Ssal Makgeollii (750 ml) (Pack 20 Bottles)

When Sang-myeon Bae founded Girin Brewery in 1952, the Goryeo-era practice of fermenting unsteamed raw rice had largely disappeared from commercial production — Kooksoondang's 1982 patent formally revived it, and every bottle of Ssal Makgeolli carries that technical lineage.

The brewery sits at approximately 500 m elevation in Hoengseong, Gangwon Province, drawing clean mountain water from the highland watershed — a water source with low mineral interference that keeps the fermentation character of the nuruk starter unobstructed.

The production method is the defining departure: raw, unground rice is combined with nuruk (the traditional Korean yeast-and-enzyme starter) and water, then fermented at room temperature without any heat application — a process that preserves a measurably higher amino acid and vitamin content than the steamed-rice method used by virtually every other commercial Korean brewer.

The result is an unfiltered takju — milky, lightly effervescent, with the lactic-grain complexity that pasteurized shelf-stable versions cannot replicate. What separates this expression within the makgeolli category is the industrial scale at which a genuinely traditional, unsteamed fermentation is executed: 600,000 bottles per day at a facility designated a Green Company by South Korea's Ministry of Environment.

NV by nature; drink cold and fresh.