sake making

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How to Make Sake at Home

by

Bob Taylor

Taylor-MadeAK Brewing

A Taylor-Made Guide

www.taylor-madeak.org

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Table of Contents

Page 3: Introduction

Page 4: About Sake and How Sake is Made

Page 7: The Recipe

Page 8: Ingredients

Page 10: Equipment

Page 11: Preparing the Rice

Page 13: The Actual Process

Page 22: Secondary and Packaging

Page 25: Drinking Sake and Conclusion

Copyright Bob Taylor 2007.

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How to Make Sake at Home - a Taylor-Made Guide

Introduction

If you Google for homebrew sake or make sake at home, youll get a few hits. But theyre all

really the same poorly written guide. Ive been homebrewing my own sake for years, and Im really

dissatisfied with the quality of the online homebrewing sake guides, whose process turns out a

product that is vastly inferior to commercially made sakes and even my own home-made product.

Im hoping to change that. This guide will teach you how to make authentic seishu () - refined

Japanese sake - at home, using the kan-zukuri () [cold-brewed] method. While Im at it, I

hope to educate you, at least a little bit, about different varieties of sake and maybe even different

methods for making it. I dont intend for this to be the be-all end-all guide to sake, but I do hope it

will generate some interest in making it at home from ingredients and equipment that are quite

readily available. This is a long guide, with many pages, but hopefully taking the time to write all

those pages will shed some light on a process that appears to be very complicated on the surface,

but really is quite simple at its heart.

This guide is aimed at moderately experienced homebrewers. If youre not a homebrewer, some

terms will be a little unfamiliar to you. A quick Google search will usually define those words for

you, but feel free to post questions in the form of comments on this guide. Ill be more than happy

to answer them for you.

Finally, to give credit where its due, everything I know about making sake, I learned from the book

Sake (U.S.A) by Fred Eckhardt. I dont want to duplicate his work in its entirety here, but the recipe

and method presented here are entirely his work. I heartily recommend adding his book to your

library if you find this guide to be at all helpful.

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About Sake

Because of its alcohol content and the lack of hops and carbonation, most people refer to sake as

rice wine. This is a contradiction in terms. Wines are always made from fruit, specifically the

grape. Beer always contains hops, some kind of grain, and usually some amount of carbonation.

Sake fits into neither one of these categories, though if you twisted my arm Id tell you that it would

go in the beer category. However, the category that sake really fits in is jiu - the Chinese word that

is the root for all the myriads of other Asians call their fermented alcoholic rice beverages.

Making Sake

Years ago my first attempt didnt turn out very well. It was very sour, low in alcohol, and just not

very drinkable. Like many of the guides Google turns up, I tried to shortcut the process by adding

all the ingredients at once and fermenting at room temperature. My excuse, such as it was, for that

was I didnt have the right equipment for making sake, specifically a steamer and a means for

controlling the fermentation temperature.

Before you can make sake, you must learn the basic concepts of how sake is made. Lets start with

the ingredients.

Like beer, sake has only 4 ingredients:

Water ()

Rice ()

Kome-koji ()

Yeast ()

Notice the absence of malt there? You cant malt rice for sake making the same way you malt

barley, so the rice doesnt contain any enzymes for converting starch to sugar like malted barley

does. Ill reiterate: rice wont convert itself to sugar for the yeast to ferment. Thats where kome-

koji (just koji for short) comes in.

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Koji is rice that has had aspergillus oryzae (koji-kin) mold grown on it. This special mold has an

interesting property: it secretes enzymes that convert starch to sugar. If you add it to a soupy mash

of rice, water, and yeast, the result is fermentation. All that remains is technique.

If I were to list the steps for making sake right away, most of you would close this window and

never come back. At first glance it looks really complex. Hell, my first attempt at sake turned out

horrible largely because I didnt understand the rules of sake making and tried to oversimplify the

process. I guess years of homebrewing experience really does make for a greater understanding of

certain concepts, because when I got back to making sake after having given up for a few years, the

whole convoluted and tradition-steeped process that the Japanese use to make sake makes sense to

me.

Eventually, I worked it out to simple rules that must be followed to make sake:

Make a yeast starter. Like any other beer (especially lagers), a big healthy yeast starter is

essential for a good sake fermentation. When making sake, this step is called the Moto or

seed mash and the purpose is to get the yeast to reproduce to a good number and start

actively fermenting before you add more rice and koji for the main fermentation.

Rice must be added in doubling additions. If you add everything at once, your yeast will just

give up before you reach the desired alcohol content of sake. Worse: if your yeast gives up,

other bugs can take over and ruin your sake. So, add rice in additions that double your

fermentation volume each time. Using this method, your homebrewed sake can reach

18%-20% ABV.

Koji is always added the night before you add your rice addition. Basically, you add koji to

your fermenting sake at the same time that you put your rice in the fridge to soak for

steaming. The purpose is to hydrate the koji so that it will give up its enzymes to the

solution, ready to be soaked up by the steamed rice being added the next day.

Control your fermentation temperature. The closer you get to 50F, the more dormant

lactobacillus becomes. This allows the yeast to take control of the fermentation and prevents

your sake from becoming too sour. Some acidity is necessary, but too much will render it

undrinkable.

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Apart from the above rules, there is the method of adding fermentables gradually to the

fermentation. Sake brewing is separated into the following stages:

Moto () - The seed or yeast mash. This is a yeast starter, fellow homebrewers.

Moromi () - The main fermentation, which has three koji and rice additions:

Hatsuzoe () - First addition.

Nakazoe () - Middle addition.

Tomezoe () - Final addition.

Yodan () - Stabilizing addition.

Got all that? Ok, recipe time!

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The Recipe

You can probably tell by now, making sake is more about process than ingredients. Even still, you

have to know what you need for ingredients before you can start, right? Heres my basic recipe for

about three gallons of sake, which can be halved or doubled (or tripled lol).

10.00 lbs Short grain rice

40.00 oz Cold Mountain Rice Koji

2.00 gal Cold water

0.75 tsp Brewer's yeast nutrient

1.00 pinch Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate - MgSO4)

1.25 tsp Morton Salt Substitute (potassium chloride - KCl)

1.00 pack WYeast Sake Yeast

You might notice a few funky ingredients on this list. Those being the salts. Unlike wort made

from barley, rice doesnt contain the minerals and amino acids that yeast needs for a healthy

fermentation. So were supplying those nutrients with the water. Brewers yeast nutrient for

nitrogen, Epsom salts for magnesium, and Moton Salt Substitute for potassium and chloride. Please

note: do not use a different brand of salt substitute without reading the ingredients list. Most other

brands use calcium chloride, which normally isnt a bad thing to add to a batch of beer, but its not

going to supply the potassium that we need here. These additions arent absolutely necessary (infact, the current batch of sake detailed in this thread was made without them), but they help your

yeast get a leg up on all other microbes and in the long run will help to produce the most

alcoholic sake possible.

Also conspicuous in its absence is the citric acid, vintners acid blend, or citrus juice that most of

the sake recipes found on the internet call for. Please dont do this to your sake. Commercial sake

brewers dont do it, and neither should you. The stated purpose for this addition is to protect thesake from infection by lowering the pH. This really isnt necessary because there is going to be a

lactic ferment along with the main yeast ferment that will acidify the sake for you and, along with

the dominant sake yeast, will help to keep all other microbial activity in check. Citric acid is also a

powerful antioxidant, which hurts your yeasts reproductive cycle. In other words, adding citric acid

to your sake is only going to make your sake more sour, it doesnt serve any other beneficial

purpose.

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Ingredients - Strange Names and Where to Buy Them

One by one, here are the ingredients listed in the above recipe and how to find them.

Short Grain Rice - Here in the U.S.A. this variety is often called pearl or California pearl. The

brand I prefer for making sake (and sushi!) is Kokuho Rose Sushi Rice. Its not expensive, and

readily available in grocery stores that cater to ethnic foods. Ive even seen it at my local Fred

Meyer (Kroger to you East Coasters). If you cant find it, you can use pretty much any short grain

rice you can get your hands on.

Cold Mountain Rice Koji - Without a doubt the most difficult product to find, simply because you

dont know where to look! The first time I attempted sake, I sent my poor wife around to every

Asian market in town looking for this item. She never did find it. I actually tripped over it at a large

local ethnic store called New Sagaya. Really, any grocery store that caters to a wide range of ethnic

interests (especially Japanese) will have this item - hey, if I can get it in Alaska, its probably

available where you live! Alternatively, your local homebrew supply store may stock koji-kin

spores. This is more expensive, but you can make your own kome-koji with it and one packet

makes enough for several batches of sake. Push comes to shove, you can always order it (scroll all

the way down to the bottom of the page).

Sake Yeast - While were on the subject of homebrew supply stores, youre going to need some

yeast. Youre not going to find sake yeast in a grocery store, so hit the yellow pages and locate a

homebrew supply store near you and see if they stock WYeast WY3134 Sake #9 yeast. If they dont

stock it, and theyre not willing to get it for you, you can always order it. If you just cant wait,

white wine yeast will do just fine. Please dont use bread yeast, though. I know Asian homebrewers

do it all the time, but believe me they wouldnt if homebrewing were legal there.

Epsom Salt - Were out of the hard ingredients now. This is available at your local megamart,

usually in the pharmaceuticals or first-aid department. I bet you probably have some under your

bathroom sink or in the medicine cabinet to treat the occasional pulled muscle, even.

Morton Salt Substitute - Grocery store. Morton is pretty ubiquitous, so you shouldnt have any

reason to even consider a different brand of product. If for some reason you just cant find this

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brand, read labels. If you cant find a salt substitute label that lists potassium chloride, just leave it

out. You probably wont miss it.

Water - Only mentioning this because all municipal water sources in our nation are chlorinated.

Sake doesnt have the same issues with chlorophenols that beer does, but I still prefer to leave the

chlorine out. Filter your water or buy distilled (its cheap).

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Equipment

You only really need some very basic equipment for making sake. If you have a basic homebrewing

or winemaking equipment kit, youre already most of the way there! Heres a short list:

Fermenter - A five-gallon, food-grade plastic bucket with a tight-fitting lid that has been drilled for

a fermentation airlock. Like this one, but the spigot is not necessary (you wont use it).

A large steamer - Really the only specialized piece of equipment you need, a large steamer that can

hold 3 to 5 pounds of rice would be very nice to have. You could cook rice with a rice cooker or in a

potbut really, sake rice needs to be steamed. Steamed rice doesnt get mushy and gluey like

boiled rice does, and this is important for the koji to get hold of it. Large steamers sell for about $30

at your local Asian market, so its not a huge investment.

A racking cane and hose - Like beer, sake can be damaged by contact with oxygen, so siphoning is

the rule when transferring it between vessels. This is available at your local homebrew supply store,

if you dont already have one as part of your homebrewing/winemaking equipment.

Airlocks and one-hole stoppers - Again, you want to protect your fermenting sake from theenvironment, and thats what these are for. If you bought a homebrewing kit, you have these

already.

Glass jugs of one-gallon capacity - Later in the process youre going to want to get the sake off of

the rice lees, but its not quite ready to drink yet. One-gallon glass jugs (like the ones good quality

juices come in) will serve as perfect secondary fermenters or bright tanks in which your sake can

finish fermenting, clear, and mature.

A means to control fermentation temperature - Every homebrewer dreams of having a chest

freezer with a temperature controller on it dedicated to his beer. I have one, and I love it. But

fulfilling this requirement doesnt necessarily mean you need a piece of equipment for the job. If

you have a basement, garage, or any part of your home that stays in the 50F-55F temperature

range for at least part of the year, that will do nicely to keep your sake fermenting in the right

temperature range for each step of the process.

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Preparing the Rice

Rice must be cooked before it can be used for making sake. The reason, familiar to all-grain

homebrewers, has to do with gelatinizing the starches in the rice kerels. Gelatinizing alters the

structure of the starch granules in such a way as to make them more readily soluble. Bottom line:

you have to cook the rice before the koji enzymes can do anything else with it.

The preferred method of preparing rice for sake is steaming. This is because steamed rice, while

fully gelatinized, doesnt have the tendency to go mushy and gooey like normally cooked rice does.

This means that clumps are a lot easier to break up, and your hands will thank you for that when it

comes time to mix the rice into the moromi. If you dont have a steamer, cant concoct one, and

couldnt find one to buy, then cooking in a rice cooker or even simmering in a pot on the stove is

acceptable - so dont let not being able to steam your rice discourage you!

You prepare rice for steaming like this: Wash the rice thoroughly in running cold water to remove

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all starch powder. Then, cover the rice in 2-3 inches of very cold water, and stash in your fridge for

about 18 hours. Properly soaked rice is slightly less than crunchy and nibbles easily (if its squishy,

you soaked too long. if very crunchy, it hasnt soaked long enough). After soaking, drain off the

cold water in a colander for at least half an hour. Then place the rice in your steamer (with plenty of

water in the bottom half) and steam for 45 minutes. Steamed rice is tender to the tooth and

translucent - not white, like simmered rice.

I realize that this seems like a small subject to devote an entire page to, but it stands by itself

because it deals with the base ingredient of our recipe.

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Making Sake, Part II - The Actual Process

Ok, step-by-step, heres how to make a batch of sake.

Moto ()(Total time: 14 days)

Prepare 2.5 cups of cold water by adding 0.75 tsp yeast nutrient and a pinch of Epsom salt and

stirring until completely dissolved. Then add a half cup of koji and stir it into the water. Put this into

the fridge at the same time as you put your rice to soak for steaming.

Prepare 1.5 cups of rice as described above (wash, soak, steam).

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After steaming, add the hot rice to the cold koji and water mixture in your fermenter (theres no

reason to use an intermediate vessel here) to produce a starting temperature of about 74F. Mix well

with a sanitized spoon, and put this fermenter somewhere where it will remain at this temperature

for the next couple days. Stir twice a day with a sanitized spoon. In the first few hours the rice will

soak up almost all of the liquid (see image), but after 24 hours the koji enzymes will cause the rice

to liquify again.

After two days, cool to 50-60F and add the yeast on top. Dont stir the yeast in yet! Cover and let

stand for 12 hours. The cool temperature at this stage is very important (sake yeast is a lager yeast) -

remember the sour flavors I mentioned earlier? Move the fermenter to your basement or into a

temperature-controlled refrigerator.

After 12 hours have gone by, allow the temperature to come back up to 68-72F and stir the yeast

into the moto mixture with a sanitized spoon. Stir twice a day for 3 days, then once a day for three

more days.

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The basic ferment of the moto is now finished, and the temperature should again be lowered to

50F. Allow the moto to rest for 5 more days. Now you are ready for moromi fermentation!

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Moromi () and Odori ()(Total time: 26 days)

Fred Ekhardt wrote in his book:

The moromi ferment will be a three-stage buildup over a four day period. The slow buildup is

necessary to ensure a maximum alcohol content. The stages, or additions, are called first addition

(hatsuzoe), middle addition (nakazoe), and tomezoe or last addition. Each consists of a further

portion of koji, steamed rice, and water. These sequential additions each double the volume of the

mash until the full ferment can take place over about three weeks.

Hatsuzoe (): (Day 1 - 2)Day -1: Eighteen hours before you expect to add this addition, wash and soak 2.5 cups of rice in

cold water. At the same time, add a cup of koji to the moto, which has now been working for 2

weeks. Stir the koji in with a sanitized spoon.

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Day 1: After soaking, prepare the rice with the usual steaming method. While the rice is steaming,

dissolve 1.25 teaspoon of Morton salt substitute (or potassium chloride) in a little warm water, then

add more cold water to make a total of 2.75 cups. Stash this in the fridge to chill.

Day 1: When finished steaming, add the rice to the above cold water to cool the rice down. When

the rice gets down below 85F, add it to the moto.

Day 1 2: Long-time beer makers hate this step. Wash your hands and arms really really well, then

use them (yes, your hands) to mix the steamed rice into your moto, making sure to break up all the

clumps. This should take you about 30 minutes or so. When youre done, put the lid and airlock

back on and keep the temperature at around 70F. Stir with a sanitized spoon at 2 hour intervals for

the next 12 hours, then twice a day for the next 2 days. You have now tripled the volume of your

original moto.

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Nakazoe (): (Day 2 - 3)

Day 2: 18 hours early, wash and soak 6 cups of rice. At the same time, add 1.5 cups of koji to the

fermenter. Stir it in with a sanitized spoon.

Day 3: Steam your rice as usual. Then add the hot steamed rice to 8.75 cups of cold water. Mix with

your clean hands, then add the whole thing to the fermenter. Again, mix with your hands for 30

minutes, being sure to break up all the clumps.

Day 3: Put the lid back on, keep the temperature at about 70F, and stir it up after 12 hours. By now

your volume is about 2 gallons.

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Tomezoe (): (Day 3 - 4)Day 3: After you stir the mash up in the last step, add the remaining koji and stir it in. At the same

time, wash and soak the remaining 5 pounds of rice.

Day 4: The next day, 24 hours after starting the nakazoe step, steam your rice. Add the hot steamed

rice to 1 gallon + 1 cup of cold water, mix with your clean hands, and add the whole lot to the

moromi. Again, mix it up with your hands, making sure to break up all the clumps. This will again

double your volume to around 4 gallons. Leave this alone at 70F over night. At this time you can

observe odori - the dancing ferment. The bubbling action of happy yeasties is a familiar sight to

anyone who has made their own beer before.

From the fifth day on, you want to maintain a cooler temperature for the fermentation. After the

room-temperature overnight period between days 4 and 5, you should chill it down to as close to

50F as you can get, or at least keep it between 50F and 60F. Believe me, you want to ferment this

cool. A warm sake fermentation can lead to some funky flavors, so try to avoid it. This is why the

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Japanese traditionally only made sake during the cold winter months, which is why this is called the

kan-zukuri () or cold-brewed method. Stir at 12 hour intervals through the 6th day, then

leave it alone for the next three weeks. Somewhere between day 19 and day 21, the fermentation

should pretty much be over (a hydrometer would read at 1.000 or less at this point).

Note that, since theres no way to determine an original gravity for sake, its not really possible to

calculate ABV for the product. Youll know its alcoholic when you taste it, though! Ok, on to the

next step.

Yodan ()(Total time: a few hours to a day)

The stabilizing addition. I only mention this for sake of completeness, as I always skip it because

I prefer the driest and most alcoholic sake possible. There are two ways you can go here: you can

add water to decrease the alcoholic strength of the product, or you can add rice and koji to sweeten

the sake. Here are the calculated water additions:

0 ounces - If you add no water in this step, the sake should finish with an alcohol content

above 18.5% ABV. This is Genshu () sake.

30 ounces - This will yield about 16% ABV, which we could call ordinary sake.

68 ounces - The alcohol level will decrease to about 14% ABV. This is pretty weak for a

non-carbonated product, and generally not recommended.

20 ounces - Add two gallons of water and youll be down to about 12% ABV, which is the

usual strength of fruit-flavored sakes.

178 ounces - This will yield 10-11% ABV, which is low enough to allow you to bottle

condition the sake for a carbonated product.

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Why would you do this? Got me, Im just parroting the math. Ive never done any of these water

additions.

Last, but certainly not least, adding 2 cups (uncooked amount) of steamed rice and 1/2 cup of koji

to the sake at this point will add more sugar than the yeast can ferment, which will sweeten the

sake. This amount of rice and koji will produce a very sweet sake called mirin, which is used in

Japanese cooking to make such things as teriyaki sauce. Basically, the Japanese tend to use mirin in

place of sugar wherever a sweetener is needed. If you prefer your sake to be sweeter, but not so

sweet as mirin, you can decrease the amount of rice added in this step.

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Secondary and Maturation (Bright Tank)

(Total time: 14 days)

If you made no additions at yodan, then you should rack the sake at this time. Clean and sanitize

three one-gallon jugs, your racking cane and hose, and one-hole stoppers for the jugs. Then just

siphon the sake off of the rice lees. Then take the lees and put them in a colander lined with

cheesecloth, wrap it up, and squeeze as much liquid out as you can (if you have a small fruit press,

this works even better). Use this to top up your jugs to the neck (dont fill them completely full).

Affix stoppers and airlocks to these jugs, then keep them right at that 50F temperature for the next

couple weeks. This will allow any residual fermentation to finish up and will allow the rice solids

and yeast to settle out, leaving your sake relatively clear.

At this point you could just put a tight lid on your jugs of sake and store it in your fridge for

anywhere from 2 weeks to a month before you drink it all. I seriously dont recommend this

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because any longer and lactobacillus can take over and turn your sake very, very sour. The next step

is pasteurization.

Pasteurizing sake is pretty easy. Just put your sake into a pot of water on your stove, stick a

thermometer in through the mouth of the bottle, and heat until the sake reaches 140F. Then take it

out, put a lid on it, and allow it to cool. The resulting pasteurized sake can be stored for up to 6

months before drinking or repackaging.

Packaging for Consumption

Right now you have a couple options:

After aging, you can leave the sake as-is (or mix the sediment into solution and rack to smaller

bottles, followed by re-pasteurizing and sealing) and enjoy it as nigorizake () - cloudy sake

that is meant to have the sediment mixed into the sake before drinking. This kind of sake is sweeter

and has more body than filtered sake, and is very delicious in and of itself.

Or you can allow the jugs to become well-settled and carefully rack the cleared sake off of the

sediment into smaller bottles, re-pasteurize, and seal. This is muroka () or unfiltered sake -

seishu that hasnt been further clarified by filtration. Its still a little hazy, and thats generally

considered to be unacceptable for [em]seishu[/em]. To render this sake brilliant, I suggest fining

with bentonite - a type of clay used by vintners to clarify their white wines.

The ratio of bentonite used is generally 1/2 teaspoon per gallon being fined - for our recipe, that

works out to 1.5 teaspoons bentonite. Start with a cup (8 fluid ounces) of really hot water. Stirring

continuously with a whisk, slowly sprinkle the bentonite powder into the water. Once you have it all

in a smooth slurry, gently stir it into your sake in its secondary fermenter (split it up if youre using

multiple jugs as secondaries). In about 3 days it will completely settle out and you can rack the

brilliant sake off of the sediment for bottling and pasteurizing.

Sake is ready to drink any time after its bottled, but a modest aging period of about two months

tends to improve the flavor. Traditionally, sake is aged at the brewery for six months in this stage of

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production, before filtering, bottling, and re-pasteurizing the product for sale. But Im not going to

suggest anything so extreme here, aging for 6 weeks to two months will be sufficient to get rid of

the green sake flavors.

Thus we come to the eighth and final page of my guide: drinking your sake!

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Drinking Sake

A lot of people I talk to are a bit in the dark about how to drink sake. I will now attempt to light the

way for you! Homebrewed sake can be drank warm or chilled, and is great either way.

Drinking chilled sake: Chilled sake is traditionally drunk from 6 oz square cedar (or cypress) cups

called masu. Usually a bit of salt is sprinkled on the rim, symbolizing food (sakana). Traditionally,

sake is never consumed without food, so putting salt on your cup is just a way to allow you to drink

sake by itself! The cedar masu add its own complementing flavor to the sake, but can overwhelm

more delicately flavored ginjo sakes; for which a laquerware alternative is available.

Drinking warm sake: Restaurants use a sake machine through which hot sake is dispensed from

18 liter boxes for consumption by their American patrons. Warm sake is good, but these machines

heat the sake up to almost boiling and keep it there for far too long as it dispenses. This is far too

hot to drink, and actually ruins the sake - changing the flavor and boiling the alcohol out of it. The

same thing often happens if you try to warm sake up in the microwave if you arent careful,

actually.

The proper warm temperature to drink sake at is just barely warmer than your blood: 110F-120F.To warm it up, put a small pan of water on the stove and bring to a boil. While youre waiting, pour

some sake into the jug of your favorite sake set, and put a thermometer in it. When the water boils,

remove from the stove and put your sake jug in the hot water. Gently heat until the thermometer

reads the appropriate temperature, then immediately serve.

Conclusion

Well, I hope you found this guide to be much more helpful than those other guides that Google

turns up. As stated at the beginning, Im always happy to answer questions - so if you have them,

either use the contact button above to e-mail it to me or post it as a comment here and I will do my

very best to answer it for you in as clear a manner as possible.

Happy Brewing!

Bob Taylor, Taylor-MadeAK Brewing

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