Medicinal liquor has a history of thousands of years since ancient times. Through the continuous summary and improvement of medical experts and health care experts in past dynasties, many effective medicinal liquor formulas have been accumulated. These prescriptions are not only used to prevent and treat diseases, but also a major feature of TCM health care.
What is medicinal liquor? Medicinal liquor is a transparent liquid made by combining wine with Chinese herbal medicine and processing it. It is a health drink. Medicinal liquor belongs to blended liquor in the national beverage and wine classification system. It is a kind of medicinal liquor based on fermented wine, distilled wine or edible alcohol, added with edible animal or plant Chinese herbal medicines, and processed by different processes such as soaking, boiling and steaming. However, in the traditional preparation process of medicinal liquor, appropriate Chinese medicines are also added to brew.
Self-brewed medicinal liquor should be white wine with a temperature above 50 degrees.
What kind of wine should I choose for making health wine? Wine is a kind of beverage made of rice, wheat, corn, sorghum and distiller's yeast, and it has many kinds because of different raw materials and brewing techniques. From the perspective of brewing technology, liquor can be divided into distilled liquor and non-distilled liquor. The former is found in general liquor, while the latter includes yellow wine, yellow wine and wine. In ancient times, whether making health-preserving medicinal liquor or medical liquor, the original base liquor was non-distilled liquor. Tang's Newly Revised Materia Medica stipulates that "all wines must be qu" and "all wines are different, only yellow wine is used as medicine". It can be seen that the base wine of Tang dynasty medicinal liquor is rice wine brewed with distiller's yeast, which is a non-distilled wine. It was not until the Qing Dynasty that distilled liquor (distilled liquor) gradually became popular as a medicinal base wine. People's Republic of China (PRC) Pharmacopoeia (20 10) stipulates: "Liquor refers to a clear liquid preparation made by extracting decoction pieces from distilled liquor." The liquor standards issued by the National Bureau of Standards include both grain-brewed liquor and potato-brewed liquor. People's Republic of China (PRC) Pharmacopoeia clearly points out: "The production of oral liquid should take grain wine as raw material." It can be seen that in the production of medicinal liquor, white wine made of grain raw materials should be chosen as the base wine of medicinal liquor.
Experts believe that the base wine for brewing pharmaceutical wine should generally drink more than 50% alcohol, so as to kill microorganisms, parasites and eggs attached to the brewed Chinese medicinal materials to the greatest extent during the brewing process and ensure the safety of brewing pharmaceutical wine. In addition, the concentration of soaking solution should also be selected and applied according to the function of various medicinal liquor. Generally speaking, the concentration of base wine used for nourishing medicinal liquor can be lower; Because of the need of promoting blood circulation, the concentration of base wine used in blood-activating medicinal wine can be relatively high. Therefore, families should also master the proper amount of base wine according to its function.
It can be seen that the self-made health care medicinal liquor chooses base liquor, mostly white wine, yellow wine, yellow wine, especially white wine. The selection of base liquor concentration should not only consider the function of medicinal liquor, but also consider the individual differences of drinkers' alcohol consumption. The concentration of base liquor with good capacity can be higher, and the concentration of base liquor with poor capacity should not be too high, and low-alcohol liquor can be used. It is forbidden to soak medicinal liquor with inferior liquor with high residual amount of ethanol (alcohol) or methanol.