A Journey Into the World of Home Brewing Sake
Quick Intro…
After 5 years of brewing at a mid-sized brewery in Japan, there was one thing I couldn’t really understand about homebrewing. While taking part in the brewsake.org calls and Sake Brewer’s Guild discussions, I heard a lot of homebrewers say “My batch went bad”, “throw it out”, or “I think I have a contamination”.
And for sure there is the fact that SO much equipment and know-how is available in japan that perhaps I was overlooking a key point in our process that was missing to the people brewing at home. There was only one way to experience that dramatic emotional rollercoaster for myself…
So, I tried it.
Somethings were on my mind as I took on this journey:
What is the reasoning for a yeast starter?
Why do some breweries use a separate ‘Soe’ tank?
What will it be like experimenting with Table rice
I should document this with photos, etc. to track this experience.
And not only that, I tried to do it as inaccurately as possible while still keeping the most important points in-mind. Granted these are things that I suppose I internalized over the years, so this was more or less an exercise in, “if you practice basic brewing principals, can you make decent sake with table rice at home?”
I’ll explain each step along the way. We are going to rely on MsPaint for a little bit here and I'm going to ignore tank sizes, batch sizes, and numbers.
Let’s start with Koji….
Koji is interesting, attractive, mystical and sexy. Hot take: Don’t try to make it for your first few batches, or if you’ve already been brewing for a while with mixed results, just stop making koji for a few batches and see what happens. If you have spent so long getting koji “good”, but don't really know how your style of koji is going to affect the moto / moromi stage, then it’s kinda been a waste of time IMO. When you are thinking about the intricacies of koji making you are juggling too much and have no idea what might have been the problem because there are so many moving parts. The most important frame of reference you can have in sake is your previous batches.
So for now, let's ignore koji making. Because a first time or early stage brewer should be watching the brew. It sounds counterintuitive because the brewers always say “koji is the most important part”, but koji is also one, if not the most difficult part. Not ideal to start on hard mode when you don’t know what monsters lie ahead.
Miyako Koji
I literally bought frozen koji online (what a time to be alive). When the two packs I bought turned out to be less than I needed for my tome addition (maths isn't my strong point), I bought random dried koji from the asian supermarket to make up the difference. Again… quite literally going for broke. However, while this decision might seem self-destructive in nature, the dried koji I bought from the store may have turned out perfect because of my overarching goal of early additions being softer and later additions (naka and tome) being firmer. When preparing koji for competition level daiginjo, the spore count of koji is often changed to this effect (GIANT SIMPLIFICATION). Since we are not making our koji, buying a different brand that comes much drier kinda did the same thing? maybe? In any case, for the first addition, Miyako frozen was quite soft out of the freezer. The store bought dried koji I used for naka and tome might have been an equivalent to lowering spore count and moisture.)
The rice I used was the first Japanese table rice I could find that popped up on amazon.
random short-grain rice I found on Amazon
And I steamed it in a gas stove-top steamer.
initially i used the lid to see how far the moisture would go but in the end didn't cover it with the lid but instead just folded over the cloth
Recipe
Now, I mostly followed the “one step wonder” that is on the brewsake.org website. The purpose of the One Step Wonder recipe is nothing more than a giant simplification of the entire process, designed to remove steps that could lead to failure. It isn't necessarily designed to make “good sake the first time”. It CAN but the purpose of simplifying everything into one go is to remove steps that cause human error.
However, I have added some steps to my process that are designed to strengthen the brew so that human error really doesn’t matter.
Yeast Starter (amazake moto)
Using an extra (smaller) vessel for the soe and odori stage
1) Yeast Starter
One of the major ways to secure a healthy (sturdy) fermentation, especially in 2500kg size brews, is to ensure you have strong yeast. Let’s take a look at why:
Now let me explain the physical, real-world reasons this matters:
A large, healthy yeast population is your biggest line of defense in preventing bacteria outbreaks once the brew has started, but they grow much slower, so we need to consider ways to give them an advantage over faster growing bacteria:
Less Surface area: less stuff falling into the tank
Less Heat Loss: if the yeast lost momentum, bacteria can propagate faster
With “strong” yeasts in big batches you have less to worry about (901 and so on) but with weaker yeasts this is a problem.
In a real-world situation with highly-aromatic yeast, for example, 1801 and other caproic acid producing “ginjo'' yeasts, they are weaker than even standard yeasts. Even if most tanks can be done in a standard “suppon jikomi” (single tank preparation) the weaker yeasts often require an intermediate tank called a “soe oke” to address these issues.
2) Soe Oke
From the initial addition until the end of odori (the day of just not doing anything) is supposed to be the ramp up of yeast production stage, heat loss is going to hamper that. And the thin spread of the yeast within the spread out mash is going to slow growth too.
Small volume in Large Tank (yeast too spread out)
So what can we do? Add more steps and smaller vessels essentially.
This picture below is showing the “naka” or what you do before mashing in naka, moving the moromi from the soe oke to the main tank “soe gaeshi”
A smaller "soe" tank being added to the larger tank AFTER odori
“Soe oke” is the first addition tank, in a lot of “ginjo” brews we will do our first addition into a smaller tank and fill it up to the top, so that there is less surface area for heat to escape and bacteria to get in.
Keep this mini tank nice and wrapped up to let the yeastie boys grow.
The higher density in the smaller tank at this important growth stage will help yeast grow better and also make it harder for bacteria to grow.
Shubo (moto)
So yeah i did a moto too, “how do you do a moto at such small batch sizes?” a thermos my friend a thermos.
"Shubo" tank.
I did a version of high temperature moto
My goal was:
hold 55c for 24 hours
Ice to cool to 40 and add lactic
Yeast at 35, and hold for another 12 hours or so
Then normal kinda moto temp curves
The reality was closer to:
55c mash
held for maybe 3 hours
then a slow drop over the next 8 or so hours
around 40 I added the lactic
Waited another few hours till it got to 33 or so and added the yeast.
The next day or so it slowly dropped down to 18c put it in the fridge to get it to go lower and then i went away for a week vacation with zero knowledge of how it was going until i got back.
"Shubo" tank from the top (using tin foil to help keep as much heat in as possible)
Another disclosure the yeast I used was this Wyeast 9 (supposedly 901 but tbh not really)
I didn’t activate the nutrient packet inside, i just opened it up and used only half of the liquid ( remember I’m trying to do this badly i swear)
The yeast I used
The reality is only half of it would fit in my thermos so the afterthought was “fuck it this will be a good test of the yeast”
Remember I’m trying to build conditions under the assumption that the yeast is weak (maybe thats the w in Wyeast, WEAKyeast?) so using even less than is provided fitted that goal in the end.
The thought process behind a lot of this is it's easier to start with overshooting and then reign in what you are doing to the “right” point than it is to start low and never know how much you have to work after that. I ended up having the wildcard of not using the whole yeast packet but in the end fuck it it will be worth it to see what happens.
Rice
Something we do in commercial brewing is adjusting the hardness of the rice. I was curious to explore that on a homebrew level, so I experimented with drastically different steeping times. Table rice behaves very differently than sake rice, of which strains are practically selected to be more reliable than others. Here are my notes:
The rice I steeped:
Steeping Rice
I did 3 tests before actually mashing - first attempt my water uptake ended at like 160 percent, second 125 and third 140.
My base tests gave me a ball park of time taken vs uptake for my setup, after that I didnt bother measuring too carefully. And instead followed the idea that from moto to tome we go softer to harder rice.
Longer steep, softer. shorter steep, harder. And adjusted simply on time.
1 hour 30 for the moto rice
1 hour for soe
45 minutes for naka
And 35 for tome
(remember i'm trying to do things with as little accuracy as possible)
I did keep an eye on the rice while steeping at first but with table rice i wasnt too focused on getting an exact timing (yes the grains are cracked- no we don't care another benefit of not making our own koji )
Visual inspection of rice while soaking (still submerged)
Steamed rice cooling
Brewing
Here are some more photo from my brewing experience:
The "Soe-Oke" with temp probe and spoon to stir
I moved that into into some weird probably not safe for food plant pot for naka (not pictured) and tome
Final build up of the total batch and yeast starting to foam.
For tome, I managed to cool down to like 8c and it gradually rose to a high of 11 before stalling there and basically sitting at 10 for a few days and then slowly dropping down to the refrigerator temp of 7 where I pressed at day 22 or so (tome is day 1 )
I took samples maybe 4 times in total over the whole process
Dripping a sample with a coffee filter.
Early on is very lactic acid sour? I don’t have the vocabulary to describe it but to give you a frame of reference for tasting, we almost NEVER tasted samples before the day 19 point? So I actually didn't know what to expect either, I just assumed that it was fine and left it and by the day 10 point you can really see that taste mellowing out and the sake flavor starting to appear.
Pressing
I pressed on a “meh tastes ok” scale with two pillowcases (boiled for 30 minutes then dried out before using ) left it for basically 24 hours - checking the bottom bowl every couple of hours
Pressing (fune-style), settling (orisage), and racking (oribiki)
After pressing, crashing, and oribiki, I pasteurized, straight away. Heat to 65, instantly stop and start to cool as much as my set up allowed.
Sake changes over time with the enzymes and so on still doing their work even post pressing.
Post pressing storage, blending, and aging are GIANT topics on their own. So my second hot take is for your first set of brews. Ignore namazake. Pasteurize as soon as possible post press so you have a “finished” baseline to compare against later.
-JJ