Traveling through 70's wine

After returning home, Wen Qing first lit the stoves on both sides to warm up the room. After dinner, Wen Qing went to the backyard to check the fermentation of the wine cellar and the ground tank. She found that the fermentation in the wine cellar was too slow, mainly because the quality of the lees in the wine cellar was very poor, the starch content was low, and the temperature could not rise.

The fermentation in the earthen jar was going well. She checked the indoor temperature, which was about 7 or 8 degrees. She touched the wall of the jar and it was slightly hot, about 12 or 3 degrees.

After the inspection, Wen Qing entered the space.

The winemaking in the space progresses faster. The strong-flavored wine brewed after the Spring Festival has completed fermentation, and it is time to distill the wine.

Wen Qing first soaked the grains and rice husks. The key to making strong-aroma liquor is "thousand-year wine cellar and ten-thousand-year dregs", which means that during the winemaking process, dregs are constantly discarded and added. The discarded dregs are the steamed flour dregs, and new grain dregs are added during the steaming process, and then koji is added to the cellar for fermentation.

The wine cellar in Wen Qing's space is not very big and can only hold 1000 kilograms of wine lees at a time. She picked up a shovel to break the mud seal and put the mash into the wine steamer layer by layer. She first steamed the lees and yellow water, and put the steamed wine aside, preparing to take it to the mud cellar in the backyard together with the steamed lees.

When steaming the grain dregs, she added the soaked grains, slightly reduced the firewood in the stove to make the fire smaller, and started steaming the wine.

When the temperature in the steamer reaches 60 degrees, Wen Qing opens the cold water valve, and soon the wine flows out from the pipe.

This steamer of mash weighed about 500 kilograms. Wen Qing took more than a kilogram of the mash, changed the barrel and started to collect the wine.

She took the jar containing the wine heads and smelled it. The aroma of wine was strong, but the wine heads contained impurities and could not be drunk. They needed to be stored separately.

She controlled the temperature of the wine between 25 and 30 degrees, took the wine according to the flowers, and when the time was almost right, she added firewood into the stove and steamed the grain over high heat.

After adding dregs each time, the water is measured, the wine is cooled and added with koji, the yellow water is thrown away and some dregs are poured into the wine cellar, and then the cellar is sealed again for fermentation.

There were four mud cellars in the space, and she steamed the mash 12 times in total before she finished steaming all the mash.

When I left the space, it was already morning.

Although she didn't sleep all night, Wen Qing was very excited as this was the first time she made strong-flavor liquor. In two months, she would be able to taste the strong-flavor liquor.

After school started, Wen Qing lived a very regular life. He attended classes during the day and went to the space at night. He either practiced, reclaimed wasteland, planted crops, fed chickens, made tea, or brewed wine. It was a very fulfilling life.

There are 2000 chickens and 3000 rabbits in the space, and one thousand seven hundred to eight hundred eggs can be picked up every day. Although the harvest is good, it is really too troublesome.

There are too many chickens and there is not enough grass on the lawn, so we need to feed them some feed.

Wen Qing took out iron sheets, conveyor belts and other materials and placed them in the front yard. She then took out a cutting machine and an electric welder and made a timed feeder.

The mixed feed is placed in a stainless steel tank and transported to the chicken trough at a regular interval. After the chickens have finished eating, it is rinsed with water. The waste water enters a special pool and will be used to water crops in the future, or discharged into the lake after sedimentation and purification.

This device originally needed electricity, but she only had a diesel generator and a gasoline generator. Generating electricity was very fuel-intensive, so she did not use electricity, but instead used mechanical timing and a wheel spring.

It is controlled by a chain. When the time comes, the feed is unloaded from the feed tank, water is added to stir it, and the conveyor belt is driven by gears to send it to the feeding trough. When the weight of the trough drops to a certain level, the gate of the pool is pulled to release water for flushing. She only needs to adjust the hinges and load the feed every day, which is not a big deal.

This feeder is only used for the chicken coop in the space. The rabbit house is larger and the rabbits just eat grass, so she doesn't have to worry about it.

It's just that the rabbits reproduce too quickly and her space is a bit crowded.

Wen Qing kept the fat rabbits and chickens in a pen, preparing to sell them at the market.

Spring has arrived, and the peach blossoms in Wen Qing's space have bloomed. Over the past few years, the bee colony has been divided into four groups, which have been moved by Wen Qing to different places in the space to pollinate crops and fruit trees.

The honey in the space tastes very good. She usually harvests honey once every six months and can harvest about 5 to 60 kilograms each time. She mainly eats the honey herself and only sells some of the honey she can't finish.

On market day, Wen Qing went to Shi County, a county town in the eastern part of Pingdong. Shi County had a large population, and its economy was the best developed among the nearby counties, and its purchasing power was also strong.

She made up as Li Wen, rode a tricycle, and pulled 200 poultry and 100 bottles of honey. It took her more than two hours to get there, 40 kilometers from Erxia Village to Shi County.

She went out at 7 o'clock in the morning. When she arrived, there were already many people in the market. Some of the people who came to the market were from Pingjing City, the same county, and the neighboring province. The quite large market was crowded with people.

Wen Qing parked the tricycle in a corner of the market, put up a sign and started selling goods.

She sold chickens and rabbits without tickets and at a reasonable price, which quickly attracted buyers. Rabbits were not common in the market, so the items sold out very quickly. By 11 o'clock, only honey was left on the stall.

At this time, an old woman came over and asked, "Are there any more rabbits?"

Before Wen Qing could say anything, the old woman looked inside the tricycle and said with a bit of regret, "I just heard from my neighbor that you had rabbits for sale, so I came here to buy some. How come they're sold out so quickly?"

Wen Qing asked: "Auntie, do you want to buy rabbits? 2 yuan per pound."

The old lady said, "Brother, do you have any more?"

Wen Qing pretended to take out a rabbit from the sack. It was very fat, probably 5 or 6 jin. The old lady immediately said, "I want this rabbit." It weighed 5 jin and 8 liang, a total of 11.6 yuan. Wen Qing rounded off the decimal point, and the old lady gave her 11 yuan and left happily.

Honey is a high-end food ingredient. A bottle from Wenqing weighs about 500 grams and is priced at 15 yuan, which is more expensive than a chicken, so few people ask about it.

Wen Qing was not in a hurry. She took out the pork pie she had prepared and ate lunch with the water in the kettle.

After dinner, there were fewer people in the market. She moved the tricycle to the entrance of the market and replaced the sign with one that read "Wild honey, nourishing and healthy."

After a while, a woman in a tweed coat came, looked at the honey carefully, tasted it, and got Wen Qing's guarantee that it was 12% wild honey. She bargained down to 6 yuan a bottle and bought bottles at once, saying that they were bought for her parents' family, her husband's family, and her own family respectively.

The woman's family was obviously well-off, and passers-by saw someone buying honey, and came over one after another. Wen Qing sold more than 30 bottles at once, and she didn't care whether she could sell the rest immediately. At three o'clock in the afternoon, there were only more than 100 bottles of honey left out of the 20 bottles she brought. Wen Qing didn't wait any longer and rode her bike home.

Between spring and summer, there was a shortage of food, and the price of food rose. When Wen Qing met Xiaozhuang again, Xiaozhuang took the initiative to ask if he had any food to sell.

Xiaozhuang told Wen Qing his full name: Zhuang Xien, and he was from Xijiang.

Wen Qing didn't have time to do sales, but Zhuang Xien had already led a sales team in the past few months. Wen Qing said, "We don't have any food now, but we got a batch of eggs. Well, they're 5 cents a pound."

Zhuang Xien was so excited when he heard that there was a chance! He was worried about the lack of supply, but he still asked, "Yes!"

Then he asked, "Brother Li, can you get some food?"

"You want to sell food? What kind of food do you want?"

Zhuang Xien explained: "I found a few people to cooperate with and found a way to sell grain." He then said: "I need 1000 kilograms of eggs and 3000 kilograms of grain, a little bit of everything."

Wen Qing had more than enough grain, even for making wine, so the two of them agreed to give him 3 kilograms of rice at 5 cents a kilogram, 1000 kilograms of flour at 2 cents a kilogram, and 2000 kilograms of eggs at 4 cents a kilogram, for a total of 1000 yuan.

Wen Qing rented a small house as a warehouse at No. 48, Majiaxiang, an alley near Zhuang Xien’s stall. The door was locked with a combination lock, which required not only the key but also the combination to open it.

She nailed a wooden box to the wall outside and gave Zhuang Xien the key to the box. If she had all the goods ready, she would put the door key and password in the box.