sake brewing– tag –

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...

Behind every great bottle of sake stands one guiding figure: the toji. So what is a toji? A toji is the master brewer who leads all of sake production. Indeed, this person oversees everything, from choosing the rice to judging the taste....

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...

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...