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How to Make Sake at Home - a Taylor-Made Guide (New & Improved!)
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
23 comments
Comment from: Steve [Visitor]
Great guide! I found your site from listening to the basicbrewing podcast. I'm going to give this a try.
What type of smaller bottles do you transfer the sake into from the 1 gallon jugs? Just regular beer bottles and cap them the same way?
11/29/07 @ 12:52
Comment from: Chad [Visitor]
I have all the ingredients & equipment, and I'm going to start tomorrow on my first batch of Sake. I'm really glad I heard your interview on BBR, otherwise I would have fermented it warm!
One thing: when you say to add 2.5 cups of rice is this the cooked or uncooked measurement?
12/06/07 @ 10:02
Comment from: Bob Taylor [Member] 
I'm really glad you guys are getting some benefit out of this guide and the BBR interview!
All rice measurements in this guide are DRY, that is to say uncooked.
12/06/07 @ 17:58
Comment from: Ted G [Visitor]
great article..one question, what is the
yeast nutrient mentioned?
12/16/07 @ 07:04
Comment from: Bob Taylor [Member]
It's just the standard yeast nutrient sold at your local homebrew supply store. Usually it's made from autolyzed yeast.
12/16/07 @ 11:35
Comment from: Dave [Visitor]
Like others have said, this is a great guide. I make sake every couple of years and each time I have to stumble thru the online guides and my old notes. Thanks for taking the time to clarify a few points and put it together in one coherent guide.
01/13/08 @ 12:20
Comment from: Andrew D Pohlman [Visitor] · http://www.android-nurse.com
I found a web store that offers Cold Mountain Koji: http://www.pacificeastwest.com
Search for "Cold Mountain" or "koji" or "072546382100".
I live the SF Bay Area. I did find this product at the Ranch Market, a huge Asian grocery store. It was about $10 per tub. So even with shipping charges, the online purchase was cheaper. I'll continue to shop around for better prices locally though.
Either way, the premade koji eliminates a step in the process and the arithmetic suggests it's cheaper than making your own from spores.
01/25/08 @ 11:06
Comment from: Bob Taylor [Member]
Wow, $5.99 for a tub of koji is really cheap! Great find, I'll add the link to the guide!
01/25/08 @ 12:28
Comment from: Andrew D Pohlman [Visitor] · http://www.android-nurse.com
Could you describe the mixing of hot rice with cold koji? It sure seems like dumping hot rice into cold koji could kill the mold, despite the final temperature of about 70-74 F. So I assume there is something I am not understanding about the technique.
01/25/08 @ 13:38
Comment from: cj8scrambler [Visitor]
I'm at then end of my 3 weeks of fermentation. 3 days ago the SG was 1.001, so I think I'll be ready to rack to 2ndary tomorrow. However the fridge I was using needs to be taken down to 35F for a lager that I have going. So my choices for aging the sake are either the 35F fridge or the high 50s of the basement floor.
I understand the 50F temp requirement for fermentation, but is there any special reason you say to age at 50F? I would think the sake would benefit from a cold aging and clarify better there. Any thoughts?
01/25/08 @ 15:53
Comment from: Bob Taylor [Member]
There's a very good reason for keeping the temperature in the 50's
during the secondary: it's still fermenting! Keeping the secondaries in
your basement for a couple weeks in the 50-60ºF range is just fine,
assuming your basement is nice and dark. Once you rack the sake off of
the fluffy white sediment that you'll find in those secondary vessels,
fine it, pasteurize it, and cap it, then keeping it in the 35ºF fridge while you wait for it to clear will be fine. That is, in fact, exactly what I do.
I tried to e-mail this answer directly to you, cj8scrambler, but it bounced. Hopefully you remember to come back and check for an answer. =)
01/25/08 @ 16:13
Comment from: cj8scrambler [Visitor]
OK, that makes sense. I'll go with basement floor with a box over them.
01/25/08 @ 16:54
Comment from: Stepan [Visitor]
Really great guide. I have one question - You mentioned white wine yeast (top-fermenting yeast) as possible replacement of sake yeast (lager alias bottom-fermenting yeast). Wouldn't be better to use beer lager yeast instead since the temperature is about 10°C during almost whole process? I know that beer lager yeast can't survive in higher alcohol volumes but I quess that top-fermenting wine yeast won't work properly in low "lager" temperetures.
03/26/08 @ 10:17
Comment from: Carl Streator [Visitor]
I live in a hot climate where the temperature is inside is anywhere from 70-80F 20-25C how will this influence the sake.
04/12/08 @ 07:49
Comment from: Donald Wong [Visitor]
This is such an excellent guide! Thank you Robert. Do you happen to have the guide in PDF format?
04/17/08 @ 10:28
Comment from: Keat [Visitor]
I notice in the process that there are a few additions of water. Do you need to boil and cool the water to sanitize it?
05/16/08 @ 13:52
Comment from: dwain hill [Visitor]
Mahalo, I enjoyed the trip. If I wanted to polish my rice, because dijinjo seems to be from rice that has been 60% polished is their a machine to polish rice?
Aloha, dwain
05/17/08 @ 11:23
Comment from: Bob Taylor [Member]
@Keat: The response I e-mailed to you bounced, so I'm posting my answer here. You can pre-boil if you want. I run my water through a charcoal filter that I know has silver in it, so I trust that it's pretty sanitary when it comes out of my filter. If you don't trust your tap water, you can always use bottled.
@Everyone in general: You will get a much faster response from me if you use your real e-mail address when posting a comment on this site. Every comment gets e-mailed to me, which means I usually receive it about two minutes after you post, and snap back a reply as soon as I've had time to consider your question. I totally understand e-mail address paranoia (evidence: my e-mail address appears nowhere on this site - you must use a form to contact me directly, but you have my addy when I respond to you), so please believe me when I tell you that I don't abuse or allow to be abused any e-mail addresses that get stored in my secure (internal access only) SQL database on my personal server when you post your comment on this site.
If you're really that paranoid about it, go ahead and keep posting comments as nobody@nobody.com or whatever. Just realize that it might take me a couple days to realize my error in replying to a bogus address and post an answer to your question in these comments.
@Everyone in general: You will get a much faster response from me if you use your real e-mail address when posting a comment on this site. Every comment gets e-mailed to me, which means I usually receive it about two minutes after you post, and snap back a reply as soon as I've had time to consider your question. I totally understand e-mail address paranoia (evidence: my e-mail address appears nowhere on this site - you must use a form to contact me directly, but you have my addy when I respond to you), so please believe me when I tell you that I don't abuse or allow to be abused any e-mail addresses that get stored in my secure (internal access only) SQL database on my personal server when you post your comment on this site.
If you're really that paranoid about it, go ahead and keep posting comments as nobody@nobody.com or whatever. Just realize that it might take me a couple days to realize my error in replying to a bogus address and post an answer to your question in these comments.
05/22/08 @ 14:48
Hey there- Taylor, great guide. Good combo of science and culture(s). Its hard to find things that dont just tell you what to do because "thats how its done"! so congrats.
One thing I wish was explained a little better however is why it is necessary to continue to add more Koji at each step. If the mold in the Koji is active and digesting the ricestarch shouldnt it be reproducing as well, much like the yeast?
The other question is- why not do this in two basic steps- use the koji to make a sweet amazake like pudding and then introduce the alcohol yeast process aftwerward for a proper ferment. (akin to malting then brewing beer)
In this way you can optimize the conditions for each organizim at each stage.
okay thanks alot.Raphael
One thing I wish was explained a little better however is why it is necessary to continue to add more Koji at each step. If the mold in the Koji is active and digesting the ricestarch shouldnt it be reproducing as well, much like the yeast?
The other question is- why not do this in two basic steps- use the koji to make a sweet amazake like pudding and then introduce the alcohol yeast process aftwerward for a proper ferment. (akin to malting then brewing beer)
In this way you can optimize the conditions for each organizim at each stage.
okay thanks alot.Raphael
05/27/08 @ 07:17
Comment from: Bob Taylor [Member]
You've asked a very good question here, and I want the answer to be publicly available. So I'm posting it as a response to your comment as well as e-mailing it to you. I'm also going to add it to the FAQ first chance I get.
Fair warning to unsuspecting readers: this is going to be a loooong answer.
There are a couple of reasons why koji is added with each rice addition. The first has to do with the conditions koji requires for growing: koji does NOT continue to grow, reproduce, and produce enzymes in the moromi because the mold requires a temperature of around 85ºF to do so. Enzymes are slowly active at low temperatures, but the mold itself is not.
You compared making koji to malting barley, so let's follow that thought to its next step. Koji is like an incredibly powerful diastatic malt that can handle a ton of adjuncts in addition to itself. Just like malt, however, there is a limit to how much starch the enzymes in a given amount of koji can convert. So with each addition of rice we add the amount of koji necessary to convert it.
Which brings us to our next question: why not create a sweet amazake slurry and THEN add yeast to ferment it? Well, for a couple different reasons, actually. If we did that with the stirring and stuff that's necessary for the process, we'd essentially be creating an open invitation for every speck of microflora and fauna in the area. Funky lambics are good, funky sake isn't so good.
The other reason has to do with alcohol tolerance of the yeast itself. Have you ever heard of "syruping" a wine? It's the process of slowly adding fermentables to a wine with the goal of slightly increasing its alcohol content beyond the 16% or so that the yeast is normally tolerant to. By adding rice and koji in additions over a period of a few days, we're pushing the alcohol content of our sake up to the 18-20% ABV that genshu sake is all about.
I hope this clearly answers your questions.
Fair warning to unsuspecting readers: this is going to be a loooong answer.
There are a couple of reasons why koji is added with each rice addition. The first has to do with the conditions koji requires for growing: koji does NOT continue to grow, reproduce, and produce enzymes in the moromi because the mold requires a temperature of around 85ºF to do so. Enzymes are slowly active at low temperatures, but the mold itself is not.
You compared making koji to malting barley, so let's follow that thought to its next step. Koji is like an incredibly powerful diastatic malt that can handle a ton of adjuncts in addition to itself. Just like malt, however, there is a limit to how much starch the enzymes in a given amount of koji can convert. So with each addition of rice we add the amount of koji necessary to convert it.
Which brings us to our next question: why not create a sweet amazake slurry and THEN add yeast to ferment it? Well, for a couple different reasons, actually. If we did that with the stirring and stuff that's necessary for the process, we'd essentially be creating an open invitation for every speck of microflora and fauna in the area. Funky lambics are good, funky sake isn't so good.
The other reason has to do with alcohol tolerance of the yeast itself. Have you ever heard of "syruping" a wine? It's the process of slowly adding fermentables to a wine with the goal of slightly increasing its alcohol content beyond the 16% or so that the yeast is normally tolerant to. By adding rice and koji in additions over a period of a few days, we're pushing the alcohol content of our sake up to the 18-20% ABV that genshu sake is all about.
I hope this clearly answers your questions.
05/27/08 @ 12:06
Comment from: Sue [Visitor]
Hey, I am brewing sake from your instructions and everything is going great so far. I just put the sake in the cellar to cool for secondary firmentation. Thanks for the guide! My husband and i have tried to figure out a way to polish rice at home. Have you come up with any ideas?
05/27/08 @ 15:51
Comment from: Colin [Visitor]
Are there any issues using ale yeast instead of sake, or lager, besides flavor? I've no real way to keep the temp of the fermenting slurry between 38-65F. I've got a culture of wyeast 1187 Ringwood Ale I was thinking about using.
06/05/08 @ 05:58
Comment from: tico [Visitor] · http://www.montrealers.ca
great guide Taylor!! i was so excited to start making sake that i made a mistake and added the salt substitute to the water for Moto!! will this have an adverse effect on Moto and my Sake? will this kill the molds?
06/21/08 @ 21:55
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