02/29/08
Introduction
If you Google for “homebrew sake” or “make sake at home,” you’ll get a few hits. But they’re all really the same poorly written guide. I’ve been homebrewing my own sake for years, and I’m really dissatisfied with the quality of the online homebrewing sake guides, whose process turns out a product that is vastly inferior to commercially made sakes and even my own home-made product.
I’m hoping to change that. This guide will teach you how to make authentic seishu (清酒) - refined Japanese sake - at home, using the kan-zukuri (寒作り) [cold-brewed] method. While I’m at it, I hope to educate you, at least a little bit, about different varieties of sake and maybe even different methods for making it. I don’t intend for this to be the be-all end-all guide to sake, but I do hope it will generate some interest in making it at home from ingredients and equipment that are quite readily available. This is a long guide, with many pages, but hopefully taking the time to write all those pages will shed some light on a process that appears to be very complicated on the surface, but really is quite simple at its heart.
This guide is aimed at moderately experienced homebrewers. If you’re not a homebrewer, some terms will be a little unfamiliar to you. A quick Google search will usually define those words for you, but feel free to post questions in the form of comments on this guide. I’ll be more than happy to answer them for you.
This guide contains quite a few Japanese characters, which won’t display correctly if you don’t have the Japanese language pack for your OS installed. If 清酒 looks like a couple empty boxes and that bothers you, then set your browser encoding to Japanese (Shift-JIS) and follow the prompts to install the Japanese language pack. If it doesn’t bother you to have empty boxes in place of certain characters, then carry on!
Finally, to give credit where it’s due, everything I know about making sake, I learned from the book Sake (U.S.A) by Fred Eckhardt. I don’t want to duplicate his work in its entirety here, but the recipe and method presented here are entirely his work. I heartily recommend adding his book to your library if you find this guide to be at all helpful.
Shall we get on with it? Use the table of contents below or the page numbers at the bottom of this post to navigate the guide.
Table of Contents
Page 2: About Sake and How Sake is Made
Page 8: Secondary Fermentation
Page 9: Maturation and Bottling
04:26:27 pm, Categories: Homebrewing
Appendix A: Downloads
To help you in your sake making experience, I’m making some files available for download from this guide. Here are your options:
sake task list.pdf (60KB) - This is my standard task list in PDF form. To use it, just print it out and pencil in the projected dates and times for each step. Then you just check ‘em off as you go.
- How to Make Sake Offline v2.pdf (2.3MB) - This is the most recent (but not up-to-date!) version of my guide in PDF form so that you can have it available to you offline in those dark times of no internet connectivity. I will increment the version number and make a new post when it’s updated, so use the RSS feed to keep track of updates. This file is my creation and is not to be confused with the next one on this list.
- Sake Making.pdf (980KB) - Created by Steve Ross, this is an offline-viewable file based on an older version of my guide. The guide has been updated several times since, making this guide deprecated. I couldn’t get Steve to update it for me, which led to my creation of the above listed file. Posted for those unfortunate souls who are stuck using dial-up internet, where a 1MB difference in file size actually matters.
- ekhardt-sake.pdf (27KB) - This is Fred Ekhardt’s “New Sake Recipe,” created in 2002. This recipe describes the shubo method of yeast starter, which uses lactic acid to lower the pH in an effort to speed up the process and reduce the risk of infection. This is the method that many other sites are describing when they tell you to add acid (lactic, citric, lemon juice, etc.) to your sake recipe, and is quite commonly used by large sake producers. I’m hosting the file here because it’s difficult to find without bludgeoning yourself with internet search engines for hours on end.
05:27:57 pm, Categories: Homebrewing
Appendix B: Frequently Asked Questions
You guys keep sending me a lot of really interesting questions about making sake, and I've accumulated and answered enough of them so far to make into a Frequently Asked Questions list. So, here it is, the Taylor-MadeAK Homebrewing Sake FAQ!
- Can I use other kinds of rice?
- What about American rice vs. Asian rice?
- What about plum wine?
- Is it possible to use other types of grain to make sake?
- I saw this stuff called "rice malt syrup" can I use that to make sake?
- Do I really have to use several 1 gallon jugs as secondaries? Can I use [insert on-hand equipment here] instead?
- Is it really necessary to soak the rice for 18 hours? I'm reading on line on how to make sushi rice and most say to soak for 30 minutes.
- How do I calculate my sake's alcohol content?
- Somebody told me I could go blind by homebrewing sake. Should I be concerned with methanol in my sake, and is there's anything I should do to get rid of it?
- Sake Timetable
Q: Can I use other kinds of rice?
A: Sure. Use any kind of rice you want, experiment and see what kind of difference it makes to your sake. Short grain rice is just preferred because of its kernel structure compared to long grain rice. Short grain kernels have a core filled with loose starch particles that are pretty readily digestible by koji enzymes, while long grain rice are pretty much solid starch. Koji still works just fine on long grain rice kernels, it just might take it a little longer to fully liquefy it.
Brown rice is something different altogether. I avoid that stuff because you have to use about 10% more and it takes 2.5 times longer to soak and steam it. If you want to use brown rice to make genmai sake, keep in mind that you'll have to soak it for 36 to 45 hours, followed by steaming for 1.5 to 2 hours.
Q: What about American rice vs. Asian rice?
A: With the exception of yamada nishiki rice, I can't think of a single material difference between Japanese and American rices. Well, there's where the rice is grown, but that's about it. The real question is, can you even get Japanese brewing rice in the United States? Probably not, because those rices (especially yamada nishiki) are protected pretty fanatically by the Japanese government.
You know, even the big American sake producers like Takara don't use Japanese rice. They use American rice same as we do, mostly grown in California. The difference is they have the equipment to polish their rice down past the 90% that rice meant for eating is polished to. Rice polish is much more important than where the rice came from, if you ask me.
A: What about it? OH! You mean how do you make it? Well, traditional home-made Japanese umeshu isn't a wine at all, it's a liquer. Here's how it's made:
Ingredients:
2.25 lbs Unripe umes (also called Japanese plums)
2.00 lbs Rock sugar
7.50 c ShōchūProcedure:
Wash umes, discarding any that are bruised or have broken skins. Use a toothpick or bamboo skewer to remove the calyxes (the black bit from the flower end of the fruit) and dry thoroughly with paper towels. Wash out a very large jar (at least a gallon capacity with a wide mouth) very well and allow to drip dry thoroughly. Place umes and sugar in the jar in alternating layers, starting with the umes, then fill the jar with shochu. Place in a cool dark place for 6 months to a year, checking on it every now an then and giving it a shake to help dissolve the sugar. Umeshu is ready to drink after a year.
This isn't the plum wine that you buy at the liquor store or order in the restaurant, however. Commercial examples like that are made by adding ume syrup to white wine or (very rarely, unfortunately) sake. If you want to make your own using sake, I suggest following the above recipe and just substituting your homebrewed sake for the shochu. I've never seen green umes in any grocery produce sections, so I don't even know if they're available in the USA; but I live in Alaska so I urge you to check around your area for ethnic grocery stores to see if you can find some. They're in-season starting in May.
Q: Is it possible to use other kinds of grain to make sake?
A: I'm going to say NO, and for a couple of reasons:
First: Koji is a species of mold called aspergillus oryzae. The "oryzae" in that name means "rice," and it's an indicator that this particular mold has been selectively bred over the centuries to be pretty specific to the kind of starches found in rice. Amylase is amylase, and I'm sure that the enzymes produced by this mold would indeed break down starches from barley, wheat, oats, corn, etc. provided those enzymes can get at the starches in question.
Rice, however, is always milled to remove the hull, germ, and most or all of the outer bran coat, which gives koji easy access to the starch once you gelatinize it by steaming. Other cereal grains simply aren't processed in this manner, which means you'd have a hard time growing koji on the grains in the usual manner as well as trying to get the enzymes to penetrate the cooked grain. While we're at it, have you ever tried to steam a large amount of barley or wheat? Not pretty.
Second: Can you really call it sake if it's not made with rice?
Q: I saw this stuff called "rice malt syrup" can I use that to make sake?
A: Rice can't be malted that I know of, so the "rice malt syrup" is a bit of a misnomer (just like how koji is sometimes called "malt rice"). Rice syrup or brown rice syrup is made by mashing cooked rice with barley malt to saccharify it, then straining off the liquid and boiling it down to a syrup. Sound familiar? Yep, this is the same way malt extract is made.
Can you make an "extract" sake with it? Nope. Sake gets its characteristic flavor and alcoholic punch from the slow starch-to-sugar conversion and flavors produced by the koji. If you add rice syrup to water and then ferment it, you're making rice beer sans hops, which will taste nothing like sake.
A: Use whatever you want. I just suggest using glass jugs as your secondary fermenter vessels because they're commonly available, small enough to handle easily, and can be sealed with a cap later for the clarifying/pasteurizing step.
A: YES!
Those directions for cooking sushi rice assume that you will be using a rice cooker or a pot on the stove to boil your rice. Either way you're going to be immersing the rice in order to cook water into the kernels. The result will be soft, fluffy, sticky sushi rice.
This is not what we're after for making sake. We want a solid, almost rubbery, and only slightly sticky rice kernel here. That can only be achieved by steaming, and steaming only heats the rice. An overnight soak in water is necessary for the rice to absorb the water that will actually cook the rice.
Q: Am I really waiting 2 days before I mix in more rice in the Nakazoe stage?
A: Yep. I can see where this gets confusing, so let me try to clear it up for you. The moromi, as I explained in the guide, is built up over 4 days. Illustrated thusly:
Hey, if this image is cut off a little bit on the right, it's because you're using Internet Explorer. Nothing I can do about it, use Firefox instead.
Take a close look. You're adding rice for the hatsuzoe on Monday, then prepping for the next addition on Tuesday. The nakazoe addition actually takes place on Wednesday. The reason for this is you're giving the yeast time to multiply their numbers before doubling the volume of rice that they have to deal with. Remember, you've already doubled it once with the hatsuzoe addition. Giving your yeast a couple days to build their numbers up will give you a better fermentation.
Q: How do I calculate my sake's alcohol content?
A: Short answer: you don't.
Okay okay, you want the long answer. Because sake is a dual parallel fermentation in which starch is being broken down to sugar which is then almost immediately consumed by yeast, there's no way to take an original gravity reading. With no original gravity reading, you can't use a final gravity reading to calculate your approximate alcohol by volume like you do with beer. If you really want to know exactly how much alcohol is in your sake, you'd have to take it to a lab somewhere to have them do their thing with it.
If you'd just like to have a ballpark idea (accurate to within about 1% ABV), I'd suggest purchasing a vinometer. This is what I use, and I'm pretty happy with the results.
A: The short answer to this question is: No, you have nothing to worry about. Homebrewing sake is no more dangerous than homebrewing beer.
The long answer is: I get this question more often than I ever expected, and the source is usually non-homebrewing (or once it was the owner of a homebrew store) but well-meaning friends who seem to be under the impression that sake is a distilled spirit. I can see where you'd get that impression: it's generally as clear as water (commercially made sake, that is) and can taste fiery and powerfully alcoholic. But the fact is, sake is still a fermented beverage. Even though all yeasts produce higher weight hydrocarbons like isopropanol and methanol in trace amounts (yes, even your beer yeast and baker's yeast), it's just not a problem unless you concentrate them through distilling.
This isn't really a specific question, but probably the most confusion I see people expressing over making sake lies in the timetable. I totally understand! The varying times between steps and the order in which the steps happen confused the heck out of me when I first started reading about making sake. I had to actually sit down and mark it out on a calendar before I got it. So, to help everyone out, I've gone and put together a Google calendar for my current batch of sake to serve as an example. This batch of sake spans from mid-January to the end of May; use the navigation arrows to move between the months and click the links to see what the steps are.
Hey, if this calendar is cut off a little bit on the right, it's because you're using Internet Explorer. Nothing I can do about that, use Firefox instead.
This marks the end of the FAQ. I will, however, continue to add to it as more questions come in. Keep 'em coming! I answer every question you send me, and if a question gets asked twice or strikes me as being pretty important, I will add it to this FAQ. Thanks for reading!
03/07/08
Appendix C: Glossary of Terms
Since my guide uses a lot of Japanese and other uncommon words that many readers may be unfamiliar with, I've decided to add a glossary. This list is intended to supplement the guide and not to be comprehensive. I tried to avoid defining terms that I have already defined in the guide (though there are some obvious duplications that I felt were important), but please feel free to refer to it as often as necessary.
B
bentonite - A type of sodium-silicate clay that white wine vintners use to clarify their wine and must.
D
doburoku (濁り酒) - Traditional Japanese homebrew sake. It is not filtered (at all), unpasteurized, and often fermented at room temperature - all of which often results in a pretty sour product. I often refer to this as the Japanese equivalent of our American heritage of Blue Ribbon homebrew of 50 or 60 years ago. Homebrewing is illegal in Japan, so quality ingredients and education regarding process just aren't available to would-be homebrewers in that country.
E
enzyme - Nothing more than a specially-shaped protein that happens to be good at certain tasks. The task in question depends on the shape of the protein, but when we apply it to sake making we're talking about enzymes that are good at chopping up starch molecules to produce sugar.
F
fermentation - The anaerobic process by which certain single-celled organisms (like yeast) consume sugar to produce energy for themselves. Alcohol and carbon dioxide are the fortuitous (for us) waste products of this process.
fining - The process of adding clarifying agents like bentonite to a liquid in order to reduce or remove haze-causing particles.
G
genshu (原酒) - "Undiluted" or "full-strength" sake, to which no water has been added to decrease its alcoholic strength.
ginjo (吟醸酒) - This word translates to "premium," and means any sake made with rice that has been polished down to no more than 60% of its original weight.
H
hatsuzoe (初添) - "First addition." This refers to the first addition of rice and koji to the main sake fermentation.
J
junmai (純米酒) - "Pure" or "all-rice" sake. This refers to sake that has been made with only water, rice, koji, and yeast. No additives like the distilled spirits that are commonly used in the industry.
K
kan-zukuri (寒作り) - The traditional "cold brewing" method of making sake. "Cold brewing" refers to keeping the fermentation in the low 50ºF range - either by brewing only in the cold time of year, or through means of refrigeration - resulting in a smoother, better quality sake.
kasu (粕) - Sake lees. The bits of rice that the koji couldn't break down, which are separated from the sake through pressing. Kasu is used to make tsukemono (pickles), shōchū, and is even eaten by people and livestock.
koji-kin (麹菌) - Aspergillus oryzae mold spores.
kome-koji (麹) - Rice that has been incubated with koji-kin, and is now coated in a nice fuzzy white coat of mold. Enzyme rich and ready to be used to make sake.
M
masu (枡) - Traditional square wooden cups from which chilled sake is drunk. They hold six ounces and are now often seen made of lacquerware or even ABS plastic.
mirin (味醂) - A very sweet condiment used in Japanese cooking that can be made from the same process by which sake is made.
moromi (諸味) - The sake's primary fermentation mash.
moto (元) - The yeast starter step in making sake, also called shubo.
muroka (無濾過) - "Unfiltered sake." Sake that has been separated from the nigori by decanting, but has not undergone the usual charcoal filtration (or bentonite fining in the case of my homebrew). It's hazy, but not milky white like nigorizake.
N
nakazoe (仲添) - "Second addition." This refers to the second addition of rice and koji to the main sake fermentation.
nigorizake (濁り酒) - "Cloudy sake." Sake that has been pressed from the kasu lees, but not separated from the finer rice particles and yeast. It's milky white and has a fuller body and sweeter flavor than muroka or filtered sake.
O
ochoko - The diminutive cups that sake, hot or cold, is served in. Usually accompanied by a tokkuri as part of a matched set.
odori (踊) - "The dancing ferment." This refers to the very fizzy nature of the sake's primary fermentation.
S
sake - Japanese rice wine. You know what this is or you wouldn't be here, right? Right?
sanitizer - A homebrewing term that refers to any chemical agent used to eliminate most of any spoilage microorganisms that may be residing on homebrewing equipment.
seishu (清酒) - The "official" Japanese name for sake, mostly for tax purposes I'm told.
shubo (酒母) - The yeast starter stage in the sake brewing process. Also called moto.
Sparkolloid - Another fining agent often used to clarify sake. Works much slower than bentonite, but creates a lot less sediment, allowing more sake to be recovered.
T
tomezoe (留添) - "Final addition." This refers to the third and final addition of rice and koji to the sake's primary fermentation.
Y
yeast - Any of several microorganisms of the genus Saccharomyces, used in brewing alcoholic beverages, as a leaven in baking breads, and in pharmacology as a source of vitamins and proteins.
yodan (四段) - "Stabilizing addition." The step following moromi in which water or koji and rice can be added to sake to adjust its final alcohol content and flavor profile.
05/16/08
03:46:06 pm, Categories: Homebrewing
The next step in the natural evolution of any alcoholic beverage, if left to its own devices, is vinegar. I happen to be a big fan of malt vinegar, but every time I've tried to grow a mother from scratch I've had no success. Personally, I believe the hops interfere, but I've also been told that hops have no effect on acetobacter. Either way, I haven't attempted it in probably 6 years or so, but today I decided to give it another try.
Problem: no unhopped beer handy. I'm also too darn cheap to go out and spend $12+ on a vinegar mother, though I may pick up some unpasteurized cider vinegar later tonight.
Solution: use some sake to make rice vinegar!
Hardware: one wide-mouth nonreactive vessel, enough cheesecloth to completely cover the mouth of said vessel, and a means of securing the cheesecloth to it so that nothing can get under its edge.
Sacrificed to the cause (aka Software): the remains of 3 bottles of homebrewed sake, which haven't been drunk because I bottled them too early and they have a little bit of loose sediment in the bottom. Total amount came to exactly 24 fluid ounces.
I put this jar in my open kitchen window for a few hours on a breezy day in hopes that I could encourage some acetobacter into colonizing it, then moved it to the relatively warm and dark space on top of my kitchen pots & pans rack. There it will stay undisturbed except for periodic yearning looks from the household brewer (that would be me). This post will be updated as the experiment progresses.
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