About Sake: Can We Make Good Sake At Home?

In connection to my previous post introducing a sake event on Feb. 10th, let's talk more about Japanese Sake. 

As for the question in the title "can we make good sake at home?", it is actually out of question since brewing sake at home is illegal in Japan. However in terms of technical possibility, can we brew good sake at home? 

I would say it is not impossible but very difficult. Actually making sake is different from making wine although both are using the same technique of alcoholic fermentation. Grapes, the ingredient of wine, are originally sweet so that yeasts can work on the fermentation immediately, but the situation is different for sake. Since rice grains don't contain enough sugar initialy, in order to make sake, rice grains need to be steamed and incubated with Koji-bacteria. After this process enough sugar is produced and ready for the alcoholic fermentation, so making sake requires two steps of biological reactions. 

In addition, sake ingredients must be treated under sterilized condition during the two processes. That's why most Sake breweries are hanging a sacred rope of Japanese Shinto at the entrance as shown in the lower right hand side photo. Places for sake brewing must be very clean.

Moreover, though it sounds simple when we hear the ingredients of sake are basically water and rice, actually the ingredient rice for sake is not the usual rice we eat. Since the rice needs to get bacteria to increase sugar contents, special kinds of rice are used for sake, and it is called "Saka-Mai (sake rice)". The "Saka-Mai" grains have a white core in the center with a spongy structure containing only starch. Please compare the two photos of rice grains in the lower left hand side. They are both unpolished rice grains, and the "sake rice" has a whitish core in the center though "Usual Rice" looks just semi-transparent brown. Apparently the "sake rice" kinds are not tasty when cooked to make a usual meal.

Thus making sake is not an easy task for unprofessional people. Even in old times when bottling were not available, people didn't try to make sake at home and they went out to buy sake at sake breweries. How did they bring sake back home? This would appear an eco-friendly way nowadays: they rented big ceramic containers from the breweries to bring sake home and kept it until they finish the sake. So old-days ceramic sake bottles always had the name of the sake breweries to show the lender as shown in the lower center photo.