Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

This was featured on Basic Brewing Radio a while back.  It is very comprehensive and I found it helpful to think about the steps that sake-making will take.  I plan on following this guide (and hoptical_allusions comments) when I finally get around to making some.

http://www.taylor-madeak.org/

Maybe it is just me, but I tried my hardest to make a 5 gal batch of sake.  I did everything by the book, even steamed the rice in bamboo, cultured the fungus in a temperature controlled cooler, got the fluffy white rice growing fungus, the whole nine yards.  That was some of the worst S&*it I have ever placed in my mouth.  Threw out the whole batch.  LOL.  Well, it is not worse than the liquid mouse bottles or the dead mouse in the carboy, but it is up there.  Any tips on sake making from someone who has done it?

No experience and based on your endeavors I doubt I'll ever go the Sake route. I mean its OK and stuff but when do you ever want to kick back with a pint o' sake? Thanks for the funny post...

I think sake is an acquired taste.  I end up drinking a little bottle of it once or twice a year.  It is excellent with home cooked rare seared tuna.  Well-executed sake is reminiscent of a dry, un-oaked white wine with a funky twist (due to the kome koji).

It was the first thing I ever brewed, and I've only ever made 1 gallon batches at a time.  I can't figure out how to steam cook any more than 4lbs of rice, which is the proper amount for a sake.  People online claim that one can use a rice cooker to prep the rice, but if you suspend a steamer full of pre-soaked rice in a large kettle with a few inches of boiling water in it for an hour or two, the rice is different from rice-cooker rice or stove-top rice in at least texture.  I don't know how it would be chemically different, but my rice was always laboriously steamed.  My best batch was created thusly :

-- prepare kome koji --
wash, soak and steam 2 lbs brown, short grain rice and inoculate with aspergillus oryzae (amylase-producing mold)
store culture in sanitary container
stir every 10 hours with sanitary utensil in a moist, warm environment for ~40 hours
use 1 lb as 'starter' and freeze 1 lb as a 'kicker'
{supposedly, some ethnocentric groceries carry kome koji, as it is useful for more than just sake, but I have not been able to find any such stores.}

-- prepare sake 'wort' and ferment --
wash, soak and then steam 4 lbs brown, short grain rice
pitch 4 lbs steamed rice, 1 lb molded rice, 1 gal spring water into 2 gal sanitary fermenter
(I used Fleishman's bread yeast due to a lack of knowledge about the existence of brewer's yeast and fermented in my smaller brew kettle with a completely improvised air lock.  my Taiwanese roommate said that his cousins just cover the fermenting sake with cheese cloth!  the internet often suggests lemons; having tried this, it is a terrible idea.)
ferment at 60 F for 2 weeks, agitating the batch every day
toss in remaining 1 lb of kome koji and ferment for an additional 10 days agitating every day
allow the sake to settle for several days

-- bottling / storage --
simple sparkling - bottle and cap. it will continue fermenting. (successful, well liked)
unsparkling - gently pasteurize and bottle. it will keep for more than a year this way. feel free to use clear or green bottles
bacchanal - invite friends and start drinking out of the fermenter

It keeps developing in the fermenter over time; I tried one batch every week.  The folklore of sake says that if one keeps adding kome koji to the batch, the sake will stop fermenting when the yeast has died as a result of the 18%+ ABV of the sake.  The best sake is supposed to ferment for a couple months with regular additions of kome koji.  I don't know what the ABV on my sake was, but a couple 12 oz glasses were enough to intoxicate anyone willing to drink that much of it.  The kome koji is quite bizarre.  It smells like cheese, and yet because of the amylase the mold produces, it is very sweet.  Other sake lore I have read says that the cultivators of the kome koji are considered the most important part of the process, since it is the kome koji that contributes the bulk of the character to the sake.  Other lore says that one should use highly polished white rice.  Personally, my brown rice batches came out much tastier than my white rice batches.  Overall, sake isn't that hard to make (it's a common household activity in Taiwan according to my former roommate) but it certainly does not taste like beer, or really anything else with which a Western palate is acquainted.

The big mystery I'd like to understand is how exactly the amylase breaks down the starch at 60 F, which is what people claim occurs and I am willing to believe given that fermentation can persist for so long.  I wonder this because all the beer literature claims rather specific ranges and temperatures for the activity of amylase.  If I feel really adventurous some day, maybe I'll extract the starches from barley and try to ferment it with kome koji or something like that.

My sake ended up tasting like Ozeki Nigori Unfiltered Sake, which has quite a distinct and strong flavor.  The higher end sakes tend to be filtered and are much more subtle.  They also easily cost $13 / glass...

@ Doc M -- have you ever tried drinking sake in a restaurant?  I was pretty convinced I'd done something wrong when I opened up my first batch too, but turns out that homebrew sake is supposed to taste that way.  I've grown to like it over time, and a self proclaimed amateur sake connoisseur told me what I brewed was high on his list of favorites.

I drink a lot of sake, tried even the high quality stuff for 30 bucks a smidgen.  Nothing has compared to the crap I brewed up.  I mean, I might as well have fermented donkey dung and used carbon to strip out the color.

Pretty bad stuff.  It smelled like sake, but it did not taste like sake.  I had three people with me spitting it out.  I think I will stick to beer brewing and wine making.  An art I do understnd.  LOL

Maybe I just don't like homemade sake.

hm.  well, if I brew some more, I'll let you try it!

I'm not a big fan of leaving all the rice-flour, sake-trub or whatever the white power that seperates out in the beverage.  I let it decant and clarify some, and I think homemade sake tastes better that way, although there are plenty of pictures online that show people drinking sake that looks like milk (doburoku is the transliteration of the class designation, I believe).

Mine turned out a golden yellow color.  Smelled like good sake, but didn't taste that way, or at least what I buy at the store.  What color does your sake turn out to be?  I would love to try your sake.

Hi guys!  I noticed you hitting my guide from the link on this page, so I thought I'd come take a look and see if any of you had any questions for me.  I'll start by addressing this question from hopitcal_allusions's post:


Enzymes are active at all temperatures above freezing up to the point that they denature.  While they do have temperatures where they are at their most active, the biggest reason beer mashing takes place at a high temperature is starch gelatinization.  In order for starches to become available to the enzymes for conversion, they need to be gelatinized, and barley starches fully gelatinize at 140ºF.  Alpha amylase and beta amylase both have their most active temperatures within the 150ºF to 160ºF range, so beer brewers consider that to be their "magic window" for rapid starch conversion.

That brings me to the subject of koji enzymes.  Rice starch gelatinizes at around 165ºF, which is hot enough to quickly denature starch conversion enzymes (this high temperature is one reason why rice is never malted).  Therefore, rice must be cooked before it comes into contact with koji enzymes.  Since those enzymes are active at differing rates at all temperatures above freezing, starch conversion takes place (slowly) even at the usual fermentation temperature of 50ºF.

Hopefully that answered your question without putting you to sleep.    If you guys have any other questions for me, go ahead and post them and I'll do my best to help you out. 

Taylor-MadeAK, thanks so much for posting.  It is truly neat to see that something we put on our little forums somehow reached the actual original author.  I have been meaning to do a batch of saki for sometime now, and your guide was very informative.  I enjoyed hearing you on Basic Brewing Radio, as well.  Thanks for visiting our forum and I hope you keep checking up on us!

Cheers,

Tom

Thanks for the warm welcome, Tom.     I was hoping to see a bit more of a response, but the rest of the guys are probably out doing their winterizing and fall brewing.  I'll be around to answer questions, though, so fire away!

The forum can be a bit slow at times.  We have people check sporatically throughout the week.

And then of course there are people like me, who check in like once every couple months and dump 1000 words on three or so postings...

Thanks for the post, Taylor-MadeAK.

I had generally assumed that amylase must work below the magic mashing temperature, since it's in saliva (hence the production method for South American chicha -- see next paragraph), and nature isn't a big fan of sticking stuff in organisms if it doesn't do something fairly effectively.

Chicha :: As far as I know, indigenous populations from South America achieved brewing by chewing corn products and spitting out the corn mash along with saliva into a fermentation vessel.  Since saliva has both alpha and beta amylase in it (as I recall from 9th grade biology), this is an effective way to convert starch into fermentable sugar.  NOTE : a lot of chicha produced in S.A. with the indigenous technique will make American travelers very sick with amoebas and the like and the ill effects of amoebas can persist for years.  Anyway, this is further evidence that starch conversion doesn't have to occur at the magical mashing temperature.  I know nothing about the effectiveness of converting starch this way nor do I know anything about the geletanization of corn starches or the effects of the myriad components of saliva on any of the aforementioned chemistry.  I would not mind learning a thing or two.




"Rice starch gelatinizes at around 165ºF, which is hot enough to quickly denature starch conversion enzymes (this high temperature is one reason why rice is never malted)." -- T_MAK




Is this why some sets of instructions insist that the rice must be steamed and not boiled or cooked in a rice cooker?

Also :

Does anyone have any 'effectiveness' vs temperature graphs for amylase?  (I may be able to find them as I am regularly in one of the Best Academic Libraries in the World and have vast access to magical online scientific publications via the aforementioned library).

I assume amylase eventually denatures at any temperature.  Does it denature slower at lower temps?  Faster at higher temps?  Does anyone have charts, graphs, tables, etc?

Does sake quit fermenting after ~2 weeks because the amylase gives up or because the sugars run out?  (the highest quality sake requires regular additions of koji, I hear.  I usually perform 2 infusions.)  Is the sake higher quality because maintaining a more even level of sugar, amylase and so on is nicer to the yeast? (high ABV beer starts out with lots of sugar sometimes lead to angry yeast).

Is there a reagent commonly available which will indicate whether amylase is around? (the simple experiment is to take several samples and add starch to half and then test with iodine/iodophor for blackness after ~30 min, but that is an indirect method.)





"In order for starches to become available to the enzymes for conversion, they need to be gelatinized, and barley starches fully gelatinize at 140ºF." -- T-MAK



The malted barley has already been cooked -- BYO magazine says one stage of malting for pale grains is around 150 F; darker grains require temperatures up to 400+ F (http://www.byo.com/feature/284.html).  Why aren't the barley starches already geletanized after malting?  Does geletanization require aqueous solution?  If geletanization requires aqueous solution, then how can cooled steamed rice starch be gelentanized?  Does the processing of barley make it better to use higher temperatures because the starch must be freed from the grain hulls and other barley bits, whereas the rice has more or less been stripped to the starch-only component, and rice starch can therefore more easily dissolve in water?



Lastly, has anyone ever tried converting barley with koji?

PS -- I found my pictures of brewing sake, and posted them online, but neglected to share the link here.

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2148647&l=75324&id=1518533

There isn't a picture of the fermentor 'in action'.  It is possible to see in the one shot of the large pot that I used a lot of saran wrap to turn the lid into a giant, waterless fermentation trap.  I hadn't read enough about brewing at that point to have actually _seen_ a fermentation trap, but I was sufficiently paranoid about non-sake organisms entering my sake to ignore the 'cover it with a cheese cloth and set it outside' advice.

enjoy.

No.  Boiled, simmered, or rice prepared in a rice cooker (all forms of cooking by absorption) can be used to make sake.  Most sake making instructions insist on steaming, however, for a multitude of reasons.  I'll list some for you here:

(1) Rice prepared with an absorption method is tenaciously sticky.  Breaking up all of the clumped rice is nearly impossible when dealing with rice prepared in this manner and, as any all-grain brewer can tell you, dough balls result in unconverted starch.  It's a lot easier to break up those rice clumps when dealing with steamed rice because it's far less sticky.

(2) Sake requires a lot of rice.  Cooking said rice via steaming is a lot more efficient in a time and energy sense when looking at it on an industrial scale.

(3) Koji making requires gelatinized starches with a fairly firm structure for the mold to grow on, and steaming rice meets this requirement.  If you try to grow koji on boiled rice, the result will be a puddle of goo after 40 hours.


Yes and yes.  I might have some tables, but I'll have to check my brewing books upstairs to find them.  Right now I have a three-year-old pulling on my arm, so it's all I can do to pound out this quick reply.


This is really two questions.  My sake generally takes about four weeks to fully ferment out, and it does so mostly because the fermentables have run out and the yeast have largely died off from alcohol poisoning.  In this case, it's because the starch has run out, not because the enzymes have denatured.  I could (and sometimes do) add more rice at the end of fermentation to sweeten the sake up.  Adding a pound of rice will increase the specific gravity significantly after three days at 50ºF, so there is definitely still some amylase present.

Higher quality sake comes from temperature control and higher quality rice.  Higher quality rice usually means rice that has been milled down to a greater degree than that used in lower quality sakes.  "Normal" grade sake uses 75% polish rice, while ginjo (premium) grade sake is always made with <60% polish rice.  Daiginjo grade sake is made from 40% polish rice, and is really rare in the US because that method is so wasteful.


Starch gelatinization requires both heat and water.  The dry heat of malt kilning won't do it, therefore barley malt starches are not gelatinized until introduced to hot mash water.  Steamed rice is gelatinized by the water that the rice took on during soaking: the steam heats the water, and the heat and water gelatinize the starch.  Gelatinization is irreversible, just because the rice has cooled doesn't mean the starch returns to its ungelatinized state.

Starch does not dissolve in water, nor does rice starch end up suspended in the water until after the koji takes it apart.  The koji enzymes get suspended in the water, from where they can degrade the gelatinized rice kernels from the outside in. The leftover kasu (rice lees) after fermentation is complete is made up of koji mold, yeast, and that small percentage of the rice kernels that was indigestible to the enzymes - mostly structural proteins with some lipids and dextrins here and there.


Common?  Not that I know of, but Google turns this up: https://www.megazyme.com/Dynamic.aspx?control=CSViewProduct&categoryName=ReagentMixtures&productId=R-CAAR4


This isn't unique to South America or chicha.  The first sakes were called kuchikami no sake which translates to "chewing of the mouth sake."  They were made by chewing cooked rice, acorns, chestnuts, etc. and spitting the mixture into an open tub fermentation vessel.  Likewise, the Chinese had their xiao mi jiu that was made exactly the same way, references to which date all the way back to the 14th century BC.

Your first batch of sake looks pretty decent for a first try.  A little refinement of your method and you could be turning out some first-class homebrewed sake.

Thanks for the info quick response!

I attend an Oktoberfest celebration supplied entirely with homebrewed beer and brandy, and there are a couple people who without fail ask if I have brought some sake each year.  I guess that's a pretty good endorsement.

One of the most favored versions of my sake was one where I put the still-fermenting sake (towards the end of the fermentation) into a bottle and capped it to produce a sparkling drink not unlike a champagne or hard cider.  I was way too paranoid to let it sit very long, but it's a pretty good experiment.

For the record, that batch of sake in the pictures was probably the second one I produced.  I had no sanitizer (so, the fermentation pot was sanitized during the boiling process) and we had to drink it all that weekend because I didn't have a bottle capping device or a good way to sanitize anything.  I was using a free camping thermometer keychain in a plastic bag to figure out the temperatures, and temperature control was achieved by putting the fermenter near a drafty door.

Versions after that took over my dormitory mini fridge, and the resulting temperature controlled environment was quite favorable for the product.