namazake– tag –

Open a well-chilled bottle of Kaze no Mori sake, and the first sip may prickle gently. It feels more like a lively young white wine than a sparkling drink. However, nobody added that gas. Instead, it is left over from fermentation and st...

Bottling, or binzume (瓶詰め) in Japanese, is the stage where finished sake enters its retail container. Brewers fill, seal and then check the liquid they have spent months preparing, usually after clarification, dilution and heat treatm...

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...

There's a moment every spring in Japan when something shifts. The cherry blossoms are just beginning to open, the air feels lighter, and at specialty sake shops, a new kind of bottle quietly appears on the refrigerated shelf. It's labele...

There's a moment every spring in Japan when something shifts. The cherry blossoms are just beginning to open, the air feels lighter, and at specialty sake shops, a new kind of bottle quietly appears on the refrigerated shelf. It's labele...