IN PART I, I talked about the method for making sake.  This time, as promised, I’d like to talk about some of the different types of sake.  Like other types of alcoholic beverages, sake has a classification system and like most classification systems, it is very complicated and very confusing.  I’ll try to cover some of the basics in an attempt to make your sake experience more enjoyable.

Let’s start with the best.   Any sake classified as junmaishu is pure rice sake.  The only ingredients that can be used to make this type of sake are rice, water, and Aspergillus orryzae, the mold used to convert the starch in rice into sugar.  The production of this type of sake has been compared to beer brewed under the regulations governed by the Bavarian Purity Law.  Under this law, beer can only be brewed using water, barley, and hops.  The law was later amended to include yeast.  Sake that is not classified as junmaishu has pure distilled alcohol and other ingredients added to it during production.  One other restriction is that the rice used for junmaishu must be milled to 70%.  That means that 30% of the rice must be polished away.  This is to ensure a certain degree of smoothness in the final product.  Junmaishu is heavier and fuller in flavor than other types of sake, but is much easier to pair with foods than lighter sakes.  This type of sake is probably not for the unadventurous among us.

Honfozo is sake that has a very small amount of pure distilled alcohol added to the final stage of its production.  The amount of alcohol that is added is strictly limited to 120 liters per metric ton of rice used in the brewing process.  Adding alcohol is not done just to increase the yield, but to lighten the flavor as well.  This makes it a little more drinkable because adding alcohol at the precise interval during production tends to bring out the more flavorful and fragrant components of the finished product.  Like jumaishu, honfozo must be made using rice that is milled to 70% of its original size.

Next, I’d like to confuse you by introducing ginjoshu.   This type of sake is made with rice that is milled to at least 60%.  It should be noted that this is only a minimum requirement.  Within this classification, there is a subclass known as diaginjoshu.  The grains of rice in this subclass are milled to at least 50% of its original size.  There are pure rice sakes within this class and subclass as well.  They are known as junmai ginjo and junmai daiginjo respectively.  Tokubesu is a term that literally means special in Japanese.  When you see this term, it refers to the fact that something special has been done to the sake during production.  It may have a higher milling percentage or there may have been a special non-standard method used during the sakes production.  Sometimes, this information is on the label and at other times it is not.

Are you confused yet?  I’m not, so let’s continue.  Namazake is unpasteurized sake.  This type of sake tends to be a lot fresher than pasteurized sake.  Namazake must be kept refrigerated because it can spoil.  Most other sake is pasteurized twice: once before it is brewed and again before it is bottled.  Of course there is an exception called namachozo, which is only pasteurized once just before it is bottled.    Like namazake, namachozo should also be refrigerated after opening to keep it from spoiling.

Sake is sometimes aged in cedar casks called taru.  In the centuries before sake was bottled, all sake was stored this way.  This type of sake takes on some of the flavors of the wood while it’s stored in the cask.  These days, this practice is considered a tribute to the origins of sake.  There are also sakes that are unfiltered.  Most sake is either clear or slightly amber in color.  Sake that is cloudy in appearance is filtered through large-holed or very coarse mesh filters to allow some of the white material left from brewing to remain in the finished product.  This type of sake is called nigorizake.   Before sake is bottled, pure water is added to reduce the alcohol content from 20 percent down to 16 percent.  Sake that doesn’t have water added is called genshu.  This type of sake is rather harsh and is sometimes served on the rocks to reduce its bite.

I know that this is a lot of information.  Unfortunately, it only covers some of the basics.  The best way to find out what you might like is to try some sake yourself.  As an exercise, I sampled my favorite sake at dinner recently to give you a sense of how much fun it can be and to give you some hints on what to look for when choosing sake.  It is helpful to look at the labels on the bottle.  I like cold unfiltered sake.  This is conveniently served in 375 milliliter bottles, so you can actually see the label.  This particular sake is called Sho Chiku Bai.  It’s nigorizake, which means that it’s unfiltered.  The alcohol content is 15% by volume.  That means that pure distilled water was added to it before it was bottled.  On the back label, it says that it’s best served at room temperature, chilled, or on the rocks.  It’s not recommended to be served warm or heated.  It’s sweet with complex flavors, a rich body and mild aroma.  I’m also told to refrigerate it after opening because there are no preservatives added.  The label also says that this particular sake pairs well with spicy foods.  That’s a good thing since I had spicy tuna that night.  I’ve found that I like cold sake as opposed to warm sake.  Warm sake tends to be less flavorful and bitter to me.  Everyone is different, so I suggest trying a few to determine what you like.  Sometimes the label has information about where the sake maker is from, where the rice was grown, and the location of the sake brewery.  This is interesting to me and helpful to the connoisseur.

So there you have it — sake unfiltered, twice.  This simplified description of some of the more commonly used sake terms hardly scratches the surface, but it does give you a spring board from which to begin your own personal sake experience.

I LOVE SUSHI.  That means that I find myself at Japanese style restaurants quite often.  Being the experimental type, I’m always up for trying new things.  Recently, I’ve discovered Sake.  I’d had it in the past, but I wasn’t really impressed by it.  After doing a little research, I found that the reason that I didn’t like it was because I was probably drinking inferior quality sake.  This peaked my curiosity, so I began looking at sake in a different light.  That lead me to discover that there is a lot more to sake then the cute little containers from which it’s served.

As usual, I like to start at the beginning.  Let’s look at what sake is not.  Many people refer to sake as rice wine.  Sake is not wine.  Wine is made from fruit.  Sake is made with rice — a grain.  However, sake is also not beer as some experts claim.  It is made with a grain, like beer, but sake is not carbonated and has a higher alcohol content than beer, so it shouldn’t be classified as beer either.  That leaves us with one conclusion — sake is sake.

Now that we know what it is and is not, how is it made?  As I revealed earlier, sake is made from rice.  The rice used to make sake differs from the rice that is eaten at mealtime.  The most important difference is the concentration of starches in the center.  The starch is surrounded by minerals, fats, and proteins that are detrimental to the sake-making process.  In order to remove these unwanted materials, the rice is milled or polished.  The rice use to be polished using a mortar and pestle which was hardly efficient.  These days, modern polishing machines using the latest hardware and software are used to remove the undesired materials from the rice.  The powder left behind after the polishing is complete is not discarded.  It is used to make live-stock feed, crackers, and pickles.  It’s also used to make low grade alcoholic beverages.

After the polishing step is completed, the rice is washed and soaked.  Washing the rice removes the remaining talc-like powder that remains after the polishing process.  Soaking the rice prepares it for the next step — steaming.  This is done by pumping steam directly into large vats.  After the rice is sufficiently steamed, it is allowed to cool.

Once the rice is cooled, the most delicate and complex phase of sake making takes place.  A type of mold, known as Aspergillus orryzae, is cultivated onto the steamed rice.  This is done because a starch molecule is a long chain that cannot be fermented unless it is broken down into smaller chains.  The mold breaks the long chains down into smaller molecules, actually sugars, that can be processed by yeast cells.  During this forty-to-sixty hour process, regulating temperature is crucial.  Temperature determines how dry, sweet, light, or rich the finished product will be.  The actual process gives off heat, so regulating temperature is vital, yet difficult.  Automation is used for mass-produced sake, but for the higher grade sakes, manual methods are still employed.

At this stage, we still don’t have sake, but we’re getting close.  The rice mixed with mold and yeast are transferred to a large vat where rice and water are added.  This step is repeated at least three times and is done over a four day period.  After the fourth day, the rice, water, and yeast are left to ferment from eighteen to thirty-two days.  Here, another crucial decision must be made — when should the fermentation process be stopped?  Allowing fermentation to continue too long usually leads to sake with odd undesirable flavors.

Next, the mixture is pressed through mesh in order to separate the sake from the solid remains for the fermented rice.  This use to be done by placing cotton bags full of the fermented rice into wooden boxes.  Then the bags are pressed, pushing the sake through holes in the bottom of the boxes.  These days, sake is pressed using modern machinery.  Another method that is used for some higher grade sakes is to fill bags with fermented rice and then suspending them so that the sake drips from the bags.  The yields from this process are much lower, but the sake that is produced using this method are much higher in quality.  At this point, the sake is allowed to sit for about ten days to allow residual chemical reactions to complete and sediments to settle.  Then it is filtered.  This removes unwanted flavor elements as well as sakes natural amber color.  In some cases, high grade sakes are not filtered.  These sakes are said to be more interesting and appealing.

The last step is pasteurization.  This allows sake to be stored without refrigeration.  Interestingly, it was discovered that heating sake briefly deactivated the enzymes and killed any remaining bacteria in the sake long before Louis Pasteur was credited with the technique.

So, there you have it — sake unfiltered.  This brief description of how sake is made hardly does justice to the complex set of processes involved in its production.  It does, however, give you an idea of how it is done.  Next, I’d like to look at some of the different types of sake and maybe even get into the descriptions of actual sake that I’ve sampled.