The days of waiting for the unveiling of the list are extremely difficult, and it can be said that the days are like years!

After the examination, many scholars went to Shevagoulan to be vassals and have fun. Every day, there are scholars in the Zhuangyuan Building who are inviting friends and friends, talking and talking. The alum building is full of guests and friends, lively and extraordinary, and it makes people happy. Among the 72 famous restaurants in Beijing, all kinds of jealous romances emerge one after another, and they can always become people's after-dinner conversations.

And these have nothing to do with Wu Zhi.

Sit and eat the mountain empty. After the exam and a few days of rest, he began to plan how to settle down in the capital, and he needed some ways to make money.

After a few days of walking through the streets and alleys, Wu Zhi found that the commercial activities in Bianliang City, Tokyo are very developed, and all walks of life are booming, especially the food and daily necessities business, which is more prosperous and surprisingly profitable.

Therefore, Wu Zhi decided to start with these industries first, develop slowly, and then build his own business empire after accumulating enough strength. At present, he has no funds, no manpower, can't run a restaurant, can't start a business, so he can only start from what is in the cup.

At that time, Bianliang, the capital of the Great Song Dynasty with a population of more than 1.2 million, was extremely prosperous, giving birth to countless restaurants and restaurants, among which there were as many as 72 large restaurants, and there were countless foot shops of all kinds. In the sheng song banquet and dance, the daily consumption of various drinks is as high as tens of thousands of catties, and the market is very vast, which is a good direction for investment. Therefore, Wu Zhi decided to start with alcohol and began to take the first step to make money in business.

Alcohol is a good thing, it can be used in many places, such as medical disinfection, eating, extracting flavors, making perfumes, making dyes, etc., and Wu Sik needs to make high-purity alcohol in order to implement his business plan.

At that time, most of the liquor commonly consumed by the people of the Great Song Dynasty was liquor with a degree of no more than 20 degrees, and generally a few degrees below 20 degrees and a few degrees of low-alcohol liquor, with a very low alcohol degree, and the aroma of the wine was not strong, and most of them tasted bland and tasteless. "Cooking sheep and slaughtering cattle for pleasure will require three hundred cups of drink." The ancients described a large number of drinkers, often saying that a thousand cups are not drunk, and they drink this kind of low degree of light liquor! You can drink it, and it's rare to get drunk.

Liquor above 38 degrees was almost non-existent in the Song Dynasty, and this high-grade liquor was only brewed in small quantities in the northern Liao Kingdom, which was located in the north and the weather was colder, and they needed spirits to keep out the cold. However, the production of spirits above 38 degrees is very small and very precious, which only the nobles of the Liao State can afford to drink, and they cannot enter the territory of the Song Dynasty at all, and the people of the Great Song Dynasty have never heard of this wine.

What Wu Zhi has to do is to first distill and purify the low-alcohol liquor to make alcohol with a concentration of more than 75 degrees, and then blend and mellow the high-purity alcohol to convert it into spirits above 38 degrees, and at the same time prepare some 75-degree alcohol for disinfection. Disinfectant alcohol is very useful, and you need to keep it at home, which is called being prepared.

As a former excellent science student, the distillation and purification of alcohol is not a problem for Wu Zhi at all, a piece of cake, the only problem is: the steaming equipment commonly used by the people of the Song Dynasty can not meet his distillation requirements at all, and he cannot produce high-purity alcohol, so he needs to renovate the distillation facilities.

Just do it. Wu Zhi mobilized all the knowledge in his mind, pondered hard, and after several days and nights of drawing, deletion and revision, he finally designed a relatively satisfactory distillation equipment drawing. Wu Zhi took the drawings he had designed, inquired around, and found a skilled carpenter Tan Si to help him make them. Carpenter Tan Si looked at the drawings, although he was puzzled, but after detailed reference, he said that he could make it. So, Wu Zhi bought materials from him and invited him to come to his home with a high salary to make them on the spot.

After a few days of busyness, under the questioning eyes of Pan Wei, Xiao'e and Wang Er, Tan Si finally made the distillation equipment designed by Wu Zhi. That is, on the basis of the traditional wine steaming equipment, retain the large stove and the large bottom pot, remove the heavenly pot, the circumference of the vertical barrel is reduced by half, the height is elongated three times, the bottom end of the vertical barrel is emptied, and a hollow surrounding impermeable partition is fixed at the top of the three inches, which is used to fix the opening wine jar, the partition is sealed around the corner and the interface of the wine jar, the top of the vertical barrel is covered with a circular cover plate, and a round hole is left in the middle to cut into a hollow bamboo tube, the inner end of the bamboo tube is flush with the cover plate, and the outer end is connected to a three-meter-long bamboo tube with a small elbow and a slightly larger inner diameter. The bamboo tube is fixed, a piece of wet linen cloth is tied in the middle, and an iron ring is put on the bamboo tube in front of the linen to block the water, and the outermost end of the bamboo tube can be stretched into the empty wine jar.

Looking at the tower-style distillation equipment in front of him, Wu Zhi felt quite satisfied. But Xiao'e, Pan Wei and Wang Er were confused on the side, and they wanted to ask but didn't dare to ask. Tan is in his forties, Mu Ne is honest, although he is also confused, but Wu Zhi praised him for doing a good job, and he smiled after getting double the salary, and no longer questioned it.

Wu Zhi uses the water bath method to distill the alcohol. When steaming wine, first put the big bottom pot on the big stove, load four-fifths of the pot with water, fix the wine jar containing the wine at the bottom of the vertical barrel, seal the seams, and then erect the vertical bucket on the large bottom pot, try not to make the wine jar touch the bottom pot, soak it in water, part of the water is exposed outside the vertical barrel, easy to observe the temperature, fix the vertical barrel, connect the hollow bamboo tube, seal the interface so that it does not leak, the linen in the middle of the bamboo tube is poured with cold water, and the bamboo tube outlet is stretched into the empty wine jar and fixed. Then light the fire, and let Xiao'e boil the water in the big bottom pot, ask her to control the fire, not too big, try to keep the water in a state of boiling or slightly boiling, and keep the water temperature at about 90 degrees.

After a while, when the bamboo tube starts to get hot, slowly, the outlet of the bamboo tube begins to drip down the crystal liquid. Wu Zhi scooped it up with a spoon, tasted it, and immediately felt spicy and painful, feeling extremely awe-inspiring, much stronger than the 53-degree Moutai wine he had drunk before, and a little stronger than the 76-degree Hengshui Fuyang River Laobai dry wine he had tasted. He knew that he had succeeded, and this was the alcohol he wanted above seventy-five degrees!

Constantly pour cold water on the linen, when the bamboo tube is sparse and no longer flows continuously, turn off the fire, remove the bamboo tube, remove the vertical barrel, remove the distilled wine jar, and then install a new wine jar, re-erect the vertical barrel, reconnect the bamboo tube, then pour cold water, continue to ignite the boiling water distillation, and so on and so on to carry out the distillation operation.

A jar of low-alcohol liquor can only distill a little more than one-sixth of the alcohol, and it took several hours to distill a jar of high-alcohol alcohol of the same volume after steaming six jars of liquor in a row.

Looking at the jar of alcohol in front of him, Wu Zhi felt a lot of emotion in his heart. According to his estimates, the alcohol content of this jar of alcohol should be about 85 degrees, because in later generations, he once tasted the 76-degree Hengshui Fuyang River Laobai Dry Liquor, which can be called the king of wine, out of curiosity, and its intensity is not greater than the alcohol distilled now.

This alcohol is ready to use. A little blending and mellowing, it can be turned into a mellow and fragrant high spirit, and it can also be used as disinfectant alcohol, as long as it is mixed with some cold distilled water, it can be prepared into an alcohol of about 75 degrees, which is a miracle potion that can save countless lives. Distilled water can be prepared directly with the distillation device in front of you, without adding new equipment, and can be used for two purposes.

Pan Wei and Wang Er quietly watched Wu Zhi and Xiao'e tinkering, and occasionally intervened to help. When I saw the wine coming out and smelled the strong aroma of the alcohol, I couldn't hold back, and I picked up the spoons and tasted it, and my face was immediately flushed, and I coughed again and again: "This wine is too strong!" As soon as the alcohol entered his throat, the burning sensation followed, which irritated the two of them beyond measure!

Looking at the wine in the spoon in their hands, they were completely frightened: "Why is it so strong?" Can this be drunk? Then the two looked at Wu Zhi with a wry smile, shook their heads and sighed again and again.

When Wu Zhi heard this, he just smiled and didn't answer. Just kidding, how can this alcohol be drunk without blending? Doesn't that kill people?

Xiao'e was calm on the side, in her mind, Brother Da Lang was the best, and everything was taken for granted.

But seeing the six wine jars next to him, Wu Zhi couldn't laugh a little: "The cost of making high-alcohol in this way is too expensive, and the six jars of low-alcohol liquor are almost more than 120 catties, so it takes one jar to distill, more than 20 catties, and six for one, the wine money alone will cost more than 2,400 yuan, plus materials and labor, almost six yuan will be gone!" All of a sudden, he was distressed by the loss of six yuan, and then he knew that he didn't know that firewood, rice, oil and salt were expensive. When it comes to large-scale production in the future, he will not only have to expand the distillery, but also build or own his own brewery, so as to reduce the production cost.

After the exam, he was completely relaxed, Pan Wei had already secretly been to the Washe Golan a few times, drank flower wine, and had fun, but later saw that Wu Zhi had not entered this kind of occasion, and there was no debauchery and pleasure, he also felt embarrassed, and he endured the pain of cutting his love, and put away his wandering thoughts. He is a few years older than Wu Zhi, but he is not as steady and defensive as Wu Zhi, he feels ashamed! Sometimes, he also felt strange that this Wu Zhi's manners, words and deeds were very incommensurate with his age of less than nineteen, and he was too serious and old.

Now seeing that Wu Zhi and Xiao'e were busy drumming up the drinks, he was curious, so he had to pull Wang Er to help out.

Wu Zhi took the opportunity to boil some distilled water, and after the water was cool, he slowly mixed about ten catties of alcohol into seventy-five degrees of disinfectant alcohol, divided it into ten small jars, covered the altar lid, and sealed the mouth of the altar with wax, preserved it, and set aside. Then the remaining more than 10 catties of alcohol were mixed with about half a jar of low-alcohol liquor, and carefully blended nearly 10 catties of 38 degrees of spirits and about 10 catties of 50 degrees of high spirits, he tasted them respectively, and felt that the taste was really good, mellow and fragrant, full of fragrance, pure and long taste, this is exactly the high spirits he wants to develop, only a little mellowing can be put on sale! It is best to be able to mellow it for ten or twenty years, that is called a real fine wine, it is definitely a fine wine, but unfortunately Wu Zhi can't wait that long, and he doesn't have time to wait, as long as this wine can be mellow for ten days and half a month, it's good.

Looking at the liquor in front of him, Wu Zhi knew that he had finally succeeded in developing a high-grade liquor, and as for whether it could be popular with the public, he was still quite confident.

The 38-degree spirits and the 50-degree spirits were divided into two jars, covered with lids and sealed, and labeled separately, and Wu Zhi stored them in a cooler place to mellow them.

While the iron was hot, Wu Zhi invited Tan Si again, painted the gourd according to the drawings, and continued to make three sets of distillation equipment for him, and added three large stoves for later use when expanding the scale of production.

Every two or three days, Wu Zhi will buy a batch of relatively high-quality mellow and low-alcohol liquor, which is used to distill alcohol, and then blend and blend it into spirits of about 38 degrees and high spirits of about 50 degrees, and blend more than 100 catties of spirits of about 38 degrees and more than 100 catties of high spirits of about 50 degrees.

There are too many spirits, but Wu Zhi's pockets are gradually empty! The sixty taels of silver he brought from his hometown were almost used up, but fortunately, Pan Wei had brought enough coils from his hometown, and borrowing some was enough for him to continue tossing for a while.

Pan Wei and Wang Er watched Wu Zhi tossing every day, very puzzled, and didn't understand why he kept making this kind of undrinkable wine, which was not only a waste of money, but also laborious. Because Wu Zhi avoided Pan Wei and Wang Er every time he blended spirits, Xiao'e was the only one left to help at the scene, and they didn't have a chance to taste the spirits he blended. This is a trade secret, Wu Zhi doesn't want to leak it now, and as long as he tells Xiao'e, she will definitely not leak the secret, but others are different, he can't believe it at the moment.

In this way, Wu Zhi's business road has finally made a good start, and when everything is ready, he can set sail!