The Yi classic "The Origin of Everything", which is circulated in Yunnan Yi society, said that Separ, the ancestor of Yi people, realized the truth of making wine from rice, but devoted his life to finding wine and medicine, and finally failed. Later, his apprentice Huo continued to work hard, relying on the collective wisdom and strength, and finally found the herbal raw materials and synthetic methods for making koji. Daqu was not discovered by one person overnight, but gradually explored and summarized in the long production practice. Folk songs, with extremely beautiful language, create a hard and poetic realm. When discovering the hardships and twists and turns of wine and medicine, he expressed his sincere praise for wine, and also revealed the original concept of "labor creates beauty and labor creates life" of Yi ancestors. The ballad puts forward that "sixteen herbs are needed to make koji". On the other hand, Song of Drunk Medicine, an ancient Yi book circulating in Luquan and Wuding, Yunnan Province, holds that there are twelve kinds of medicinal materials for making distiller's yeast, and points out the types and methods of making distiller's yeast.
In ancient China, the method of chewing rice to make wine spread among ethnic minorities. The Biography of Shu Wei Buji contains: At that time, "people who lost Wei" could "chew rice to make wine, and drink it to get drunk." A Journey to the Sea includes the Gaoshan people in Taiwan Province Province. "Its brewing method is to gather men, women and children to chew rice and put it in a bucket, which will become wine in a few days. When you drink, you will enter the clear spring. " "Chewing rice into koji" is a relatively backward koji-making method.
Since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the brewing industry in Yunnan, where ethnic minorities live in concentrated communities, has made great progress, especially the folk brewing and drinking of water wine has become very common. At the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, Italian traveler Kyle Polo visited Yunnan, and in his The Travels of Marco Polo, he mentioned the production and consumption of Yunnan wine industry many times. This shows that the people of all ethnic groups in central Yunnan have reached a very skilled level in the use of koji. In the Ming dynasty, there were people who specialized in making wine and pharmaceuticals. Xu Xiake, a famous traveler, roamed the mountains and rivers of Yunnan and entered Xiangyun County of Dali from Nanhua County of Chuxiong, Yunnan Province along the ancient tea-horse road. "He got off a village, went to North Erli, passed a slope and Erli in the north, and passed a small Haizi. There are several villages on his northern mountain called Jiuyao Village." The location of Jiuyao Village is unknown today, but it can be speculated that the commercial production of Jiuqu began at that time and was named after the village.
After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with the development of plant medicine, ethnic minorities had a deeper understanding of the plants used to make koji. Many ethnic groups have been able to brew and mix wines with different tastes and colors to meet different drinking requirements by adjusting the proportion of some plant components in distiller's yeast according to the raw materials.
The Yi people in Nujiang, Yunnan Province used Sophora alopecuroides (that is, Gentiana scabra) as the main raw material to make distiller's yeast. The method is to grind Sophora alopecuroides into dough, steam it thoroughly in a steamer, cover it in a bamboo basket for several days, and ferment it into distiller's yeast. Like the Yi people, the Nu people in Robbie Snow Mountain and Gaoligong Mountain also like to drink hard liquor, and they mastered the method of making high-quality distiller's yeast earlier. The main components of Nu nationality distiller's yeast are corn flour and Sophora alopecuroides. First, the corn flour and Sophora alopecuroides are mashed into powder, put into a soil pot, soaked in cold water for one day and one night, stirred into a semi-fluid state with red and bitter water juice, kneaded into egg-sized medicine balls, spread rice bran on a bamboo basket, put the medicine balls into the bamboo basket in layers, and sprinkle rice bran between layers. All the people who undertake the above work are Nu women.
The raw materials used by ethnic minorities to make liquor koji are different due to regional and ethnic differences. Lahu people mix Bupleurum, fragrant bark, banana peel, orange peel, grass roots, stems and fruits of some spicy plants, fry them in an iron pot overnight, then dry them in the sun, crush them, mix them with old wine and medicine, hide them in straw, and seal and ferment them to get koji. Another feature of Tibetan distiller's yeast is that a plant called Mudu Zige is used to mix the bile of fish, goats, bison and other animals, ground into powder, kneaded into cakes with human flour and a little cold water, strung together with strings, hung on the house wall and dried. Yi people use the most materials to make koji. In the selection, proportion and procedure of koji-making, the ingredients can be appropriately adjusted according to the raw materials, seasons and winemakers' preference for wine taste and color. The commonly used ingredients in local distiller's yeast made by Yi people are: medicinal flowers, laurel leaves, Ophiopogon japonicus, asparagus, ephedra, wasp, Komatsu root, old lady's ear grass, radish, scutellaria baicalensis, ear grass, gentian, mint, kusnezoff monkshood, pepper, malt, old sow's spicy stems, loose hair, grass, ivy and bitter grass. There are also ethnic minorities who started late in understanding and using distiller's yeast. For example, Kucong people of Lahu nationality, who live in deep mountains and forests, have a long history of brewing wine, but they can't make koji. Until the 1950s, they also exchanged forest products such as animal skins, bear gall and wild notoginseng for distillers' yeast for the surrounding Han and Hani nationalities. Because of its scarcity, distiller's yeast has become a valuable item in the life of Kucong people, and even when they worship their ancestors and gods, they use distiller's yeast to express their feelings. This situation is a manifestation of the unbalanced development of all ethnic groups.