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May 4, 2026 31 min

Alice Jun of Hana Makgeolli

from Skurnik Unfiltered Hosted by Skurnik Wines & Spirits

"Sool is an ancient style of rice wine. It has over two-thousand years of documented history. Our style is distinctly influenced by the style of brews that I grew up with—a wilder, more natural, more gastronomical style of Korean wine. And for those who are curious about going deeper, there is always something more." – Alice Jun Alice Jun remembers makgeolli as an important ingredient of her upbringing in the '90s in her Los Angeles Korean American community. Her father, a first-generation immigrant, taught her how to brew the mixed-culture sedimented rice wine at home. His style, brewed from brown rice, was rustic and traditional—much stronger and drier than the lighter, aspartame-sweetened version exported to grocery store shelves, which many in the Korean diaspora had become used to. In this week's episode, Alice tells the story of how she went from bootlegging her father's recipe from her NYC shoebox apartment to starting Hana Makgeolli, the first craft makgeolli brewery in the US, and how the explosion of Korean pop culture and a rapid consumer-driven appetite for craft Asian beverages is changing the landscape of American gastronomy. Automatically generated transcripts often make mistakes. Find a corrected version here. Learn more about the different types of sool. Skurnik Wines & Spirits Follow us on Instagram

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"Sool is an ancient style of rice wine. It has over two-thousand years of documented history. Our style is distinctly influenced by the style of brews that I grew up with—a wilder, more natural, more gastronomical style of Korean wine. And for those who are curious about going deeper, there is always something more." – Alice Jun Alice Jun remembers makgeolli as an important ingredient of her upbringing in the '90s in her Los Angeles Korean American community. Her father, a first-generation ...

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Alice Jun of Hana Makgeolli

0:00 31:48

Chapters

  1. 0:03 Introduction
  2. 6:05 A crash course on Korean sool
  3. 12:30 Starting Hana Makgeolli
  4. 17:13 Reception in Korea and the diaspora in America
  5. 25:30 The growing popularity of Korean culture in the US
  6. 29:39 Rapid fire questionnaire

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This episode is 31 minutes long.

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This episode was published on May 4, 2026.

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