A Live Guide To Brewing Sake

[afromaiko]

I'll tell ya, it was very difficult getting the dog to pee into that bottle! But it will go well in my next VB clone. :icon_vomit:

I brewed a modified Tibbs-Vision basic recipe, with these changes:

- Wyeast Sake #9
- lactic acid instead of citric
- extra addition at end of ferment (koji only, no steamed rice but now wish I had added some more)

I used store bought koji and good quality sushi rice.

Planning to do the Taylor Made recipe the next time around.

 

[Fermented]

Congrats afromaiko!

It has a bit more colour than the stuff my mate in Sapporo used to make (long since dead, so I can't get his recipe). What did the ABV% end up at?

And big cheers to Taylor-MadeAK! Your guide and writings have inspired me to try to make sake. So nice to see you here, Sensei-san!

Cheers - Fermented.

 

[afromaiko]

Congrats afromaiko!

It has a bit more colour than the stuff my mate in Sapporo used to make (long since dead, so I can't get his recipe). What did the ABV% end up at?

And big cheers to Taylor-MadeAK! Your guide and writings have inspired me to try to make sake. So nice to see you here, Sensei-san!

Cheers - Fermented.

It's impossible to take an OG reading so I can't be any more accurate than guessing, but possibly around 15%. This is based on my observations from quite quickly drinking the cup full I used for the FG sample and seeing how light-headed I felt afterwards. All very scientific... :icon_drunk:

 

[taylor-madeak]

Here's pic of my recently finished sake. After straining, I ran this through the usual 1 micron absolute beer filter, but unfortunately I only got about 2 litres before it clogged solid. So the rest of the batch was bottle up cloudy as nigori. Tasting.. slight sour taste, but fairly neutral sweetness at FG 1.000. I'd prefer it a bit sweeter myself. Heated seems to be the go, rather than chilled. The nigori seems a bit mellower tasting though. Bit of alcohol kick to it so I'd put it somewhere around 15%.

I think I mentioned over on NB, but the filter probably would've worked better if you let the nigori settle out first. :lol: I probably should've specified that before you tried it, but I guess it just didn't occur to me. My bad.

Your sake is going to taste pretty harsh right now, with the sourness jumping up to smack you in the face when you first taste it. My advice is to put the filtered sake in a beer box and forget about it for a couple months. Sake mellows out quite a bit in the 2-6 months following filtration and pasteurization, which is why most sake producers sit on their product for six months before selling it.

That's a beautiful bottle of sake, though, man. Congratulations! The color is just right for sake made with common 90% polish dinner rice.

It's impossible to take an OG reading so I can't be any more accurate than guessing, but possibly around 15%. This is based on my observations from quite quickly drinking the cup full I used for the FG sample and seeing how light-headed I felt afterwards. All very scientific...

Have you guys ever heard of a vinometer? I have one that I picked up years ago just because it looked cool and it was cheap. These devices are used for measuring the alcohol content of dry white wines which have no residual sugar and the one I bought has a scale that goes up to 20% v/v. As it turns out, that makes vinometers perfect for measuring the alcohol content of my very dry (FG 0.996) homebrew sake. The instructions say it's accurate to within +/- 1% v/v, provided the sample has fermented completely dry.

More accurate than taste buds, anyhow. :lol:

And big cheers to Taylor-MadeAK! Your guide and writings have inspired me to try to make sake. So nice to see you here, Sensei-san!

Mission accomplished! Thanks for the big welcome.

 

[taylor-madeak]

Not to hijack this thread or anything, but it's aliiiiiiiiiiive!



I think the foam trying to claw its way out of my fermenter is the result of using homemade koji instead of the store-bought stuff I normally use. I could go on about how the Cold Mountain Rice Koji is made for making miso blah blah blah...but the truth is I just don't have an explanation. The moromi has been held at a strict 11C for the last five days and it's still foamy as hell! I've never seen anything like it. If I hadn't put it directly into the fridge right after tomezoe, I probably would've found myself cleaning up one heck of a mess...well, whatever the cats left me anyway. :lol:

 

[afromaiko]

Have you guys ever heard of a vinometer? I have one that I picked up years ago just because it looked cool and it was cheap. These devices are used for measuring the alcohol content of dry white wines which have no residual sugar and the one I bought has a scale that goes up to 20% v/v. As it turns out, that makes vinometers perfect for measuring the alcohol content of my very dry (FG 0.996) homebrew sake. The instructions say it's accurate to within +/- 1% v/v, provided the sample has fermented completely dry.

I see that one of the forum sponsors has these available so I'll pick up one when I'm passing there next.

http://www.grainandgrape.com.au/product_in...roducts_id=8124

Interesting to hear & see the difference between store bought & home made koji.. looking good!

 

[taylor-madeak]

Yep, that's exactly the one I own.

 

[Adverse]

i hope you dont mind a new member butting in

i started a rice brew going 1:30AM 1/1/09

i used yeast balls (they have koji in them)

its a 55Lt brew consisting of

5Kg rice
5Kg raw sugar (it has nutrence the yeas can use)
55Lt water approximately
2 berocca tablets (it has nutrence the yeas can use)
pinch epsom salts (it has nutrence the yeas can use)
1 tablespoon tomato past (it has nutrence the yeas can use)

proses of making

.........making a yeast starter
500ml water temp 30c
2x berocca tablets
pinch of epsom salts
4x yeast balls
50g raw sugar
1 tablespoon tomato past
let sit covered (not sealed) 2 hours

........making the wash/brew
boil 30Lt water cover it and let it cool (the cooler the better sub 18c would be good)
boil rice till its a thick sludge (i did it in 2 lots of 10LT water 2.5Kg rice)
use one of thos hand held blenders the mix is liquefied (no lumps or grains at all)
at this point it you should be able to take a spoon full of it and turn it over and all most none drop off the spoon
put the sludge in to the brewer
cover the brewer
boil 5 Lt water put in 5Kg raw sugar and desolve
add sugar to brewer
give it a really good mix
now add the cold water till you get to 54.Lt total
give it a really good mixing
it should still be really thick and hard to work with
cover the brewer

go look at your yeast starter it should be starting to bubble a bit if it is good go add it to the brewer as long as the brew has cooled to a temp sub 30c
give it a really good mixing the more oxygen you can get in to it the better

put the lid on attach the bubbler and dont let it get above a temp of 30c
24 hours later the koji has done a lot of its work and the brew has a consistency of soy milk and is bubbling like nuts

 

[hoonaberry]

i hope you dont mind a new member butting in

proses of making

.........making a yeast starter
500ml water temp 30c
2x berocca tablets
pinch of epsom salts
4x yeast balls
50g raw sugar
1 tablespoon tomato past
let sit covered (not sealed) 2 hours

Interesting... Using tomato paste and berocca...

I make with hmm... something like yeast ball.
I use 1kg of rice with 1.5L of water and 500g of yeast ball.
Also add wine yeast to make it ferment safely.

Then after 5 days, add 5Kg of rice with 8L of water.

ferment it further 2weeks.

You can also use malt to make ricewine, but have to use yeast.

By the way, where can I buy Koji or Koji kin in Sydney??

 

[hoonaberry]

I second that - though I must go back into the Central Market/Chinatown and try some of the newer Japanese and Korean groceries and see what they come up with. Certainly the Japanese sections of the other Asian groceries don't have it.

Koreans don't use KOJI.
So don't even go there. Some store might have NOO ROOk.
That's what they use to make rice wine.

I've tried 2 Japanese stores today to fine KOJI.... No luck yet.

 

[hoonaberry]

I wasn't a big fan of beer when I thought all beer tasted like VB

Me too!

 

[Adverse]

Interesting... Using tomato paste and berocca...

I make with hmm... something like yeast ball.
I use 1kg of rice with 1.5L of water and 500g of yeast ball.
Also add wine yeast to make it ferment safely.

Then after 5 days, add 5Kg of rice with 8L of water.

ferment it further 2weeks.

You can also use malt to make ricewine, but have to use yeast.

By the way, where can I buy Koji or Koji kin in Sydney??

this is the yeast balls i use

i got thes at a Tie (spelling?) market that sells all forms of food
they had no idear what i was talking about till i took them a pic of the pack then they took me strate to the shelf where they had about 30 packs on there

 

[taylor-madeak]

I'm at risk of sounding like a know-it-all here, but I just can't let you guys stay all mixed up like this without trying to correct it.

Koreans don't use KOJI.
So don't even go there. Some store might have NOO ROOk.
That's what they use to make rice wine.

I've tried 2 Japanese stores today to fine KOJI.... No luck yet.

[SOAPBOX]

Koreans do use koji when they're making sak, and some pretty darn respectable sak is indeed made in that country. To further clarify on the subject of that moldy rice: if you are not using koji, you are not making nihonshu (sak).

To be sure, there are other styles of jiu that don't use koji. The Korean homebrew makgeolli (or makkoli, depending on who you talk to) uses nuruk and usually baker's yeast. Nuruk is a kind of diastatic granola made from wheat and barley malts, and it's none too sanitary when you consider you're using it entirely on the cold side of brewing this style of jiu. The resulting room-temperature fermented beverage is so sour that it's almost always sweetened with sugar before being consumed, and a significant portion of it ends up being distilled into soju - the Korean analog of Japanese shochu.

Those yeast balls mentioned in the last few posts of this thread are jiu-men, that might help you guys who are looking for them. They contain yeast, flour, and a laundry list of microorganisms that can saccharify rice starches (koji is not necessarily one of those critters), though usually only amylose. Jiu-men is used to make Chinese style jiu: huangjiu, nuer'hong, and huadiao jiu. Because the the rice of choice for these products is the amylopectin-packed "glutinous rice" (more properly called "waxy rice"), the resulting jiu is usually very sweet.

[/SOAPBOX]

Cultural differences between Anchorage, Alaska and Sydney, Australia aside, every time I've asked for koji in an Asian market I've been met with blank stares. In my experience, the employees of those shops are about as familiar with that product as anyone else. You can try showing them a picture, or you can just check the refrigerator case next to the miso. Koji is used to make miso, so it's usually kept near those products since it also requires refrigeration.

 

[afromaiko]

By the way, where can I buy Koji or Koji kin in Sydney??

Try Tokyo Mart, their Melbourne store Fuji Mart used to sell it. It's about $6 for a 200gm block of kome-koji.

http://www.junpacific.com/e/tokyomart/map.html

For yeast, don't much around just get some Wyeast Sake #9 from the site sponsors... I know Craftbrewer or Grain & Grape both carry it.

http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/details.asp?PID=1592

G & G also carry koji-kin and have a sake kit available.

EDIT: If you don't have any luck on the koji, try calling Japanese food importers Jun Pacific or Daiwa Foods direct.

 

[Adverse]

thank you for that information Taylor-MadeAK