Text: Kiki Oh yeah Editor: Cat Nine Technical support: Beijing Oriental Huangpu Liquor Technology Research Institute
There are always people who say that liquor will be sweet after drinking, in fact, drinking for a longer time knows that it is necessary to have sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, astringent, and the five flavors are rich and coordinated liquor that is a good wine.
Our tongue is sensitive to bitterness and sweetness. The sweetness is evident in the front of our tongue when the wine is introduced; sour is felt when it reaches the middle and sides of the tongue.
The wine goes further down to the base of the tongue and feels bitter and astringent.
So, will there be bad wine merchants who "cleverly" use sweeteners to achieve their own goals in order to achieve such a taste?
Let's take a look at sweeteners
In the food industry, sweeteners such as cyclamate (cyclohexylsulfamate), amne honey (acesulfame potassium), sodium saccharin (sodium salt of o-sulfonylbenimidine), abbass sweet (l-aspartic anhydride-l-phenylalanine methyl ester) are often added to increase the taste of food.
However, these chemically synthesized sweeteners are strictly prohibited to be added and used in the liquor production process of liquor enterprises, and according to the provisions of national standards, liquor belongs to fermented liquor and cannot be sweetened.
Liquor products due to the particularity of their products, sweeteners are the top priority of its spot checks, liquor illegal addition of sweetener news is not uncommon in the country.
In general, wine bitterness can be considered through the way of process and the way of blending and seasoning in the later stage.
During the winemaking process, the starch will first saccharify, similar to the process of making mash. However, liquor is distilled liquor, and sugar cannot be evaporated, so it cannot bring sweetness to liquor.
Therefore, if the distillery adds sugar to the liquor without authorization, it may cause the wine to be turbid, precipitate, and affect the quality. There is a "solids" item in the detection indicators of liquor, and although sugar increases sweetness, it is easy for solids to exceed the standard.
In the past, liquor manufacturers often used glycerol (commonly known as glycerin) and butylene glycol to sweeten, but the former tasted bad, and the latter was more expensive, so manufacturers set their sights on inexpensive sweeteners.
For example, we added two cheap sweeteners, aspartame and acesulfame potassium, to our liquor, which are hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, and 500 grams of wine only need 0.015 grams to have a good taste.
As a winery, it only costs a few cents, but the taste immediately rises a notch, and the price rises.
Sweeteners can also mask the undesirable odors produced by fermentation, making the aroma of the wine more mellow. Due to the very small amount used, it will not affect the solids detection.
Sweeteners are prohibited, so why is the wine still sweet?
May see here, many drinkers will be more confused, since it has been banned to add sweeteners to liquor why liquor is still sweet to drink? In fact, this is because in the process of wine fermentation, microorganisms produce a variety of acids, aldehydes, ketones, alcohols, esters and other types of organic matter.
On November 28, 2018, Jiangjin District, Chongqing City, visited Chongqing liquor brewing technology, high-quality and high-quality wine making technology
Among these ingredients, ethanol is undoubtedly the most abundant, while the other various ingredients add up to only about 2%.
Don't underestimate this 2%, more than 300 flavor substances have been identified from it, and their subtle differences give different liquors a unique aroma and taste. There are a lot of sweet substances in these 2% ingredients.
For example, butyric acid, n-valeric acid, ethyl hexanoate, ethyl palmitate, n-hexanol, acetaldehyde and the like. However, polyols are the most important sources of sweetness, such as glycerol, butylene glycol and so on.
During the winemaking process, the starch will first saccharify, similar to the process of making mash. However, liquor is distilled liquor, and sugar cannot be evaporated, so it cannot bring sweetness to liquor.
How to choose a reliable liquor?
In fact, compared with the data that broke out before, it is not difficult for us to find that the 3,000 batches of liquor randomly inspected by the Food and Drug Administration in 2015 involved 1147 enterprises in 30 provinces, autonomous regions and cities across the country, of which 108 batches of unqualified flavoring agents accounted for 3.6% of the total number of samples sampled, and they were basically the products of small distilleries.
Therefore, when we see this, we also understand that if you want to drink safe and secure wine, there must be no mistake in choosing a well-known brand.
Dear wine friends, today's sharing is here, what is your opinion on the illegal addition of sweeteners to liquor? Welcome to share and leave a message in the comment area