Editor's Note

On April 28, at the conference to celebrate the May 1st International Labor Day and commend model workers and excellent craftsmen in Hunan Province, Su Shuming, leader of Team 16 in the brewing workshop of Xiangjiao Liquor Co., Ltd., was awarded the “National Labor Medal”. It’s been 25 years since he became a brewer at the age of 19. Su Shuming has mastered excellent traditional brewing craftsmanship that produces beautiful liquor through hard work and strenuous training.

Su Shuming is a typical representative of brewers working in Jindong Group. He has many outstanding peers in the company. Jindong Group is widely known for its good liquor products thanks to a large number of unknown but remarkable brewers. Brewing is a trade of great doctrines and there is no end to it. Salute to the respectable brewers of Jindong! 

A battle of the best is a matter of inches. Triumph will never befall those that are unskilled.  Being meticulous and keeping practicing are my know-hows.

- Su Shuming

Traditional brewers are well aware that behind the shining medal is a story of intensive study and constant exploration that Su Shuming has persisted in over the past 25 years.

“Tao Jueping, Qian Haisheng and Tang Shijun are my formal masters, but I’ll learn from any brewer who knows more and better than me.” Su Shuming recalled the days when he studied brewing skills as if they were yesterday.

“Judging liquor maturity by hops” is a stunt owned by Su Shuming. He can accurately tell the degree and grade of liquor from the size and disappearance rate of new hops, with an error within 0.5 degrees. In fact, there was an awkward story when he acquired this enviable skill even to any veterans. 

When he first tried to collect liquor from barrel, Su Shuming imitated his master by taking a sip of the liquor. The new spirit, with more than 70 degrees, burned him from throat to heart. Having been through this painful and ridiculous try, he began to think: learning techniques should be all about acquiring essence rather than reckless imitation. So he practiced the technical principles he learned from his master. He always judged the degree of the liquor by hops and made measurement for the result with a meter before he sent the liquor to the storeroom. If he had a wrong guess, he would take out a cup of the spirit, pour it into a vessel and observe the hops, especially their size and disappearance rate, until he made the right judgment again. He kept the practice for seven years.

“Every step of brewing requires craftsmanship.” This is what every brewer in the workshop knows. Take filling the stillage with water as an example. There is no fixed volume as it is affected by various factors such as materials and weather. Brewers have to decide based on your experience.

It takes 8 steps to turn grain into liquor, from removing pit mud, yielding liquor, cooling stillage to managing pit. Only when errors in every step are minimized, will efficient and high-quality liquor production be possible. In order to gain these experiences, brewers have to practice every day like Su Shuming practicing “judging liquor maturity by hops”. In the workshop, team leaders are masters. Their main tasks are getting the technique right, identifying the problems of workers at work, think about the problems, and discuss solutions at the morning meeting on the next day in order to avoid recurrence of such problems.

“Only those who are thoughtful and diligent in practice are retained in the distillery.” Su Shuming said that 5 of his new subordinates have been promoted as workshop team leaders since he took this office. All of them are people that are willing to learn, think and temper their skills.

In the brewing workshop of Xiangjiao, brewers are no longer afraid of boredom and loneliness as they are immersed in an atmosphere that favors thinking and learning. They have been working in the workshop for decades, painstakingly practicing and comprehending the essence of craftsmanship. They feel excited about every technical progress and get further motivated.

“Perseverance matters in the trade of brewing. Boredom and tiredness are natural. However, when you get the true meaning of brewing, you will no longer feel bored. Stay concentrated. Brewing is so profound a trade that you have so many to learn. The more you learn, the more interesting you will find it to be,” said Su Shuming.