Rice Drink, Sikhye~!

2011102868  태성아 Sung-A Tae

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How about having a talk of a sweet and cool drink, or sweet and warm one? There is a Korean traditional drink, Sikhye.

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Sikhye is called Rice Punch as well, since it is made of rice and Chapssal. To make Sikhye, rice and malt, sugar are not able to be lack of. Of course water is needed, too. Actually Sikhye has another name, called sweet liquor. Although most of Sikhye do not have any element of alcohol in them nowadays, people still call Sikhye as Gamjoo, which means sweet liquor.

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As other kinds of traditional foods, Sikhye has several different theories of history. However, there are two main streams of history of Sikhye.

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1.  Came From North of Korea

At the very first, it is said that Sikhye was made mainly of fishes. People put fishes, rice, radish and powdered red pepper together and fermented them to make Sikhye in the north of Korea. Then it was brought to the place far from ocean, so people there could not put fishes in Sikhye. Instead of fishes, malt was put in. After that it gradually became Sikhye at present, without powdered red pepper and radish, but with malt and rice only.

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2.  Came From China

In one old ancient book of China, a description of sweet liquor is written. It is said that this kinds of sweet liquor was for the upper classes only. Those people in upper classes drank sweet liquor coolly for getting out from the heat of hot weather.

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However, for my own experience in China, I haven’t heard about any sweet liquor (well, maybe that is because I had not yet been the age of drinking anything with alcohol). In addition, my Chinese friends think Sikhye as Korean traditional food, too. In this case, this theory of Sikhye coming from China is strange. Well, I can’t talk about this too deeply since I am not an expert. If anyone is interested in it, please search at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhye) or other websites.

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Sikhye has come out in various forms now, such as cans, plastic bottles or glass bottles. There also have come out various sizes so that everyone can carry it easily and comfortably, or keep a lot in refrigerator.

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More and more people in the world are finding Sikhye as a delicious drink. It is really good to have such a sweet and cool drink in summer, or sweet and warm drink in winter as well!

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