again:

“We’re going to start brewing again soon, are you going to livestream it?”

Qiaoqiao looked at him warily, “Can it all be finished today?”

“Yes.”

That much Seventh Uncle could guarantee.

Finally reassured, Qiaoqiao, without another word, started the livestream again–

[What did I see? The host has been on a roll these last few days!]

[Honestly, too diligent, making me feel a bit uncomfortable.]

[Can the brewing finish today? I can’t take it if it gets split up again.]

[Here we go, such frequent live broadcasts!]

…

Meanwhile, Qiaoqiao was already standing in front of the large vat from yesterday, looking serious:

“Alright, our sorghum has been soaking–”

He glanced at the time, “for 20 hours now. Seventh Uncle said it’s hot weather, so it doesn’t need to soak that long. Now let’s open the lid–”

It took some effort to fully open the sealed lid, and a wave of damp steam rushed out. Seventh Uncle then reached in to scoop up a handful of sorghum, checked the state of the cooked and ‘bloomed’ grains, and had Qiaoqiao pinch it with his fingers:

“Feel that? It turns to mush as soon as you pinch it. That means it’s soaked enough. If it weren’t, we’d have to continue soaking.”

“In winter, when the temperature is low, and it cools quickly, it all needs to soak for 24 hours–come, heat the water!”

Qiaoqiao quickly positioned his phone to one side and once again entered his focused state. At this moment, he placed the large steaming pot on the stove and scooped out the soaked sorghum to put inside.

“When the water starts boiling vigorously…”

Seventh Uncle suddenly hesitated.

After a while, he spoke up again, “It used to be quite difficult for us to buy a timer, we had to guess. The water temperature before, I guessed the temperature with a thermometer before I told you… but this time, when I say it’s good, you just look at the time and write it down.”

Qiaoqiao nodded, while the chat in the livestream started buzzing again:

[Got it. Experience from the master craftsman.]

[I knew it. The master craftsman was so precise last time, even using a thermometer to check now and then…]

[Technology affects the exertion of experience, huh!]

[Brewing really is a matter of precision; a tiny mistake can lead to a huge error.]

[Ancient times had no such things, yet people were still able to brew very good wine.]

[I can’t deny the wine was good, but the alcohol content definitely wasn’t high, after all, distillation was a big problem…]

The live chat was bustling with activity.

Meanwhile, Qiaoqiao had been staring at the clock for a while, until Seventh Uncle estimated, “That’s enough.”

Only then did he check the time and then announced with a serious face, “Kids, are you watching the time? After steaming over high heat, it needs to steam for 30 minutes.”

“Right,” Seventh Uncle added, “We’re steaming a lot at once and the pot is big, so it takes half an hour. If you’re just playing around at home, making a little bit, probably 15 minutes is enough–come, take the sorghum off, let the water in the steaming pot cool with a fan, and when I say it’s about right, you go measure…”

This process was particularly cumbersome, but Qiaoqiao learned it very meticulously, without showing any impatience.

When Seventh Uncle said it was good, he checked the thermometer, “Kids, remember, 85 degrees water temperature!”

Then he poured the water back into the sorghum to stir it evenly, covered it again, and sealed it for 15 minutes.

Next came the re-steaming, cooling down…

In the meantime, Seventh Uncle called out, “Qiaoqiao, bring over a bucket of rice husks, wash them clean–370 jin of sorghum, you take 37 jin of rice husks.”

Next, they mixed in the yeast, mixed in the yeast again, collected the heap for saccharification, and covered it with rice husks…

When the two of them, drenched in sweat, had finished the work, Seventh Uncle finally let out a long sigh,

“Alright, after waiting for a good half a day to a day, when you smell the sweetness and see white fuzzy molds, then you can take it out to put into the fermentation pit.”

By this time, the barrage in the live stream had visibly diminished a lot.

Zhang Yanping took the opportunity to glance at it and was startled, thinking Qiaoqiao hadn’t managed to keep the viewers?

But at a closer look at the viewer count–no, how come it didn’t decrease but actually increased?

After a while, finally, a lazy barrage scrolled by:

[Is the host done with everything? (o) Wow, I actually fell asleep!]

[Ah, I had such a good sleep!]

[What, it’s over when I wake up?]

[If it hadn’t been for the loud friction of the final stirring, I wouldn’t have woken up…]

[This is too sleep-inducing, I’m going to save this and replay it when I have insomnia.]

Zhang Yanping: ….

Well… how to put it, the process might have been different from what was expected, but the outcome, it seems, didn’t vary much.

After closing the live stream, he curiously asked,

“Seventh Uncle, can we drink this tomorrow?”

“Dream on,” Seventh Uncle laughed, “Tomorrow it starts to smell good, then you mix the lees evenly again. Later on, it’s up to you whether you put it in a barrel or just dig a fermentation pit, and let it ferment for twenty or thirty days before it’s good to go.”

Song Tan walked over, curiously looking at the pile of rice husks and sorghum, then unhesitatingly said,

“Since we’re brewing in the traditional way, naturally we should dig a pit–didn’t we buy the pottery jars? Clean them up tomorrow, and bury them in the backyard ditch as the fermentation pit.”

“Okay,” Seventh Uncle glanced at the pile of lees, “Let’s see how it goes tomorrow. If it smells sweet, it means the wine is brewed correctly. If it smells like alcohol, then it’s overdone, and it probably won’t taste good, so no need to bother cleaning up the fermentation pit.”

Song Tan looked at him and thought, if only you didn’t look so confident when saying those words, and didn’t so nonchalantly process all that sorghum… your words might be more credible.

If he really wasn’t sure, with all this year’s sorghum here, and only a few of them at home who drink, would Seventh Uncle really dare to process it all at once?

At that moment, Seventh Uncle, with his hands behind his back, couldn’t contain the anticipation and joy in his heart as he strolled around the yard under the blazing sun, only to eagerly ask again, “Qiaoqiao, want to eat tender corn? If so, let’s go pick a basket to bring back.”

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