Saké 101
- Chapter 1: What is Saké?
- Chapter 2: How is Saké Made?
- Chapter 3: Saké Vocabulary
- Chapter 4: Types of Saké
- Chapter 5: How to Serve Saké
- Chapter 6: Tasting Saké
- Chapter 7: Uncommon Pairs
Chapter 2: How is Saké Made?
The best wine is made from excellent grapes. The finest saké also starts with the finest premium ingredients – the purest water, high quality saké rice, special yeast, and koji. Junmai, meaning literally "pure rice" refers to saké brewed with just those four ingredients.
Water is particularly important since, unlike grapes, which provide the liquid for wine, rice has low moisture content and water needs to be added. For premium saké, the water must be pure, mineral free, and ideally has a rich, round mouth feel, good body with hints of the sweetness you expect from a wonderful mountain spring. Water is the reason we built our sakéry in Oregon. What do we have here? Water. Lots of it. And the pure water from the east slope of our coastal range is the best water in America for premium saké.
There are thousands of kinds of rice, but only about two hundred are suitable for premium saké. Table rice does not make great saké, just as table grapes make one-dimensional wines. Saké rice is brown short grain, almost round. The starches in rice, which provide the best flavors, are concentrated in the center of the rice grain, in what often looks like a white pearl. The Japanese term for this section of the grain, prized for premium sakés, is called the shinpaku, or "white heart." For premium and super premium sakés, the outside of the grain, containing undesirable fat and proteins, which can deliver unpleasant flavors and aromas is polished away. This exposes the heart of the rice that contains the starch that will be converted to fermentable sugars. Want to know if your saké was made from the shinpaku? Look for the term "Ginjo" on the label. It means at least 40% of the outer rice kernel was polished prior to brewing. An even higher quality level, and very rare and expensive, is "Daiginjo" which means at least 50% of the rice was polished. Momokawa (Murai Family) Brewing Japan's daigijno rice is polished to just 45% of its original size. All Momokawa and Moonstone sakes produced in Forest Grove are Ginjo grade. Polished saké rice looks like small translucent BBs with a white center.
Saké made for the hot saké market is not polished to ginjo level and is usually made from less desirable rice and yeast and contains a lower percent of koji rice. Some is good. Some is not so good. Often people who taste our saké for the first time are surprised how good it tastes. Premium Ginjo saké is very different from most saké made to be served hot, although Ginjo does taste good when heated.
At SakéOne we make Peaceful River saké in 18ltr packages for restaurants to serve hot. It is different from other hot sakés. It starts with our wonderful water. We use a high percentage of rice milled to 40%. The rice, yeast and koji are all premium grade. Try Peaceful River. We're sure you will be able to taste the difference.
One aspect of polishing that is very important is gently rotating the rice grains against each other, as opposed to grinding this prevents cracks in the grain, which would cause the fermentation to proceed at different rates in different grains. It might not sound like a major issue, but is very important. Fast brewing in cracked rice destroys subtle fruit flavors and the best sakémasters use all of the tools available to brew the best beverage. SakéOne is the only American sakery, which has its own special Japanese saké rice-milling machine in its , to insure our rice is very carefully polished.
After polishing, the rice is washed and then soaked to bring up the water content before it is steamed. Part of the steamed rice is reserved for koji. The balance goes directly to the moto or brewing tanks.
Koji is one of the keys in the saké making process. It functions similarly to botrytis, the mold that gives sauternes many of its special characteristics. Koji mold is cultivated on a bed of steamed rice. As this occurs, some of the enzymes break down the rice's starch molecules into smaller sugar molecules that are food for the yeast. Other enzymes release tendrils into the rice, which gives saké some its special aromas and flavors. The final product is light, almost fluffy, and looks like a BB coated with powdered sugar. It is actually somewhat sweet. My children call it "sweet popcorn rice" and like to eat it.
The koji process is very dependent upon proper temperature and humidity control. Some sakeries make koji in a stainless steel tank, mixing the koji with metal paddles. But rice is sticky and clumps when mixed this way. The resultant koji consists of rice that is not uniformly inoculated, resulting in good, but not great, koji. SakéOne has the only traditional cedar lined koji rooms in America. They look like very large saunas and have computer controls for temperature and humidity. Cedar is used, in part because of tradition and cedar's role in Shinto, but also because it is antibacterial. We want only koji growing in our koji room! In our koji room, the inoculated rice is placed on tables and turned carefully by hand every four hours, over a period of four days. The handwork keeps the rice from clumping. The koji from such a room is very uniform, allowing the sakémaster to carefully control the koji's role in the brewing.
As you can imagine, koji rice is more expensive to make than plain steamed rice. Premium ginjo saké has a higher percentage of koji rice than other saké. There are also many different strains of koji. Premium sakeries have developed proprietary strains and use different koji for the different styles of saké they make.
Steamed rice, koji rice, water and yeast, are next sent to the moto, or starter tank, which looks like a small stainless steel brewing tank. Saké destined for the hot market uses one moto batch and is brewed quickly at higher temperatures. For premium Ginjo saké multiple moto batches are made and added to the fermenting saké during the first week of fermentation. We have learned over the centuries that adding moto at different stages in the brewing cycle adds different flavors and aromas to the saké. Since we prefer layers of flavor and complexity in our saké, we add three or four moto batches in the first week.
We ferment our Ginjo saké at cool temperatures for about a month. Brewing slowly retains complex fruit and spice notes, which are lost in saké brewed too quickly.
After a month of cool brewing the saké is ready for filtration, pasteurization, and ageing. Just as wine has "lees", or grape skins and other solids remaining after fermentation, saké contains rice flour and other solids, which together are called "moromi." Since all of our sakés, with the exception of Pearl (nigori style) are clear; we need to separate the moromi from the clear saké. To do so, we pass the cloudy saké though our "moromi press" which is an 18' long passive machine. It contains a series a metal screens covered with very heavy cheesecloth. After about an hour of filtering, the solids build up on the cloth and the saké runs clear! Essentially, the saké filters itself. No chemicals or other artificial means are required to clarify our saké.
Pearl, or nigori, saké is an antique style roughly filtered saké. Special yeasts and koji are used for Pearl. A portion of the moromi is allowed to pass through the filter and is retained in the bottled saké. The moromi adds some sweetness and wonderful flavors including pineapple, vanilla and liquorice.
After filtering, saké is pasteurized to prevent the yeast from starting a secondary fermentation. Ideally, the saké is then aged from three months to a yearadding complexity and depth. New flavors and aromas will continue to develop if saké is allowed to mellow in temperature controlled stainless tanks. At SakéOne we age all of our Ginjo grade saké. "G" is a blend of special batches of our best sakés, some of which ages almost a year before we're ready to release it.
When the sakémaster is comfortable the saké has aged appropriately, it will be pasteurized once more and then bottled.
An exception to the normal aging and pasteurization steps occurs when we make Nama (literally "fresh") saké. This is the way saké was consumed for centuries before Pasteurization was invented. We bottle Nama saké at cask strength (genshu), and neither Pasteurize nor age it. It must be refrigerated or it will begin fermenting and pop the cork. It is sold only at our tasting room and a few local restaurants and retail stores who receive fresh deliveries every week. Nama is intense and a real treat. Please try it when you visit SakéOne.
There is some saké labeled "nama" and sold without being refrigerated. It has been cold filtered. The cold filtration keeps the yeast from being bottled, but also filters out the big flavor molecules. While it is technically nama, i.e. it has not been pasteurized; it does not taste like real "fresh" saké.
