Sake Q & A

A. It is a fermented drink made from rice and water. In it's simplest terms, sake can be described by the following equation:                                                         rice + water + koji  + yeast starter = sake

Is it like wine? beer? vodka? It is often described in English as "rice wine" and I guess it does kind of have wine-like qualities but it really isn't a wine.  It does kind of have some similar characteristics to beer.  It is made from rice which is a grain. Generally speaking, like beer, it doesn't stand up well to aging and light. But it is not generally carbonated and it has a different appearance so it is not really a beer either.  It may look like vodka in appearance, but it  has nothing to do with distilled spirits. This leads us back to the fact that sake is sake. It stands by itself as a unique and truly magnificent drink with more than a 1000 years of history behind it. However, it is very misunderstood and underappreciated.  I hope this site will help to change that.

Q. What kind of rice is used to make sake?

A. The sake brewers of Japan use what's called "sakamai" (sake rice) to brew sake. "Saka" is the same as "sake" and "mai" means rice in Japanese. It is a certain variety of rice that is suitable for the sake brewing process.  "Sakamai" is different from the table rice you eat in that the grains are a little bit bigger and hold up better to the milling that is the critical first-step of the brewing process. It is possible to brew sake using table rice, but probably the resulting sake will not taste very good.  Because rice is such a critical factor in determining how a sake turns out, an entire book could be devoted to just "sakamai". It also accounts for the majority of the overall cost of sake-brewing, so you can see that choosing the right rice is critical to making delicious sake. Some of the most well-known "sakamai" are Yamadanishiki (Hyogo Prefecture), Gohyakumangoku (Niigata Pref., Ishikawa Pref.) and Omachi (Okayama Pref.).

Q. What kind of water is used to make sake?

A. Water is the other major ingredient for making sake. It's no coincidence that sake brewers set up shop in places with an abundant supply of good, clean water. Some brewers use water from their own wells, some brewers actually bring it in from other places. Basically there are two kinds of water, hard (containing more minerals) and soft (containing less minerals). In the sake world, both kinds of water and everything in between are used. The water from each region in Japan has its own characteristics which will affect the taste of the sake. The major examples being the Nada region in Kobe which tends to have a harder water and the Fushimi region in Kyoto which tends to have a softer water. Harder water tends to produce a more masculine sake while softer water tends to produce a more feminine sake. Neither being better than the other, just different.

Q. What is koji?

A. Such a simple question with such a difficult answer. This is really getting into the heart of sake -brewing. Koji is steamed rice that has had a "koji kin" (mold spore) inoculated into it.

Q. What does koji do? A. Rice does not contain any glucose which is the sugar needed to ferment into alcohol. Koji is the agent which converts the starch from the rice into fermentable sugars. It's the catalyst for the entire sake-brewing process, so it's pretty important!

Q. How is koji made? A. It all starts with the mold spore itself. The scientific name for it is Aspergillus Oryzae.  Brewers  buy the mold spore from a company that makes and sells them called a "moyashi ya san" (there are about 10 of these in Japan I was told).  For anybody who knows anything about Japanese food, it's basically the same mold spore used in making miso and soy sauce. The "koji kin" (mold spore) looks like a powder. It is sprinkled over steamed rice and placed in an incubating room called a "muro" for 1-2 days. Think of the "muro" as like a sauna because high temperatures are required for the incubation of the "koji kin". Traditionally, the "muro" was lined with cedar boards which was conducive to the koji-making process. Once the koji kin has worked its magic, the steamed rice should have a white frosting-like coating over each grain of rice and it should emit a sweet smell of chestnuts. The koji making process is complete.

Q. What is a yeast starter?

A. A yeast starter is what gets the fermenting process going. In Japanese, it is called "shubo" (it means mother of sake) or "moto" (it means the origin or beginning). In its simplest terms, it is a mixture (mash in brewers language) of steamed rice, the koji we just talked about in the above Q and A, and water.