Jim’s Random Notes

At the end of July, I wrote about my attempt to make sake, but then failed to write an update about how the experiment progressed. Everything worked fine for a few days: I kept the mixture at the right temperature, and stirred it twice per day as recommended. It was growing quite a nice batch of white koji mold. But when I checked it on the third or fourth day, I noticed a tinge of green mold. When I checked it again 12 hours later, the green mold was quite evident.

The sake instructions say in several places that if you see mold that’s any color but white or gray, you should throw it all away and start over. Continuing the process with the green mold will likely end up making a drink that doesn’t taste very good, and could make me sick to my stomach. Fortunately, no pathogen would be able to live in the sake, so serious illness from a bad batch isn’t a concern.

In any case, my first attempt at making sake was a failure, and I haven’t gone to the effort of trying it again. When I do, I’ll be sure to update here.

Sake, as you probably know, is commonly referred to as “Japanese rice wine.” The term wine here is a misnomer, as wine is made from fermented fruit, and rice is a grain. The common term for a drink made from fermented grain is beer. Nomenclature aside, I’ve long enjoyed this particular beverage.

Shortly after I started brewing my own beer 10 years ago, I got to thinking about making my own sake. A perusal of the Internet and discussions with my Japanese friends (owners of my favorite sushi bar) dissuaded me from attempting it. The only instructions I could find online at the time made it look like the production of sake was beyond anything I wanted to try, as it involved an endlessly complicated series of adding ingredients, stirring the brew, changing temperature, and other arcane rituals over a 50-day period. That’s way too complicated for a simple minded brewer like me.

Last weekend when I was at the homebrew store getting ingredients for my latest batch of fermented malt beverage (a juniper rye that’ll be ready in a few weeks), I ran across the homebrew sake kit, consisting of four pages of instructions and a small packet of koji-kin–the mold that converts the starches in rice to sugar, making it possible for the yeast to digest and make alcohol. Reading the directions convinced me that even an amateur kitchen hacker like me could make sake, so Friday I picked up five pounds of rice and Saturday I began the process.

Making sake is a little bit more involved than making beer. In particular, not only do I have to boil water, but I also have to steam rice! Since I don’t own a rice steamer (I have one of those cheap rice cookers, but the instructions specifically say to steam cook the rice), I had to cobble together a steamer out of an 8 quart stew pot, two colanders, and a dish towel. I managed not to burn my fingers too badly on the steam, and 90 minutes later I had a small amount of steamed rice to use for the next step.

This is the fun part: you cool the rice and then add a small amount of koji-kin, place the mixture in a warm place (they recommend 86 degrees), and wait. What are we waiting for? Why, for mold, of course! We’re actually trying to grow mold on the rice! It’s like the refrigerator science experiments, but on purpose. Every 12 hours I have to stir the mixture and make sure that the temperature in the ice chest (hey, it works for keeping things warm, too) is correct. Last night I detected the first signs of mold on the rice. This morning almost all of the rice was covered in a nice thick fuzzy white mold. The Japanese term for this molded rice is kome-koji.

So the first step is successful. Tonight or tomorrow I’ll cook up a couple more pounds of rice and mix it with the kome-koji, some water, and yeast. Then it’s back into the ice chest (this time at 68 degrees) where it’ll stay for two weeks, with me stirring it every day. At the end of that time I just need to filter it through a cheesecloth, put it in bottles, and pop it in the fridge.

I can hardly wait.