sake brewing– tag –

In 1899, Japan's liquor tax overtook the land tax as the largest source of national revenue. In other words, brewing changed enormously in a single generation. Meiji era sake, the nihonshu brewed between 1868 and 1912, still began with r...

In fiscal 1973, Japan's breweries shipped about 1.77 million kiloliters of sake, more than in any year before or since. Fifty years later, the figure was under 400,000. Modern sake is the story of how Japan got from one number to the oth...

Two tanks of sake sit side by side in a storage building. Same rice, same yeast, same recipe, same brewing season. Yet one tastes rounder, while the other carries sharper acidity. So what happens next? Somebody tastes both, then decides ...

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...

Ask a brewer what makes sake possible and the answer rarely starts with rice. It starts with koji. Yet koji is not added freely, and the amount is measured to the kilogram. That measurement has a name: koji buai. Koji buai (麹歩合) is th...

Jukusei (熟成) is the maturation of sake after brewing has finished. During this stage, time, temperature, and storage conditions gradually reshape its aroma, flavor, color, and texture. Most sake goes through some maturation before rele...

Two breweries can start with the same rice variety, the same well, and the same yeast. Yet the sake in the glass tastes nothing alike. The reason usually hides in a document that drinkers never see. Brewers call it the shikomi haigo. So ...

Kumimizu buai (汲水歩合) is sake's water-to-rice ratio. Brewers calculate it by dividing the brewing water in liters by the total rice in kilograms, then multiplying by 100. Most breweries work somewhere between 125 and 135 percent. That...

Pour a glass of good sake and hold it up to the light. That transparency looks effortless, yet it takes weeks of quiet work. So what is Orisage? Orisage (滓下げ) is the clarification step brewers carry out before bottling. It settles the...

Sake begins with a quiet transformation inside a grain of rice. That transformation has a name: koji. So what is koji in sake brewing? Koji is steamed rice grown with a special mold, Aspergillus oryzae. The mold spreads through each grai...