How to Make Japanese Sake – the Old Fashioned Way

Travel to a remote corner of rural Japan, to one of the last Japanese family-owned breweries still making sake the traditional way.

It’s harder than it looks. You need exceptionally pure water, special sake rice, koji mold, yeast, and a secret ingredient. The technology is 2000 years old.

Here’s how they do it:
• Wash rice, pour it into a bag, and soak it in cold filtered water.
• Drain it overnight
• Cook it in steamer under pressure (rice must be firm on the outside but soft in the center)
• Separate and cool rice, then spread it out and cover it with mold spores (Spores turn starch into fermentable sugars).
• 48 hours later koji – sweet rice – is ready.
• Mix steamed rice with koji, spring water, and yeast (Yeast consumes sugar and produces alcohol. This takes about three weeks).
• Pour it into cloth bags and press it. This squeezes liquid sake out of the bags.
• Sake is aged for up to 4 months.

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Category: Travel