It was during that time and the positive response they got then that led me to believe that there is a market for this kind of product in the US. It was through these events where I was actually getting out there and sharing the wines with friends, but also with people that I didn't know, people that maybe had not heard about sool at all, or never even saw something that looks like makgeolli. You know, an obsession kind of turns into a more structured practice and then starts turning into a discipline. Because of the relative volume of that practice, I had to then share the makgeollis more and more-I started doing pop up events just to get it out of my fridge. I was changing one variable at a time to understand what it does to the fermentation process, to supplement my limited online research. I was brewing large quantities, maybe 40 gallons at a time for the purpose of experimentation and learning. It turned into what I like to describe as a very expensive passion project. I started running back the history of fermentation and brewing methods and learning about how unique Korean sool was from a fermenting or chemical perspective. Those mistakes really started me into my journey of researching and understanding and sustaining self study. If you approach fermentation in that way, you can make wonderful things and there is such promise and value in intuitive fermenting, as there is an intuitive cooking, for example, but of course it also led to a lot of mistakes. It was all based on kind of muscle memory. I approached it from a very intuitive place, it was more so an understanding of what things should look like or what things should smell like, how the ferment should be behaving and what ratios to combine everything in. When I moved to New York for college, I brewed a couple of batches in my first dorm, but that was back when I really didn't understand the chemistry of fermentation. That turned into a personal homebrewing passion starting in 2011. Whether it was steaming rice or washing or spreading it out when it cools or mixing it with the starter. Really homebrewing was a practice that started for me as a child, my dad used to make makgeolli at home, and it's something that I always participated in-the making, not in the drinking. Margot : I'd love to hear about your background and what brought you into the wine industry.Īlice : I came to the wine industry through home-brewing, which is how a lot of winemakers and fermenters and beer makers get to it.
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