John Gauntner - The Saké Handbook

S ak though long shrouded in misconception, veiled by language, and isolated by island geography is one of the most refined, interesting, and enjoyable beverages in the world. In its finer manifestations, it is as fascinating in flavor, fragrance, and history as any wine, spirit, or beer. But before getting into that, it is important to address the question of just what sak is, and how it is made.

Chances are, if you are reading this book, you have a good understanding of how some alcoholic beverages are produced. When it comes to sak, it is often labeled as a wine, due to the lack of carbonation and relatively high alcohol content (15 to 20 percent), or as a beer, since it is made with grain (rice) and not fruit. In actuality, sak making differs enough from both the wine- and beer-making processes to justify a category all its own.

A quick look at how these three beverages are made should clear things up a bit.

Wine is a fermented beverage. Fermentation is the process by which yeast converts sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide, which, in the case of wine, is allowed to escape. Sugars are already present in the grape juice, and these sugars are ready for use by the yeast cells as food and nutrients. Although this simple and short explanation does not do justice to the age-old art of wine making, it will serve our purposes here.

Beer calls for another step in the process. There is no fermentable sugar in barley grains, only long starch molecules. These must first be broken down into smaller sugar molecules, some of which will ferment and some that will add to the flavor in other ways, like overt or subtle sweetness. To accomplish this, several other steps are necessary. First, the barley must be malted. The grains are moistened and warmed to start the germination process. This creates enzymes that patiently wait in the grain until they are called upon to break starch molecules down into sugar molecules later in the process. Next, the barley grains are cracked open to allow water in, then soaked in water at specific temperatures for specific periods of time. This activates the enzymes, which cut and chop the starch chains into sugar molecules. Creating sugar molecules from starch molecules is known as saccharification. The steeping time and temperatures of this malt-and-water mash determine just how the starch molecules will break down into fermentable sugar that will be available as food for the yeast, and nonfermentable sugar that will otherwise bolster the flavor. Only after these sugars are created is yeast added. Fermentation can then proceed.

Sak is also made from a grain: rice. However, the enzymes that break down the starch molecules into fermentable sugars in sak making must come from outside the rice grains, which already have been milled to remove the outer portions, and therefore cannot be malted.

These enzymes are provided by a mold called kji-kin , or Aspergillus oryzae , that is deliberately cultivated onto steamed rice. This provides the enzymes that will perform the required saccharification, just as malting does in beer production.

Steamed rice onto which this kji-kin has been propagated is mixed with straight steamed rice, water, and yeast in the same tank. The key point here is that saccharification and fermentation by the yeast take place at the same time in the same tank. In this, sak is unique in the world of alcoholic beverages. This process is known as heik fukuhakk multiple parallel fermentation.

The overview above is greatly simplified because the process is impossibly complex. It is very difficult to convey in words what sak-brewing craftsmen spend a lifetime learning. So much is done by experience and intuition that simply explaining the process does not do justice to the craft.

But we must try. A fairly detailed description of the process follows, where well jump right into an explanation of each step.

Keep in mind that each one of these steps is intimately related to the others. Each step affects everything down the line to a great degree, and in a sense, each and every step is the most important step.

All rice is, when harvested, brown rice. Even when the outer husk is removed, the kernel itself is of a brownish color. This outer part of the grain must be milled away before the rice is usable for brewing sak.

Good sak rice differs from rice eaten at meals in many ways. An important difference is the concentration of starches in the center of the grain of proper sak rice. Surrounding that starchy center are fats, proteins, and minerals that are generally detrimental to the sak-brewing process. For this reason, the rice is milled to remove this outer portion, effectively removing the undesirables from the equation, while leaving the starches neatly behind.

Over the course of history, various methods have been used to mill, or polish rice for sak brewing. Originally, rice was polished using a mortar-and-pestle friction method in which dry brown rice in a small tub was mixed with a special stick until the outer part of the grain was sufficiently removed. Hardly the most efficient of methods, this soon yielded to var ious types of machines, such as waterwheel mills powered by rivers, as well as a machine used to remove the skin from coffee beans. Modern sak-polishing machines, known as seimaiki , have evolved into slick (if expensive) computer-controlled machines that will polish the desired percentage away in the specified amount of time.

This is one of the few steps of the sak-brewing process in which it can be said that modern technology is vastly superior to traditional methods. In fact, it was with the development of a vertical rice-polishing machine in 1933 that sak quality began to vastly improve.

These machines work by allowing the rice to fall down between two spinning grinding stones, then be taken back to the top by a conveyor belt. This continues for hours until the desired amount has been gently polished away. As the rice moves through the machine, the powdered part that is ground off is continuously vacuumed away. The weight of the rice that remains in the vessel is measured and compared to the original weight before the process began. In this way, the degree of polishing can be monitored closely.

This powder, by the way, is called nuka , and is used in livestock feed and many foods, among them Japanese-style pickles, traditional Japanese crackers and confectionaries, and also distilled for use in low-budget alcoholic beverages.

For table rice, about 10 percent has been ground away, leaving the white rice with which we are familiar. Sak rice is polished so that, generally, somewhere between 80 percent (for very cheap sak) and 35 percent (for very expensive sak) of the grain remains. This percent of the remaining grain size is known as the seimaibuai (pronounced say-my-boo-eye). This is an important term to remember (see the more detailed explanation later).

This polishing process is not as simple a step as it might seem. It must be done gently for several reasons. As the rice grains are polished, the friction between them naturally generates heat. This heat affects the ability of the rice to absorb water, which will affect each subsequent step. Another concern is maintaining the physical structure of the rice grains. Broken or cracked grains do not ferment as well as unbroken grains. Therefore the integral shape of the rice should be maintained as long as possible throughout fermentation.

After the rice has been polished to the designated degree, it is washed ( senmai ) to remove the nuka, the talc-like powder still clinging to it from the polishing process. It is then soaked in water ( shinseki ) to prepare it for the steaming process.