Sake Recipes

There are almost NO examples of full sake recipes available to brewers outside of Japan. Here for the first time, possibly ever, you will find a growing list of examples from around the world that can help you assess the differences in fermentation plans.

Screen shot from the Recipe Examples

If you purchase the books that are written in English, even the ones translated from Japanese sources, you’ll be disappointed when the recipe calls for 35% seimaibuai of a sake rice variety you can’t even purchase in your country. In addition to that, the examples you do find will require an alcohol addition to make Honjozo.

Most likely this is because Japan is highly protective of their time-honored traditions and rightly so. It’s taken the better part of 1000 years to achieve the level of success they have reached.

But, sake didn’t originate in Japan. Koji growing and fermentation practices were brought over by monks and other dignitaries from China and Korea. The information led to technological advances time and time again, with each exchange pushing rice fermentation concepts further and making sake even more refined.

Japan definitely is owed most of the credit for achieving the level of refined quality and consistency. Separating out the fermentation process into “koji” as a separate refined process, then “moto”, then “rice” preparation, etc… This was the true contribution that sets Japan’s national beverage apart from other forms of rice alcohol. The control of each step is fundamentally what allows Nihonshu (Japanese Sake) to attain such fruity, fragrant, and delicate textures.

“Even some Japanese breweries make poor sake.”

One of the most important things you can learn about sake is: Even some Japanese breweries make poor sake. This is evidenced by, well… drinking lots of it, but also professionals like Suzuki Kenji who specifically addressed issues with under performing sake, and the changes suggested completely turned around the quality of entire regions.

Mr. Suzuki write a “Manual for Ginjo Sake” to help Fukushima Sake producers improve their quality, but … good luck to anyone outside of their guild who can get ahold of a copy.

That’s why we are creating this list. It’s a start to give perspective on how producers outside of Japan are using table rice, or their own local polished rice to produce quality sake.

We can’t show all the details because that requires physically being present during brewing to really see the full process, but these details have been selected to allow us to see the basic plan and fermentation.

“That’s why we are creating this list. It’s a start to give perspective on how producers outside of Japan are using table rice, or their own local polished rice to produce quality sake.”

The Recipe Examples begin with a simple list and a few notes to understand the context of the specific fermentation.

List of contributed recipes

Figures are then provided that give ratios for each addition. These assume a basic 3-4 addition preparation and we are not going to describe that here, but you can view more about “san-dan-shikomi” on the main site.

Columns comparing different recipe addition ratios

It may be difficult to figure out the actual percentages so we created a calculator to help with that. Keep in mind, we are not trying to share an exact recipe, but rather give the blue-print to adapt it to your own. So it doesn’t matter if someone uses 10kg or rice, but it does matter if they use 48% of the total rice in the Tome addition or if they use 55%.

A calculator to determine ratios of each addition

Finally, there are two sheets to fill out moto temperatures (if the recipe uses a yeast starter) and another to fill out moromi temperatures. This is the second most important step because it shows how the fermentation was intended to progress. Ultimately there are aspects to this that can’t be easily organized, such as your method of temperature control, rice temperatures before addition, or plenty of other factors, but it can give you a sense of where to start.

The final sheet is where you can view these details in action. Eventually we’ll build a sheet that can take total kg of rice and some other inputs, format them into a printable build sheet and allow you to just follow the steps. As of this posting we’re not quite there yet.

You can’t select two recipes at the same time. So if you do it will throw an error and turn red, but you can select one and then deselect it to choose another.

Please contribute your own unique recipe and help others learn from your experiences.

Happy Brewing!