Traditional Korean Beverages

Korean has a word for the non-alcoholic drinks of the traditional table: eumcheongnyu (음청류). It covers a family far wider than tea, from malted rice drinks to spiced punches, fruit-and-flower bowls and roasted grain powders stirred into water. Most were sweet, many were served cold, and each had its season. They were drunk as refreshments, offered to guests and placed on feast tables; at a sixtieth-birthday banquet, for example, hwachae, sikhye or sujeonggwa usually completed the meal. Liquor is covered separately in traditional liquor.

Sikhye: malted rice drink

Sikhye (식혜) is cooked rice broken down by the enzymes in malted barley (yeotgireum) until it turns sweet and the grains float. When it began is unknown. Some scholars read a Goryeo poet's reference to a malt drink as an early sikhye or gamju, but the first concrete recipe appears in an eighteenth-century manuscript from the reign of King Yeongjo. The method is precise: strained malt water is poured over firm rice and kept at about 60–70°C for four or five hours, traditionally in a jar wrapped in blankets on the warm floor. If it is too cool the rice sours, and if too hot it will not sweeten. The floating grains are rinsed, the liquid is boiled with sugar and skimmed, and the drink is served chilled with the grains, sometimes with ginger, yuja, pomegranate seeds or pine nuts. It was traditionally an autumn and winter drink. The closely related gamju is cooked longer, until the rice dissolves, and served warm.

Andong makes a very different sikhye: rice fermented in malt water with radish, ginger and chili-tinted water, so the drink is pink, cool and spicy. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture estimates that it arose after the mid-eighteenth century.

Sujeonggwa: spiced persimmon punch

Sujeonggwa (수정과) means liquid jeonggwa, the candied fruits described in hangwa. The common version is made with dried persimmons. Ginger and cinnamon are boiled in separate pots, since the encyclopedia notes each dulls the other when cooked together, then combined and sweetened, once with honey and now usually with sugar. Dried persimmons soften in the cold liquid and are served floating with pine nuts. It was a winter drink, made once the persimmons had dried and kept through the first lunar months, and households prepared plenty for guests coming to pay New Year respects.

Hwachae: fruit and flower punch

If sikhye and sujeonggwa belong to winter, hwachae (화채) belongs to spring through autumn. The base is either omija water, steeped overnight until it turns a clear pink and tastes sour, sweet and faintly bitter, or plain honey water. Sour bases take mild garnishes such as azalea petals or Korean pear; sweet bases take tart fruit such as strawberries, cherries or watermelon. Some versions float thin strips of mung-bean starch jelly or starch-coated barley. Yuja hwachae, made in late autumn with shredded yuja peel, pear, pomegranate and pine nuts, was a court favorite.

Misutgaru: roasted grain drink

Misu is made by stirring misutgaru (미숫가루) into cold water with honey or sugar. The powder was traditionally made from glutinous rice that was steamed, dried, roasted in an iron cauldron and ground very fine, or from new-season barley in early summer. It was a cooling summer drink, a quick meal when mixed thick and an emergency ration that kept well in a jar. Today's commercial mixes often blend many grains and beans. On summer drinks and the hot-weather table, see boknal and summer foods.

Tea and its relatives

Leaf tea has its own long history. Korean histories record that in 828 an envoy brought tea seeds from Tang China and planted them on Jirisan by royal order, and tea flourished in Buddhist Goryeo. Most of what Koreans call cha today, though, are infusions of grains, fruits and roots such as barley, yuja and ginger. These are covered in traditional Korean teas and not repeated here.

Sweetness then and now

Before sugar became an everyday ingredient, these drinks were sweetened with honey, grain syrup or the natural sugars of malted rice, so sweetness was a mark of occasion. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture observes that modern sikhye, drunk year-round and heavy with sugar, has lost much of its malty flavor. Homemade versions let the cook choose how sweet to go.