Equipment / Supplies

HomeBrew

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These retailers or products come in smaller sizes and much more affordable shipping rates. You should also know that substituting these with sushi or short grain rice is okay. Also, wine yeast has a similar tolerance to sake yeast, but it might just produce more acidity.

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  • Koji (Pre-Made)

Commercial

The majority of this list was donated by our friend Reade Huddleston and a lot of commercial brewers from breweries like Farthest Star Sake, North American Sake, Brooklyn Kura, Den Sake, Sequoia Sake, The Void Sake, Wetlands Sake, and we would love to hear from you. Please share what works for you!

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Spreadsheet is not viewable on mobile web

Sake Yeast

There are plenty of sake yeasts available….in Japan. Only a few of those have managed to make their way to other countries and sometimes there are multiple strains or variants of the same strain.

If you want to order yeast directly from Japan, you can purchase slants if the laws allow it at the moment (covid changed a lot), or you can purchase dry yeast.

For yeast banks that currently have stains available, please see our list of what we know they have and hopefully you can update us if anything changes.

Dry Yeast

The only dry Sake yeast you can buy is from the Kyokai Society in Japan. They offer 701, 901 (low foaming variants of 7 and 9) as well as a distilling yeast called S-2. This requires a special commercial membership with them and copies of your commercial brewing license to purchase.

Liquid 901, 701

These are commercially banked at most large labs in the US and probably some in Europe. WhiteLabs, WyEast, Inland Island, Propagate, BSI, Omega, and Jasper all contain these strains. You may need to find out (ask us) privately who needs to give permission to use their strains in some cases because they might be privately banked. Perhaps you can offer to split the costs?

Other Liquid Strains

Some labs claim to have the following strains, but to my knowledge the authenticity those hasn’t been confirmed:

  • Propagate: 6, 9, 10, 18

  • Jasper Yeast: 5, 17, 12A

Non-Sake Strains

This entire category is a beast to unpack, but suffice it to say there are other beer, wine, and hybrid yeasts that brewers are using to create many different flavors and even some wild yeast banks.

Sake Rice

There are very few sources of polished (less than 90% remaining) rice. Even fewer for what would be described as “proper sake rice”. Here we will list companies and the varietals you can purchase from them.

  • Cypress Creek Milling (email: cypresscreek@isbellfarms.com for pricing)

    • Yamadanishiki

    • Titan

    • Omachi

  • Valley Select (only available in bulk 1000kg+ orders)

    • Calrose

    • Yamadanishiki

    • Akitakomachi

    • Koshihikari

    • Hitomebore

  • IIDA Group

    • Yamada Nishiki

    • Gohyakumangoku

    • Calrose

    • Nihonbare

    • Akebono

    • etc.

Koji Spores (Koji-kin / Tanekoji)

Koji Spores are one of the few products that seem to be rather easy to import. There are many companies in Japan that provide them at reasonable prices and shipping costs. Some production needs also call for a more technical application of lab cultured enzymes.

Unless you know which spores to choose, your best bet is to have an idea of dry vs sweet sake. Know if you want lots of umami (high amino acid producing) or less umami. You should contact the producer directly and ask for their recommendation.

If we had to categorize the main properties you’ll be looking for they are: temp growth curve, high glucoamylase (high saccharifying), specific amino acid-type producing, strains that are fairly balanced, and spores that look to solve a specific problem like non-deferri-ferrichrome producing (prevent discoloration). These would be other ways to discuss your needs with spore providers.

These are the main companies that offer sake specific koji spores:

Lab Grown Enzymes (not specific to sake)