I've been mulling over some traditional Sake making knowledge and just posting a few thoughts.
1. First and foremost, Sake is water, almost 80% of Sake is water. The quality of the water you use will have a large impact on the final quality of your Sake. Sake is high ABV% up to 18% or more. In the first batch(es) of Sake I will just use what I have available (soft local water) until I can get more information.
2. Sake is watered down. Not all Sake, but a lot of Sake which ends up at 18% or higher ABV after fermentation is complete is watered down to bring the ABV% down near 15%, this also gives the impression of smoothing out the Sake.
3. Sake is 18% ABV. At high ABVs like this fermentation temperature is critical to achieve smooth finish alcohol levels and minimise any harsh fusels or higher order alcohols. Its closer to making Lager at temperatures around 10C than Ales at 18C+.
4. Rice impacts flavour. This opens up a whole avenue to us as brewers in rice selection and amount of polishing to adjust the flavour of the Sake. However, until we build our own Rice polishing machines from odds and sods laying around our sheds we won't have much control over that in Australia for a while. Rice type we are going to have to experiment with. Old Sake uses brown rice, this is normally a problem but as Brown Rice Miso makers found out, scratching the outer coating of the husk/bran layers lets enough gap for Koji mould to grow its filamentous mycelium strands in to do its magic. If we want to go for more modern Sake brewing styles then short grain white rice is called for. We have Sun rice Japanese Sushi Rice and I think that is about it for selection, there is imported rice from America and if you can find it, Japan but these are pricey options that need to eventually be replaced with acceptable alternatives to keep the costs down.
5. Table Rice is not Sake Rice. Sake Rice is milled, or rolled around and around letting the kernels grind off their outer layers. Special rices like Yamada Nishiki grows such that the starch is more concentrated in the centre and the fats and brans on the outside. This fits perfectly with milling where you can grind off the outer layers down to the pure starch centre of the grain. That said older rustic or more traditional Sake has unique grainy flavours from not milling it. Again as brewers room for interpretation and experimentation. For now I'm going to have to experiment with 90% Sun brand Japanese style Sushi Rice (10% milled) as that is all I have available. As you can see from the picture below the resulting Sake will have a natural yellow tinge to it as well as a taste with grain background flavours. But I'm wasting less of each grain and keeping the cost down which is important in the early stages of experimentation and sorting out ones brewing techniques for Sake.
6. Japanese Sake Brewers read AHB. I knew it, here we see they have the typical Aussie penchant for stainless steel bling and you can also plainly see they have been reading the Brew In A Bag method thread. In Japanese fusion fashion they have melded the BIAB bag with stainless steel bling and have come up with a rice washing vessel par excellence. If they get a hole in one I'm sure they just ring up Gryphon and get a new one sewn up and sent out in the same days post.
7. Rice needs to be washed. Washed and rinsed again and again until the water runs clear. This will have to be addressed with our needs for not wasting water and water restrictions. Somehow we must come up with a secondary use for all this rice starch laden water sitting around after the process of cleaning is done and steaming begins.
8. Rice needs steaming. It also needs a moisture content of around 33% before chucking it in the steamer. You can be low tech and watch water absorption or a bit higher tech and weight out how much water you add and then weigh the residual left over water. That or just bung it in the fridge for a soak overnight. Take your pick. We don't have monster steamers covered with metres of muslin cloth as below so we go to the local Asian market and get a bunch of bamboo steamers and stack them together and then go to Spotless and get ourselves a metre or so of muslin to line the bottom of the steamers and wrap the wet rice after it is added to each bamboo steamer. You need low moisture steamed rice so that you think its too dry when it comes out because if you do rice in a pot of boiling water or rice cooker you can end up with too much moisture such that you end up with a pile of liquid goo after adding spores to your rice.
9. Rice needs to be cool before inoculating with Kojikin. Granted the idea of a metal salt shaker adds an additional bling element to ones brewery but as you can see you can go old school like this lad who looks like he is reusing an old hop sack perhaps and just shake shakes ... shakes his baggy all over the place. So long as you don't put one of your used socks to use as a bag then I don't see any issues keeping a mono culture of pure koji mould growing on your rice instead of a collection of things growing in your socks. Rice needs to be cooler than skin temperature or between 32 to 38C if you feel like putting your TempMate probe right into the rice for a measure before inoculation with spores.
10. Japanese brewers read AHB. I mean, come on, you can clearly see how our many brewery automation projects have infected the Japanese brewer, below is probably the windshield wiper motor off an old Japanese farm combine. It screams AHB. Stirring is an important part of making traditional Sake, whether it be by hand with poles or sticks or done by more automated means such as this motor. The main mash, or moromi, is combining the koji, rice, water, and Sake Yeast together and letting the conglomeration mature and brew over time. Commercial hoses pump out Sake in 18 days but a craft brewer can take up to 32 to make a very nice Sake with qualities he desires.
11. If you like squeezing your BIAB then get ready for Sake! Once you are done brewing you need to remove the rice solids from your brew. Traditional methods involve pressing the bag -- I can already see an AHB adaption of the jack from the boot of the car to provide the squeeze. For the lazy AHB'er there is always the rare drip drip drip method used in 1/2 % of Sake made in Japan, Junmai Daiginjo grade, which ensures that the delicate, refined, ethereal character of the sake is preserved and also preserves peace in the neighbourhood from grunting and groaning home brewers squeezing their Sake bags.
12. When done squeezing you have all the left over solids, a kind of yeasty mouldy rice cheese known as kasu. Don't throw it out, there are plenty of recipes you can use with it and if you freeze it you have 6 months to find out what they are. Otherwise its high quality food product and give it to your chooks or livestock if you feel weak in the knees eating it yourself. This is the equivalent of the spent grains from making beer.
13. Pasteurisation. You don't have to, not doing so makes one grade of Sake and doing it another. You loose aroma and flavour qualities but gain shelf life. Its up to you. Another chance to experiment as a home brewer. It is done in the bottle where you raise the temperatures up to 60C and then cool them down rapidly.
14. Ageing. Different ages make different grades. Time mellows the alcohols produced during fermentation and can change the character of your Sake.
Thats the basic process in an overview. Now once I have my mould dried (it would decide to rain all day after all those sweltering days giving 90% humidity where before it was 18% *just* when I wanted to switch to drying out my mouldy rice as quick as possible to make mould shakers
Cheers,
Brewer Pete
