【Haichuan Teahouse】Five jin of grain for one jin of wine – is liquor that costs 9.9 yuan per bottle worth drinking?
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The cost and price of baijiu have always been topics of keen interest among wine enthusiasts and netizens; some say that one pound of liquor can be produced from three pounds of grain, while others claim it takes five pounds of grain to produce one pound of liquor. But anyway, liquor that costs 9.9 yuan per bottle is actually cheaper than Erguotou. Can liquor that cheap really be drunk?
If there’s no sand, how can it be called a clam? Can one really call it drinking if they’ve never had alcohol-based drinks? :lol:lol
It is said that during difficult times, it was mixed with medical alcohol
It can be drunk, but it doesn’t taste good. This type of baijiu is usually made by mixing food-grade alcohol; its components are ethanol and water； The main components of grain-based alcoholic beverages are ethanol and water, but there are also various aromatic substances produced by microbial fermentation, such as esters, acids, aldehydes, and even some unknown compounds, which contribute to the different flavors and styles.
Right after graduating, I was assigned to a chemical reagent factory that produced anhydrous ethanol, and many workers took it home and mixed it with water to drink. At that time, the raw alcohol used was edible alcohol purchased from a sugar factory, with a methanol content of almost 0
If this formula is applied to everything that’s replicated, business as usual won’t be possible. For example, if 100 pounds of raw material can be used to produce 40 pounds of wine, then normal distillation requires five rounds of extraction, with 40 pounds of wine obtained in each round, resulting in a total of 200 pounds of wine. The first and last extracts are the most common; the first one is the strongest while the last one is the weakest. Yet even when these two extracts are mixed together, their alcohol content remains around 60-70 degrees. To reduce this alcohol content, water and flavoring agents must be added. After all, even the best-quality wine needs to be blended; otherwise it will have a strong musty taste and be undrinkable. Therefore, for ordinary grain-based wines with an alcohol content of 42 degrees, the cost is roughly 4-5 yuan per unit.
The starch content in sorghum ranges from 65 to 70%. Starch can be hydrolyzed to produce glucose, with the equation: (C6H10O5)n + nH2O = nC6H12O6. It can be seen that starch and water turn into glucose; the only product is glucose. Therefore, 1 kilogram of starch will definitely yield more than 1 kilogram of glucose, specifically 1.17 kilograms of C6H12O6 (glucose). Through the reaction –(catalyst, heating)–> 2CH3CH2OH + 2CO2↑, the conversion rate is 50%. Thus, 0.65*1.17*0.5 = 0.38 kilograms of alcohol can be obtained from 1 kilogram of sorghum, assuming no losses. Converting this amount to 42-degree liquor, it amounts to 9 taels, which means that 1.2 taels of raw material are required