A hand spreads steaming black highland barley across a large bamboo tray with a wooden paddle, more barley fills a bamboo steamer, fermenting mash bubbles in a clay vat, and a small bowl holds clear liquor.
Clean steaming, clean distilling
Introduction
Baijiu of the light aroma, made with separate steaming and distilling and a daqu starter.
Light-aroma baijiu is baijiu whose main aroma is of the light, clean type, and it too has a national standard of its own. These spirits use a daqu starter, and the traditional process is clean steaming and clean distilling. The distilled highland-barley liquor of Huzhu in Qinghai has used this process for hundreds of years, counts as light-aroma baijiu and is made mainly from black highland barley. Strong-aroma, sauce-aroma and other aroma types each have a class of their own, and particular spirits are entries.