The Road to Sake
As you venture through the process of brewing your first batch (or your second), you might be wondering if you are doing a good job, or if that thing brewing in your fermenter will explode as soon as you leave the house. Fear not, here is my complete observation log, so you can compare your notes with mine.
Assuming that your recipe looks somewhat similar to mine, you are bound to see the following:
| Day | Notes |
|---|---|
| 1 | Night: Preparation of moto as described by recipe. Drank some sake to celebrate the beginning of the batch |
| 2 | At the end of the day, rice has absorved all of the water. Adjusted by adding one more cup |
| 3, 4 | Taste is lightly acid and sweet, like that of yogurt |
| 6 | Not much activity observed. Moto seems happy |
| 7 | Holy smokes! Great activity, along with a good amount of foam |
| 9 | Moderate activity. Microbubbles all over the surface, and strongly alcoholic taste |
| 15 | Moderate activity. Nicely scented aroma. Acid taste. Vol: Approximately 2 L |
| 16 | Great activity, flavour is sweet and lightly acid |
| 17 | Tomezoe separated into two phases to simplify handling of the huge volume of rice. Adjusted with 1 extra cup of Koji to make proportions similar to William Auld’s recipe (a total of 4.5 cups for this phase). Each day saw 9 cups of water and 5 cups of rice. Water was added in the morning, while cooked rice was introduced in the evening. Cold water was not utilized to cool the rice (which was left to cool at room temperature) It took 1.5 hrs to bring it down to 30C |
| 19 | Very good flavour. Acidity slightly present, along with a light alcoholic taste. |
Yodan
Done one week before pressing, with:
- 1.5 cups of rice.
- 2 cups of water
- 1 cup of Koji.
By now the taste is very acidic and alcoholic, with very little visible activity but highly audible fermentation. Stirring once daily at this point.
Pressing
Performed two days after Yodan, taking about 4 hours. It’s a good idea to use sterilized globes, or you’ll end up washing your hands very often.
1st Decanting
Roughly on day 46 (one week after the date initially planned). Takes around 1.5 hours including washing and desinfecting the carboys.
Yield: 2 carboys of 1 gallon each, at 85% capacity.
Measured alc. Vol: ~25%
1st Pasteurization
Only pasteurized half of the batch, for comparison with the other one which will only get pasteurized once.
Total time: 2.5 hours.
Ameliorated to 19% Alc. Vol.
2nd Pasteurization, and Bottling.
Final ameliorated Alc.Vol: 18%
Final yield: 9 bottles, plus extra for cooking ;)
Notes
- Not a big difference between single and double pasteurizations.
- Amelioration (adding water) is generally producing bad results, flavour is diminished at a different rate than alcohol, and results are hard to predict and/or standardize.
- On next batch: Will monitor alcoholic content after first decanting, and will perform first (and only) pasteurization when it reaches 16% alc. vol., immediately followed by bottling. No amelioration will be performed.