Dansul, Gamju, Sikhye

Sikhye is sometimes called dansul in some regions, but strictly speaking, dansul and sikhye are different foods.

Dansul is a type of sweet drink made by adding fermented barley and floating rice grains, while sikhye is mainly made by fermenting fish on the East Coast or by adding red pepper powder in Andong.

The most favorite taste of the five human senses is sweetness, but in our country, since we do not have sugar beets or sugarcane, we could only feel sweetness through taffy, which is made by boiling down rice syrup.

However, this rice syrup is not much different from the process of making dansul.

Sugarcane grown in tropical regions is crushed and made into a beverage, and it also has a difficult history as a farm laborer in Hawaii and other places in plantation farming.

It has not been that long since sugar was introduced to our country, and it was not that long ago that white sugar was despised as the cause of obesity and diabetes.

If we look at the process of making it, when the original sugar is put in,
In the elections of the 70s, along with rubber shoes, sugar seems to have been enough to attract the attention of voters. (Molasses – animals also add molasses, which is a byproduct of the sugar manufacturing process, to improve palatability.)
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Dan-sul (gam-ju) was a regular menu item with grass during the May festival period on college campuses in the 80s, and some students would make dan-sul all night and sell it during the festival the next day.

It seems that there is no big problem in classifying sikhye as a fermented food. If our country’s food culture is a fermented culture like kimchi or fermented skate, then this sikhye can also be called fermented.

Fermentation is usually thought of as a type of product created by the influence of microorganisms, but some also have chemical changes like this.

The difference between fermentation and decay is that the process of making dan-sul is very different from the fermentation process caused by microorganisms.

In other words, as a chemical reaction, the enzyme diastase contained in barley sprouts breaks down the sugar in the rice grains, and at this time, the appropriate temperature and time are required.

If kimchi is a microbial process by lactic acid bacteria (lactobacillus), this sweet rice wine can be said to be an enzymatic reaction.

In the homes of the nobility, when guests came over, they would serve cool sujeonggwa or this sweet rice wine in the summer, or serve it with misit powder and traditional Korean sweets.

Today, it is a pity that sweet rice wine made at home is gradually disappearing and we are encountering uniform products produced in large quantities in factories.