No. 188 Spirits
One month is enough time for Cai Dao to set up these three factories, but he can't take care of the matter of winemaking.
Fortunately, the winemaker brought from home is quite reliable, and when he established the brewery, he had already successfully brewed Erguotou according to the method recorded by Cai Dao. Of course, the samples he took couldn't get into Cai Dao's eyes at all, and neither the taste, degree, or color could compare to the orthodox two-pot head blended by later generations. However, if you compare it with the strongest wine in the Great Song Kingdom, it is immortal wine.
Looking at the still somewhat muddy second pot head in front of him, Cai Dao ordered someone to summon Dean over.
"General Di, try this wine!"
Dean glanced at Cai Dao, with a hint of anger in his eyes, he ran forward and backward, not only to be busy treating those injured soldiers, but also to maintain order with the forbidden army. But since arriving at this ghost place, this ghost child has only shown two faces and disappeared. Who knows, this little kid's family actually brewed wine. I really don't know why the official family trusts him so much.
A layman, what kind of good wine can be made, Dean thought so, he walked to the table without saying a word, directly picked up the wine jar, and took a big sip.
"Poof!" As a result, this sip of wine did not spicy Dean to death, and the slightly cloudy liquor flowed down his mouth, along his throat, into his body, and burned like fire along the way, making the young general squirt at once.
First, when the liquor was in the mouth, Dean really thought that Cai Dao had poisoned the wine he drank, but as the liquor slowly flowed into his body and was quickly absorbed, a feeling of dizziness surged into his heart and rushed to the top beam.
Just one sip of the wine that he didn't fully drink almost made Dean almost drunk.
Dean felt incredible, but Cai Dao felt that the amount of alcohol was too shallow. Just now, he had already taken a sip and felt very dissatisfied, because the degree of this wine was really a little low, about thirty or forty degrees, and it was a little cloudy. It's really a big gap from his ideal second pot.
"How?" Cai Dao squinted his eyes and watched the white-faced young man suddenly turn into a red-faced uncle, with a look of disdain on the corner of his mouth.
The other party's ghost look, obviously looking down on himself, Dean can naturally see it, but he has no time to pay attention to the other party's attitude now, because although this wine is average, it is really delicious.
Moreover, Dean quickly figured out the value of the spirit. He had been wondering before, Cai Dao had collected so much grain, and he had never built any big warehouses in Shuibo Liangshan, and it was simply worth the loss to transport all the grain he received back to Bianliang City. Because when he left Beijing, there was news that there was a bumper harvest in the Central Plains this year, and even the warehouses in Bianliang City were filled, and now the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Households are still working together to build more granaries.
There is simply no need to send food back.
With this wine, Dean really understood the other party's intentions, and made all the grain he received into spirits, and, as early as when he was in Bianliang City, he heard that this child had a connection with the merchants of the Liao State in Bianliang City, could it be that he wanted to exchange these fine wines for the horses of the Liao State.
If he really wanted to exchange these spirits, Dean believed that hundreds of horses could really be exchanged, and even the other party would give him one or two horses that had not been castrated, because he knew that the merchants and nobles of the Liao Kingdom could not resist the temptation of this spirit. However, if it is a thousand horses, there is no hope at all.
The amount of wine made from so much grain must be very large, how can he digest it?
Sold to the merchants of the Great Song Dynasty, this kind of wine did have a lot of sales in the north, but when it came to the south, there was no possibility of competition.
"Not bad! It's really good. Lieutenant Mitake, do you have more of this wine here? I've got the rest. Dean himself couldn't stand its temptation in the first place.
Cai Daoxian raised his little hand, stretched out a finger, shook his head and said, "Two dollars and one altar, and now there is only such an altar, no two prices." General Di, I would like to advise you, before you are used to drinking this kind of wine, you must not drink too quickly and violently like just now. In that case, it would be a waste for such a spirit! ”
"It's stingy!" Dean muttered, took out a piece of silver from his arms, about ten taels, and said as he walked out: "Money, the sprinkler family gave it to you, and the extra is a deposit." Don't think I don't know what you're doing with all that food. ”
He was really welcome, Cai Dao picked up the piece of silver, and did not put the silver in his mouth and bite it like in later TV series or movies, and try the quality of the silver. Silver is also a heavy metal, so he doesn't have such a fetish.
Now that his subordinates have roughly figured out the method of brewing Erguotou, Cai Dao is also relieved, and he wonders in his heart at the moment if the price he reported to Dean just now is a little too low.
However, this problem is also easy to solve, because Cai Dao is instructing the brewer to see if he can find a way to improve the quality and degree of this spirit, so that the retail price of the spirit can be greatly increased.
Well! When exchanging with the Liao State for ploughing cattle, a pound of liquor was exchanged for an uncastrated bull, or two cows. As for the animals that freeze to death in winter, they can be exchanged for grain or wine, and those things that no one wants before must be worthless.
As for the Great Song Dynasty, Cai Dao plans to sell it at a retail price of ten per jar, and it is only a small jar packed for one catty. The wholesale price can be discounted by 10% for large customers, and for those merchants who plan to sell fine wine to Western Xia or Qingtang, Cai Dao can give them the best price.
By the way, the winemaker under Cai Dao is also surnamed Cai, and his name is Cai Dukang. I heard that his father was an alcoholic, so he got such a name. That Cai Gouzi is his nephew, so Cai Dao knows so much. He was loyal and honest, and he had spent his whole life in the winery, so he was not at all afraid of being poached by others.
A day later, under Cai Dao's personal guidance, Cai Dukang successfully brewed a higher degree of spirit, but he still couldn't think of a better solution to the problem of wine turbidity.
Of course, in the eyes of Cai Dukang and Dian, Cai Dao is too fastidious about the new wine. It's not normal for such a good wine to have a little bit of residue! Because, in addition to some fruit wines on the market, as long as the wine made from grain will have residues.
Cai Dao was naturally not a brick maker in later generations, and he did not make wine himself, but only read books and knew that he could obtain a high degree of liquor by distillation. However, this does not mean that he has not thought of a solution, and the method of multi-layer filtration of cotton cloth or embroidered cloth can greatly solve this problem. However, the issue of cost has become an even bigger problem.
It's not impossible to filter it with embroidery cloth, but if the filtered wine can't be sold for 50 yuan, it will be a bit of a loss. After all, the price of the embroidery itself is high.
As for cotton, it has not yet been popularized in today's Great Song Kingdom, and it is difficult to find traces in the north and south, and it can only be found in the uninhabited place on Qiongzhou Island.
A few years ago, when he was in Xiaoci, Cai Dao also got some seeds through the sea, and he had successfully tried to plant them. However, if Cai Dao wants to successfully plant in the north, it will take time to verify. Promotion is even more problematic.
Moreover, the main problem is that the territory of the Great Song Kingdom itself is very narrow, and the Central Plains and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River are still insufficient to grow grain, where is there any surplus land for growing cotton!
Before seeing the actual benefits, Song Shenzong, who had always trusted him, would not support his large-scale promotion of cotton planting. Therefore, when he learned that the official family handed over the entire Shuibo Liangshan to his own management, Cai Dao was really happy.
However, after arranging some things, Cai Dao had to leave Shuibo Liangshan with the children. Because, after the autumn harvest is over, it is time to cultivate the winter wheat in the land of Genyue. There is simply no time for him to linger here.