Qinghai Highland Barley Liquor Brewing Technique

The traditional brewing of Qinghai highland barley liquor is centred on Huzhu Tu Autonomous County in Haidong, Qinghai, a highland barley heartland at an average altitude of some 2,600 metres. Brewing here runs deep—a legend of more than four thousand years of barley liquor and seven hundred years of distilled spirit, with the "Tianyoude" and seven other great workshops famous across the northwest since the Ming and Qing. In 2021 the craft was added to the national ICH list as an extension under traditional distilled-liquor brewing.

Its core is the unbroken "four-clear" method: highland barley is the grain, cakes of starter are made from local peas and wheat, the grain is clean-steamed and the mash clean-fermented, then distilled four times in succession, all by hand with long, low-temperature fermentation before ageing in earthen jars; the liquor is clean and elegant, mellow-sweet and brisk, with a distinctive highland-grain fragrance.

The brewing craft is a living witness to the farming and handicraft culture of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, carrying the wisdom and festival rites of the Tu, Tibetan and other peoples; Huzhu is named "China's home of highland barley liquor," and the craft holds real value for the study of highland food culture and industry.