Like beer, the process of making sake is simple, and like in all things simple, it is elegant and not necessarily easy.

To make sake, you need the following:

• Water
• Rice
• Koji
• Yeast
• Other sake to drink for about three months, while your current sake is done.

Water

The kind of water you use will have a say in the kind of sake you’ll produce. Water with lots of minerals will create a fuller body sake, whilst water with less mineral content will tend to create smoother tasting sake. In Japan, different regions famous for their sake owe some of this fame to their favorable water supply.

The most important part of water is this: It should not contain iron

Rice

Rice contains starch. Starch is good. Starch is also at the center of the rice kernel, therefore, one must polish the outer layer (which contains proteins and other stuff we don’t need) to get to the tasty bits.\nThe quality of our sake is tied to the quality/polish level of the rice:

*Can be 本酿造 (Honjozo), or 普通酒 (futsu-shu), or other, depending on other factors.

Koji

Also known as aspergillus oryzae, Koji is actually a national fungus in Japan. Let’s get geeky:

Koji produces three enzimes that cut the starch of the rice into smaller bits:

• Alpha and Beta amylase: Cut the starch at different places, making it shorter. In other words: Produce polysaccharides (like maltose), which are not really useful for our plans.
• Gamma amylase: Cuts bits from the very end of the starch chain, generating glucose

AHA!

Glucose is a monosaccharide, and just the perfect food for our:

yeast

Old and wise-looking Japanese have, over the centuries, cultivated both their long and wise-looking moustaches, and different strains of yeast. They’ve kept the best ones (we have already established their wiseness) and nowadays some sake producers keep theirs a secret.

Yeast, as you now, is one of man’s greatest friends.

Verily I tell you that, if you feed me your sugars, I shall transform them into alcohol –Yeast

And so, yeast will take that glucose produced by the Koji and make sweet alcohol out of it. Nice!

Time, and other stuff

This whole alchemic process takes about three months. The choice of rice, its degree of polish, the kind of water, the conditions for the Koji to work (and the kind of koji) the comfiness of the yeast and its identity, and all other modifications in the creation process will come into play to generate thousands of different sake variations.

At the end, the sake master shall balance the result with more water. If no extra alcohol is added to the mix (a practice that happens before the press), the sake will be called Junmai (純米酒). If no alcohol is removed from the mix (through dilution, for example) the thing is full strength! and thus called Genshu (原酒).

And so, for example, a Junmai Dai Ginjo is a 100% natural sake made from very high-quality rice.

As for me, I produce Junmai Gingo because that is the quality of the rice I have access to, at the moment.