Taylor-MadeAK - Brewing Sake

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.

UPDATE

Here we are nearly two months from the start of the experiment, and I'm here to report success! Here is the rice wine vinegar, which has been refrigerated for a few days to put the mother to sleep:

Yes, that's the same jar of sake I covered with cheesecloth and put in my open kitchen window for a couple hours. Looks darker, doesn't it? This is what oxidized sake looks like. This would be something for you new sake homebrewers out there to observe and remember.

Moving on: On the bottom of the jar you can see the layer of grainy vinegar mother (click the image to get a better look). In a couple days I'll pour off most of the vinegar and add a couple bottles of mild ale on top of the mother to make some home-made malt vinegar. I don't have an acid-base indicator to use in titrating the acetic acid percentage of the vinegar just yet, but I'll pick up a small head of red cabbage next time I hit the grocery store to make some. It's definitely acidic, though: a scant teaspoon will fully neutralize 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda.

More importantly: in spite of being thoroughly oxidized and soured sake, it tastes pretty darn good! I'll probably use the entire batch the next time I make sauerbraten....

UPDATE 2

I titrated the vinegar today. I tried to take pics of the process, but they all came out really blurry so I won't torture you with them. The end result is that the home-made rice vinegar is about 3.75% acetic acid. The really low number is due to the acid evaporating off during the really long fermentation time. Oh well, it still tastes good!

Introduction

Greetings! Welcome to the beginning of a series of followups that I'm writing in an effort to plug some of the holes in my wildly popular How to Make Sake at Home guide.

When I make a batch of sake, I normally buy some Cold Mountain Dried Koji from my local ethnic supermarket to satisfy that ingredient requirement in my recipe. I understand, however, that this product is not available in all parts of the world and therefore is sometimes impossible for hopeful sake homebrewers to get their hands on. Cold Mountain Dried Koji is a dried product, but it's still heat sensitive and requires refrigeration, which makes mail-ordering problematic at best.

The alternative, as pointed out in the main guide, is to grow your own koji using non-perishable koji-kin (the spores of aspergillus oryzae mold) that is readily available on the supplier's web site and from many homebrew supply stores (my LHBS stocks it). Growing your own koji from these spores is certainly economic: one 10-gram package contains enough spores to inoculate about four normal size batches (3 cups dry rice, 6 cups steamed). Also, making your own koji will allow you to take control of the quality of this single most important ingredient used in making sake.

Vision Brewing supplies instructions for using their koji-kin to grow your own koji. Following those instructions in spite of their vagueness will produce koji for you, but be aware that the amount of koji described therein is half of what you will need for a normal size batch of sake when brewing the Taylor-MadeAK way.

The full details of this process follows after the jump.

Read more »

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3

And Now For Something...Different

Every once in a while...oh, who am I kidding? Frequently the homebrewer gets the urge to make something different. Come to think of it, that's probably what prompted most of you readers to try your hand at making sake to begin with. One of my many Google forays into the world of sake turned up this Japan Times article about akaisake

What the heck is that, right? Well, in a country where sake in general isn't very popular, it shouldn't be any wonder that few Americans have ever seen this funky red rice wine from Japan.

Yes, red sake.

Even in Japan, this is a rare style of sake. It's made by very few brewers, and it's just not popular enough to make other brewers want to take up making it. That means that here in the States, it's even harder to find a commercial example. In fact, I could only get my hands on one commercial example to try (pictured at right): Asamurasaki "Morning Purple Red Rice Sake" made by Kiuchi Brewery Japan.

Akaisake is very unusual among sake. The flavor is deceptively sweet, very fruity and berry-like, in addition to the usual sake flavors. The result is very attractive to look at, pleasant to drink, and very different from your usual sake.

As it turns out, it's not difficult to make. Well, no more difficult than any other sake, anyway.

I'll tell you how, after the jump.

Read more »