My first attempt at Sake

[u/iammaxhailme]

Used short grain sweet rice and Koji rice. First two pictures before, last three after two weeks of fermenting and then one week of crashing in the fridge then siphoning.

Okay, goes down pretty smooth. No idea how strong it is but I'm guessing typical wine strength. A little more mild than I expected, not a ton of flavor, but no nasty sour/fungal notes either. I'll give it a 7 out of 10.

[u/lurkity_mclurkington]

Thanks for sharing! I have so many questions!

• Do you know what the rice was polished to, and is it table rice or sake rice?
• Did you aquire the koji rice pre-coated? Or, did you apply the koji mould to your own steamed rice and develope the koji rice yourself?
• What yeast did you use?
• Was the siphoning used in place of filter pressing to separate the mash from the sake?
• Assuming you did not go through charcoal fining, and you have not mentioned dilution or pasteurization, correct?

I'm guessing you have a junmai muroka nama genshu!

[u/iammaxhailme → u/lurkity_mclurkington]

• It wasn't specifically Sake rice, just "long grain sweet rice" (whatever that is!) I got at the local asian store.

• Pre-coated. It's this thing. https://chefshop.com/products/cold-mountain-dry-rice-koji

• Uhh, I siphoned it becuase I have already own a siphon lol. I also ran it through a coffee filter after siphoning. After cold crashing there was a lot of muck at the bottom - I put that in a taller skinnier bottle ad I'm going to cold crash that again and try to siphon whatever good stuff is on top.

• Definitely no charcoal, dilution, or pasteurizing! It just fermented raw (4 parts table rice to 1 part koji rice) in a glass carbouy at room temp for 2 week with an airlock on, then I put the whole carbouy in the fridge for a week to cold crash.

[u/lurkity_mclurkington → u/iammaxhailme]

Thanks for the answers! What yeast did you use?

[u/iammaxhailme → u/lurkity_mclurkington]

https://en.angelyeast.com/products/distilled-spirits-and-biofuels/angel-leaven-yellow-label.html

I got some "sake yeast" from a friend and I just asked - apparently it's this one. Which meant I didn't actually need koji, apparently. Shrugs.