Sugidama Sake Podcast
Sugidama Sake Podcast
Ep 03: A Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Sake Universe Part 2
While sake has a milder taste compared to wine, it's diversity is astounding. You not only have sake grades or styles which have their own flavour profiles but also sake types, which add another dimension to the sake universe. Nigori, namazake, koshu, all these words mean variations in brewing technics adding unique characteristics to sake. If you know what these names mean, you can better choose sake for your meal or an occasion. The long names of sake, which sounded like spells from old fairy tales, will suddenly acquire meaning: try Tokubetsu Junmai Muroka Nama or Nigori Junmai Genshu for example and see if you can decipher them after listening to this episode.
Episode's Content:
- Nigori
- Muroka
- Namazake
- Genshu
- Taruzake
- Koshu
- Sparkling sake
- Sake of the Episode: “Arabashiri” First Run Nama Ginjo
Kampai!
Sake mentioned:
Tamagawa Yamahai Junmai Muroka Nama Genshu “Red Label”
World Sake Imports UK
VSF Wine
Sorakami
Arabashiri First Run Junmai Ginjo Nama Genshu
Miyasaka Brewery
World Sake Imports UK
The Whisky Exchange
Bottle Apostol
Music used:
Wirklich Wichtig (CB 27) by Checkie Brown https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Checkie_Brown_1005/hey/Wirklich_Wichtig_CB_27
Just Arround the World (Kielokaz ID 362) by KieLoKaz
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/KieLoKaz/Free_Ganymed/Just_Arround_the_World_Kielokaz_ID_362
Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Episode 03: A hitch-hiker's guide to the sake universe Part 2
0:22
Greeting
Hey, everyone, this is me, Alex again with the third episode of Sugidama Podcast, the podcast about Japanese sake, the drink which looks like spirit, has ABV of wine and is made more like beer but still is so unique that I can’t stop talking about it. We talked last time about the sake classification, grades or styles. Now let’s talk about types of sake.
0:50
Major sake types
From the previous episode you know that grades or styles of sake are defined by two main criteria: whether alcohol was added into sake at the end of the brewing process and the extent to which the rice was polished, called a rice polishing ratio. The types of sake on the other hand depend on various brewing techniques. Sake types could be of any style or grade and vice versa. For example, nigori could be honjozo, junmai or junmai daiginjo. So it’s the second dimension of the sake universe.
1:32
Nigorizake
And we will start with nigori, which I mentioned in the first episode and which is apparently a drink of choice in many sushi bars in the United States. I think nigori is the best-known sake type outside Japan for two reasons: a catchy name, easy to remember for many non-Japanese drinkers and a very recognisable look. Nigori or nigorizake means cloudy sake, where some unfermented rice solids were left in the drink. So it looks milky. “Wait a minute,” some of you might say. Does it mean unrefined sake? And you mentioned unrefined sake called doburoku two episodes back and said that to call a drink nihonshu, it should be refined.”
Well, it’s true. And nigori has definitely come from doburoku. But it’s not all simple. Doburoku was brewed In Japan for centuries by farmers and their families. However, it was banned in the Meiji period in the second half of the 19th century. Why? My guess is the government couldn’t tax it. However, the tradition has never died. Nowadays, doburoku is brewed in small quantities under special licences in small Japanese villages.
Nigori, however, is different. For centuries since the modern sake was created, and I would call modern the sake made with a help of koji, all sake were nigori. There are few interesting stories about how clear sake was invented. One story takes place in 17th century Itami, a sake capital of Hyogo prefecture, the city which calls itself a birthplace of modern sake. An employee of one of the breweries got fired. It happens. Don’t know why in that case, but the guy was pretty crossed with the brewery owner or the master brewer. So he sneaked to the brewery and dropped a load of powdered coal or ashes into a tank of freshly made white sake.
The brewery workers saw it the next morning and were devastated. The product of their hard labour looked like being completely destroyed. In a desperate attempt to salvage at least something they decided to filter the sake. And behold, the carbon dragged down the rice particles and when the brewers pressed the mixture through a mesh they got beautiful clear sake! Nobody knows if the story is true but it might have happened.
However, there are much earlier records of a monk in Nara prefecture, who was responsible for brewing sake at his monastery and who was selling rice lees, the by-product of sake pressing will talk about in a minute meaning that he was already pressing the sake then. In any case, clear sake became a norm probably around 1600.
But the story of modern nigori began in the 1960s at one of the oldest sake breweries in Kyoto, Masuda Tokubee Shoten, established in 1675 by the Masuda family and a maker of a famous Tsuki no Katsura brand of sake. The owner that time, whose name was also Masuda Tokubee, the 13th generation scion of the Masuda family after reading through a collection of 100-year old books found at the brewery decided to bring back cloudy sake which was common for centuries in Japan.
He successfully lobbied the government to allow some leeway in the rules of filtering sake and produced the first nigori called Tsuki no Katsura Daigokujo Nakagumi Nigorizake.
So how is nigori sake made? Remember, we were talking about the sake brewing process. The fermenting sake mash called moromi is left for a few weeks to let koji and yeast produce alcohol. When the fermentation process is over, moromi is pressed. So what is pressing? It actually looks more like filtering, when the mash is pressed through a net to get rid of the rice particles, which didn’t dissolve during the fermentation.
There are several methods to do it. The oldest way is to put the moromi into cotton bags and load the bags into a big box, called fune (a boat in Japanese). First, the sake will run on itself from the bags squeezed under their own weight, then a lid is put on top and it squeezes the sake further out of the bags. Another traditional method is to suspend the cotton bags with moromi in the air so sake will drip without any pressure, just by gravity to a special 18-litre bottle. It’s called fukuro-tsuri (translated simply as hanging cotton bags), and only a small amount of sake is pressed this way so it’s rare and expensive.
But nowadays, most of the sake is pressed with special machines. They look like an accordion, a musical instrument, but much bigger. The leftover of the pressing, called sakekasu or sake lees, is widely used in the food and cosmetic industries. This is what the Nara monk was selling.
So it took the Masuda Tokubee brewery several months of working closely with the Ministry of Taxation, which oversees alcohol production in Japan to create nigori, which met the legal requirements of nihonshu. According to John Gauntner’s excellent book, Sake Confidential, nigori was originally made with a cage-like device with 2 millimetres holes in its walls, which was inserted into the tank with freshly brewed sake. The sake leaked through the holes into the centre of the device was drawn and bottled.
Other breweries came up with their own methods of making nigori. However, now nigori is usually made using a much simpler way. The sake is pressed as usual and then some of sake kasu is added back to the pressed sake and voila, you’ve got your nigori. Apparently, the definition of sake has changed a bit and now permits to add not only water but sake kasu as well. It makes sense as it is still part of the original moromi.
Nigori sake ranges from thin slightly milky sake to very thick more like liqueur texture sake. I have once tried nigori sake so thick that it looked like porridge and asked the president of the brewery how people drink it. He recommended using it as a topping for ice cream of other desserts or as a sauce with foie gras, believe it or not.
Normally nigori is creamier and sweeter than regular sake. It’s got a very prominent viscous texture, very mouthful. But you can find dry nigori or very fine, called usu-nigori as well. Usually, nigori isn’t made from highly polished rice because it can’t be as refined as regular sake. So what’s the point. However, I think that I see more and more junmai ginjo and junmai daiginjo nigori like Dassai or Keigetsu I was talking about in the first episode.
Light and more refined nigori is great with sushi as the sweetness of nigori pleasantly contrasts with the saltiness of fish while more robust and thicker will be great with spicy sweeter food like curry, teriyaki or BBQ.
9:39
Muroka
After sake is pressed it is usually filtered unless it’s nigori. There is a bit of confusion between pressing and filtering as technically both processes are called filtering in English, but have completely different names in Japanese. That’s why the initial process is usually called pressing as in winemaking.
Activated carbon is added to the clear sake and then the mixture is run through a filter. Filtering removes the natural yellowish colour of the sake as well as some unwanted flavours. Breweries started using activated carbon to filter sake around after the war. However, filtering especially if it’s aggressive, strips the sake of some of its character. It’s really a balancing act: if you filter too much, sake will become a bit blunt, if too little it might have some flavours that the brewer does not want.
The filtering is called roka. After years of filtering some breweries decided not to filter some of its sake to produce some more natural rustic taste. This sake is called muroka, where mu means not, meaning not filtered or unfiltered. Muroka is usually a bit rougher than standard sake but has a deeper taste and quite a complex character. It’s not very common. I have come across very few muroka in the UK, but I guess they are not very widespread in Japan either. Usually, muroka is an additional technique used to make sake taste deeper and more complex, so you will usually see something like “muroka nama” or “muroka genshu” or a part of an even longer sake description.
11:27
Namazake
Talking about muroka nama, let’s talk about nama, unpasteurised sake. After sake is filtered, it’s usually pasteurised by heating it up to 65 degrees for 30 minutes, and left in a tank afterwards for some time. It could be weeks, months or even years. It’s usually pasteurised the second time after bottling. Sake is pasteurised because its relatively low alcohol content makes the drink vulnerable to unwanted microorganisms, which can spoil the sake.
Japanese brewers leant to heat up sake to deactivate enzymes and kill these pesky bacteria in the 17th century, way before Louis Pasteur invented pasteurisation. Pretty cool, isn’t it? The unpasteurised sake is called nama or namazake, which means raw or fresh sake. Before the invention of refrigerator trucks, breweries could sell nama sake only from their premises straight after the sake brewing season was over because namazake is a very unstable sake. You just couldn’t guarantee the quality after it was transported.
But with the emergence of commercial refrigerators, it became more common. The first commercial nama as I was told was Funaguchi Kikusui Ichiban Shibori, which is sold in sealed aluminium cans that protect it from sunlight and the air. I like this sake, it’s delicate but still funky.
But most namazake are normally bottled sake usually sold at the end of the sake brewing season in April-May because even in a fridge namazake can’t survive for long without changing its taste. However, there are nama sake like for example Tamagawa by Philip Harper, which could be kept at room temperature without any problem. But Philip Harper is a unique brewer, so it’s quite unusual.
Nama sake is very different from regular sake. It’s wild and youthful, zappy and fresh. It’s got a lot of untamed notes and aromas. It’s fun to drink but you have to be careful as it can get spoilt easily.
Another cool thing about nama is that because there are two pasteurisations, it creates three combinations. The first is just nama or namazake we’ve just talked about. The second is the sake pasteurised only once after brewing not after bottling. It’s called namachozo and is close to namazake, but a bit less wild. Still, you have to keep it in a fridge.
The third variation is namazume, the sake pasteurised only once after bottling but not after brewing. Because it is kept in a tank unpasteurised for a few months, it develops a more complex taste and aroma. This type of sake is also called Hiyaoroshi. It’s a seasonal sake released by breweries in autumn as the first sake of the season. I have mentioned it a couple of times on my blog. This seasonal sake, also called aki-agari, is more of a marketing tool though. As these names are not regulated, the sake might be unpasteurised at all and these terms nowadays refer mostly to the time of the release rather than a brewing technique used. Still, as I understand, most of them are namazume.
15:06
Genshu
I have mentioned muroka genshu before, so let’s talk quickly about genshu. Genshu is easy and means undiluted sake. It usually has a slightly higher ABV between 18% and 20% but and there’s always but in sake, it might be lower. The lower ABV could be achieved through various brewing techniques like fermenting at a lower temperature, using a special yeast or simply aborting the fermentation process when the desired ABV is reached.
Why is sake diluted in the first place? In Japan in general, people prefer mild things. Normally Japanese do not like extremes. Also as sake is usually drunk with food, the high alcohol content will overshadow the taste of the meal, which is supposed to shine. I personally never noticed any considerable difference between genshu and regular sake. I guess, brewers just want to create a certain taste profile and use this technique to achieve a punchier slightly rougher taste. Genshu is great with hearty food.
16:19
Taruzake
Now let’s talk about some other types of sake. Sometimes you might see the word taruzake in the name of a sake. It means that the sake was stored or aged for a quick period of time in a cedar barrel. Taru means barrel or cask. A bit of history here. In old times all sake were stored in wooden barrels. However, now sake is kept in steel tanks to avoid any foreign aromas.
Taruzake usually smells a bit of wood. Sometimes it’s nice but sometimes it’s a bit too much. Actually, you can make taruzake from any regular sake. Just put it in wooden vessels, preferably made of Japanese cedar, and keep it there for a few days. It will absorb the aroma. Even drinking from sake cups made of cedar adds a bit of wooden smell to sake.
17:17
Koshu
Another interesting type of sake is koshu, aged sake. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the general advice is to drink sake within 1 year of its production. After 2-3 years sake usually starts changing its taste. It’s not a bad thing, but just it becomes something that the brewer did not intend to create. Historically, sake wasn’t aged. One of the key reasons was economic. Originally and for many centuries sake was often aged. However, in the 19th century, Japan changed the way it was taxing sake production collecting the due taxes after sake was pressed not sold. So for a brewery was very important to sell sake as soon as possible.
The law was changed back after the war, but it took some time for breweries to start ageing for their sake. However, aged sake still takes a very small share of the market. There are a few reasons for that but we will talk about them in a future episode.
Koshu usually has a darker amber colour and very different taste compared to regular sake. It’s got honey, dried fruit, sherry and wood in taste and aroma. Some people love it, some hate it. Still, it depends on the sake. I tried a fair share of koshu and I loved some of them but was not too keen on others. So it’s up to personal preferences.
Another thing about koshu. Generally, the name refers to a sake aged for any reason, not necessarily deliberately. So in Japanese, it could mean a good or bad thing. Like a sake left in a cupboard and past its due date. There is a special name for the sake, aged on purpose, but I won’t bother you with it for now. In English, koshu is usually refers to a properly aged sake.
19:14
Sparkling sake
As I have mentioned before, sparkling sake is a new thing for Japan. Many sake drinkers still consider it as a gimmick, not a proper sake. I disagree. Sparkling sake is a great drink. It’s usually has a lower ABV, closer to champagne or other fizzy wines and is very pleasant on a hot day or as an aperitif at a party.
There are two ways of making sparkling sake. An easy and cheaper method is to infused sake with carbon dioxide to make it sparkling. The second is a second fermentation in the bottle or so-called champagne method when active yeast is added after bottling.
20:02
Rundown
So here you are, most of the sake types explained. Just a quick round down of the episode. Sake types are related to brewing techniques, usually altering or omission of certain steps in brewing regular sake.
By a brewing stage, you have:
Nigori – pressing is only partially done, so it’s cloudy, sweeter and creamier
Muroka – no filtering, natural yellowish colour and deeper taste
Nama or namazake – unpasteurised or pasteurised only once: wilder and funkier sake
Genshu – undiluted sake, punchier taste
Taruzake – aged a bit in cedar barrel, nice woody smell
Koshu – aged sake, completely different taste profile closer to sherry
Sparkling sake, well, fizzy sake.
All the types can be combined with each other and can be of any grade or style of sake.
Oh, I’ll give one example of a sake with a very long name: Tamagawa Yamahai Junmai Muroka Nama Genshu “Red Label”, an excellent sake by the first non-Japanese sake master brewer, Philip Harper. So, Tamagawa is the name of the brewery and Red Label is the name of the sake. But the bit between is the description of the sake. Basically, translating it into a more comprehensible language, it’s an unfiltered, undiluted and unpasteurised sake made from only rice, water and fermenting cultures using an old brewing method, yamahai. Pretty cool, isn’t it? And we will talk about brewing methods next time.
21:56
Sake of the Episode
Now sake of the episode. And I want to tell you about “Arabashiri” First Run Nama Ginjo Sake from the famous Masumi brewery. Actually, the brewery is called Miyasaka and it was founded in… 1662 in the town of Suwa in Nagano Prefecture.
The story of founding the brewery is very captivating. It starts in the 16th century, at the end of the Sengoku Jidai or the Warring States period in Japan. During that time a powerful and ruthless warlord and a clan leader, Oda Nobunaga was fighting for dominance in Japan. One of his famous rivals was Takeda Shingen. Their rivalry was a basis for the amazing Akira Kurosawa's movie Kagemusha.
The masters of the Miyasake family, the founding family of the Miyasake brewery, were a Suwa clan, who clashed with Takeda Shingen and Oda Nobunaga. I guess the family did not have much taste for violence so they gave up their swords and switch to… sake making, yay! So good for us, because Masumi sake is terrific. Some historical figures like Matsudaira Tadateru, sixth son of the first Tokugawa Shogun and Otaka Gengo, one of Japan’s famous 47 ronin warriors, were both fans of the sake from Miyasaka brewery.
The brewery started using the name Masumi probably in the 19th century. Masumi, which means transparency or truth, is the name of the 8th-century bronze mirror kept at the Suwa Taisha Shinto shrine. So a lot of history here. The brewery went into decline in the mid 19th century. It was so bad, that family members had to take side jobs, such as selling tea, to make ends meet. Miyasaka brewery’s turnaround story itself bears a full episode so we leave it here just to mention that now Masumi is one of the most famous brands of sake and definitely one of my favourites.
The brewery is also known for Keith Norum, who I guess is the head of international marketing there and who is a great person, eloquent, knowledgeable, gentle, a really amazing man. Very well-known and respected in the world of sake. I met him last year here in London when he was presenting delicious Masumi sake.
Well, after this lengthy introduction, let's talk about Arabashiri First Run Junmai Ginjo Nama Sake. You can test what you have learnt from the previous 25 minutes of the episode here. Arabashiri is a seasonal sake. It appears in spring when the brewing season is finished. The reason why it’s seasonal is that it’s a nama sake or namazake as you can see from the name. Namazake is unpasteurised sake, so it has a relatively short shelf life, a few months maximum.
The beauty of nama sake is its freshness and wildness. It hasn’t settled, it’s young and adventurous, it’s still alive! You can taste and feel all that in Masumi Arabashiri. Now this Arabashiri part. It’s not a name, it’s again a certain type of sake. Earlier in the episode, I have mentioned a traditional pressing method when moromi, is loaded into cotton bags and put into a big box called fune.
First, the sake will run on itself from the bags squeezed under its own weight. This is called the first run or rough run, or arabashiri in Japanese. Arabashiri sake is slightly rough but in a good way. So the combination of arabashiri and nama gives you a very lively and energetic sake with a lot of interesting aromas. As the sake is rough and a bit wild, the same sake could have a slightly different flavour profile year on year, which is usually not the case with normal sake, where consistency is prized and valued.
The last bit in the name, ginjo, you can now decipher yourself: premium sake with a bit of distilled alcohol added before pressing.
26:28
Ending
So that’s it for today. I’ll be back with more episodes. In the meantime, if you never tried sake, buy it and try. If you can’t find Arabashiri because it’s seasonal, try a different Masumi sake, they all are terrific, or any combination of a style and type to test yourself! Go to Sugidama Blog (which is surprise-surprise, on sugidama.co.uk) and explore the Tasting Notes section. You can always find there a nice sake to try! Please, send me an email or leave a comment about your experience.
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Thanks a lot for listening!
Kampai!