China's Distilled Liquor Dating Back 800 YearsNew findings have shown that the Chinese developed the technique of distilling liquor in the 12th century.The findings overthrew the previous conclusion that the technique was introduced from Arabian countries in the 13th century. Archeologists recently unearthed a bronze distillation device in central China's Hubei province, which is believed to be the earliest vessels for liquor distillation found in China. The archeologists experimented with the device and found that the vessels can be used to make liquor from rice. When raw rice is boiled in the pot, an evaporated alcoholic liquid will rise to the dome, where it cools, condenses and flows into a grooved vessel. The technique, a breakthrough in alcoholic beverage production, was possibly developed by Taoist practitioners who made use of distillation to prepare medicine, according to Feng Changhai, a historian in Harbin of Heilongjiang Province |
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