hiire– tag –

The history of sake stretches back roughly two thousand years, at least if you use the word broadly for Japanese alcoholic drinks made from rice. Yet the earliest rice-based drinks were nothing like modern nihonshu. The sake people pour ...

Hi-ochi (火落ち) is the bacterial spoilage of sake. It strikes after brewing finishes, and a small group of ethanol-tolerant lactic acid bacteria causes it. Sake is a hostile place for microbes, so the fact that anything spoils it at all...

Pasteurization in sake brewing is the quiet, decisive step near the very end. It is a gentle heating called hiire. This step sits at the heart of pasteurization in sake brewing. The step barely gets a mention on most labels, yet it quiet...