Well-known "Brewmaster" Li Bai, "Drunken Man" Ouyang Xiu and "Drinking Poet" Tao Yuanming ... these ancient people are all good drinkers in our impression. So! The question is, why didn't the ancients get drunk after drinking thousands of cups? How many degrees was the ancient wine?
In fact, until the Song Dynasty, most ancient people drank rice wine. Rice wine was the main drinking wine at that time because of its low alcohol content and sweet taste. Therefore, ancient people may not drink as much as modern people.
In fact, it is not that the ancients generally drank a lot, but that the wine they drank was not distilled wine, but fermented wine. This wine is similar to today's yellow rice wine, with low alcohol content, mostly only a few degrees, and high alcohol content of 10 degrees. That's how much people drink beer now!
The wine culture in "Water Margin" is very famous, including those who fight tigers after drinking, wine meat and monks. Novels often drink dozens or even dozens of bowls, while Lu exaggerates. After drinking more than ten bowls of wine, he will drink another barrel.
The alcohol content of this wine is low, generally around 15 degrees, slightly higher than that of beer, and the taste is far less spicy than that of distilled liquor, but slightly sweet. So this is in line with the scene of dozens of bowls of drinking in ancient times. In this way, if people who often drink a lot of liquor in modern times are brought to ancient times, it is estimated that they are all "Brewmaster".
The wines from the Southern Song Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty are all fermented wines, and the degree is not higher than 20 at most; Most of them are rice wine below 10 degree, which is filtered after fermentation. For example, the 18 bowls of wine that Song Wu drank over Jingyanggang were all below 20 degrees, even around 10 degrees. There is a passage in the Water Margin about Liang Jia's people and Yang Zhi buying wine to quench their thirst on a hot day. This story is enough to prove that the alcohol content in ancient times was very low.
Liquor gradually became popular after the Song and Yuan Dynasties. Its scientific name is distilled liquor, also called shochu, because white wine can be ignited. Soju is not an ancient method. Since the Yuan Dynasty, this method has been invented ... Recently, it was only steamed with glutinous rice or japonica rice or millet or barley and put in a fermentation tank for seven days. It is as clear as water and has a very strong taste, covered with wine and dew.
In the Yuan Dynasty, the brewing technology was reformed, and distilled liquor, namely shochu, appeared. The wine brewed by this technology is close to modern technology, and the alcohol content is relatively high, so even in Song Wu, even if you drink 18 bowls, it is not good wine.
Ancient liquor was generally fermented by distiller's yeast, and the degree was very low, ranging from 9 degrees to 18 degrees. Later distilled shochu, which is what we call white wine, is close to 50 degrees. According to Compendium of Materia Medica, shochu appeared in the Yuan Dynasty.
The current liquor has a low degree of more than 40 degrees and a high degree of more than 60 degrees. A few bottles will cripple you. In ancient times, if you had some white wine to warm up before the war, congratulations, you won the lottery.