Sake

Sake is Japanese traditional brewage, which is mainly made from rice, malted rice and water.

 

Brown rice of brewer’s rice, Yamada-nishiki

Malted rice

 

Characteristics

It is different from wine which is made from grapes that rice doesn’t include sugar which is necessary for alcohol fermentation, so rice needs to convert its starch into sugar and alcohol fermentation by yeast at the same time (multiple parallel fermentation), which is a high brewing technique.

Inside a traditional sake brewery

Fermenting raw unrefined sake

Also, by doing this, it produces unprocessed sake with very high alcohol content (20 percent) as brewage.

However, generally the amount of alcohol of sake on the market is about 15 percent because it was added water and adjusted before shipment. In recent years, sake of low alcohol concentration and sparkling sake have been produced.

 

Classification

Among sake, one made from only rice, malted rice, water and brewing alcohol is defined as special designation sake. Furthermore, depending on whether brewing alcohol is used and the rice-polishing ratio, specific name sake is classified into honjozo, junmaishu, special junmaishu, ginjoshu, junmai ginjoshu, dai-ginjoshu, junmai dai-ginjoshu. Other than above-mentioned ones is ordinary sake.