Monthly Archives: November 2012

I don’t always drink beer. But when I do, it’s usually Pilsner Urquell.

OK, that’s not true. It is usually from one of Japan’s quite passable large brewing companies. But without a doubt, my favorite beer in the world is Pilsner Urquell. And that tells you a lot about my preferences.

Sure, I enjoy Belgians, double-secret-probation stouts, and hopped-to-bejeezus IPAs as well. They can be very interesting. But when no one else is around and I reach for a beer, if left to my own devices, I tend to gravitate toward simple, clean but far from insipid styles like Czech pilsners. Subtle and quaffable. ‘Nuff said.

Pilsner Urquell typifies these qualities. The clean, light backdrop lets the Saaz hops present flavors and aromas that are just present enough, but not overbearing. “Hodo-hodo” is the term in Japanese. Just enough – not too much.

I don’t always drink beer. In fact, I usually drink sake. And my preferences are of the same vein. In other words, I find aged sake, nama-zake, muroka nama genshu (read: the 2×4-upside-the-head of sake) intense yamahai sake, and other less orthodox styles to be fascinating. I never pass on tasting something, no matter how much funk may have overcome it – or be designed into it. They are all interesting, and almost all enjoyable, and all have their time and place.

But when no one else is around, and I want to quaff as I am wont to do, I reach for simple, subtle, hodo-hodo sake – like Koro.

Fortunately, there are many, many sake like Koro out there. So on any given day my options abound! And in truth, I do not drink Koro that often. But I single it out as it is made using Yeast Number Nine. In fact, the folks at Koro created Yeast Number Nine, or at least first isolated it. And they brew their sake to exemplify all that Nine can be.

I have written about Yeast No. 9 fairly recently in this blog; my point today is that Koro is to sake what Pilsner Urquell is to beer. Everything I said about P.U. applies to Koro: simple, subtle, sippable, yet refined and exquisitely balanced. “Separated at birth,” so to speak. And, they were recently sighted together, a very rare occurrence, at a San Francisco establishment.

Neither stayed around very long, as you might imagine, but I did manage to get a rare shot of them together. They tend to hang in different circles, so it might be a while before we see them together again. Except at my house, that is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Announcing the 10th
Sake Professional Course
to be held in Tokyo Japan, January 21 – 25, 2012 

From Monday, January 21, until Friday January 25, 2013, I will hold the 10th Japan-based Sake  Professional Course in Tokyo, with a side trip to the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe region. This is it: the most important thing I do all year, and beyond any doubt the best opportunity on the planet to learn about sake.e” No Sake Stone Remains Left Unturned” is the motto, and “exceed expectations in that” is my goal.  If you want to learn all you need to know about sake to function consummately as a sake professional at work, or if you are simply a sake lover with an insatiable appetite for sake-related knowledge, then this is the course for you.  The course is recognized by the Sake Education Council, and those that complete it will be qualified to take the exam for Certified Sake Specialist, which will be offered on the evening of the last day of the course. Go here for more information. To reserve a spot, send an email to sakeguy@gol.com .

A Snapshot of the Sake Industry
As it is today: Statistics and Politics
In a change of pace from the technical – cultural – historical topics most commonly covered here, let us look a snapshot of the sake-brewing industry in Japan, the stats that surround it, and the politics that suffuse it.

In short, the sake industry in Japan is not exactly thriving. Yet things of recent are at least a smidgeon better than they were. Unless they’re not.

Statistics. We all know the clichés surrounding statistics. They can indeed be confusing.

For example, if I look at the statistics for the sake brewing community published in industry rags, there are just tons of ‘em. We have stats for calendar years (January to December), fiscal years (April to March) and “Brewing Years”, a period unique to the sake world that runs from July 1 to June 30 of the following year. Then there are monthly statistics as compared to the same period last year, and year-to-date stats as well. Some go up, some go down, they often contradict each other, and lead to radically different interpretations.

And all of these exist for each prefecture, and each major region in Japan as well. Furthermore, they are broken down for cheap sake and premium sake too. While each statistic is in and of itself significant to somebody somewhere, taken together they are just overwhelming. What’s a budding analyst to do?

Cutting to the chase, the sake industry overall was in decline for 16 straight years before rising a whopping one percent last year. But the upward trend has seemingly continued into this year, although not every prefecture was up every month. I then read that demand was mysteriously lower this fall, the period when sake usually sells the most. Yet, year to date numbers are still up for 2012 as a whole.

Next, the big talk is how the larger brewers are not raising prices due to price wars on their cheapest sake, sold in 2-liter boxes to the supermarkets. As such, revenues are way, way down. If volume is up but revenues are down, things cannot be said to be improving.

And, since 75% of the market is inexpensive sake, these things cannot be ignored. But the numbers for premium sake (junmai-shu, and the four classes of ginjo-shu, but NOT including honjozo-shu) are up an average of 5% almost without exception. Which is good news… right?

In the end, all we can do is take a bird’s eye view and assess things in the broadest terms, using statistics over the longest term. And things do, from that vantage point, seem to be subtly improving.

Next, a few months ago, the then-State Minister for National Policy, Mr. Motohisa Furukawa, designated sake as Japan’s “National Alcoholic Beverage” and began the “Enjoy Japanese Kokushu (national alcoholic beverage)” initiative.

However, a few weeks ago, Mr. Furukawa was replaced in a cabinet reshuffle. Will his replacement, Mr. Seiji Maehara, pursue the sake-aid initiative with the same requisite alacrity? Hard to say. But also, even if he does not, it seems like at least some momentum for the program has been created. Let us hope that that has some positive effects.

Then there is “Special Clause 87.” This is a clause in the alcohol tax laws that gives a significant tax break (it began as 30 percent but was gradually decreased) to smaller brewers in the industry (read: 90 percent of the brewers!). It was meant to be temporary, to help smaller brewers modernize their equipment and infrastructure. And it has been repeatedly extended but is due to expire at the end of this year.

Now, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers’ Association is appealing to the government to make that permanent, and to return it to its erstwhile 30 percent. If it is not extended again, some say a third or more of the industry could disappear overnight. While it means about five billion yen (about $62.5M US) less revenue for the government, it also helps local economies to come closer to thriving. It is expected to be at least extended, but one never knows until all is said and done. Let us cross our collective fingers!

As an aside, there are currently just under 1300 sake breweries in Japan. However, less than half are reasonably profitable!

On the somewhat brighter side, exports are doing very well, up 14 percent on the year. However (and there is always a “however”) this accounts for only about two percent of all sake produced. Compare this with about 30% of the wine of France and Italy being exported. If the industry is to return from the brink of continued contraction, then domestic consumption has to improve too!

And so, at the end of the day, what does this snapshot of the industry reveal? In an nutshell, it seems that the winds have indeed begun to shift in a more positive direction for sake. But until those winds blow strongly enough to clear out the fog, it may be a bit too early to break out the sparkling sake.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Announcing the 10th
Sake Professional Course
to be held in Tokyo Japan, January 21 – 25, 2012 

From Monday, January 21, until Friday January 25, 2013, I will hold the 10th Japan-based Sake  Professional Course in Tokyo, with a side trip to the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe region. This is it: the most important thing I do all year, and beyond any doubt the best opportunity on the planet to learn about sake.e” No Sake Stone Remains Left Unturned” is the motto, and “exceed expectations in that” is my goal.  If you want to learn all you need to know about sake to function consummately as a sake professional at work, or if you are simply a sake lover with an insatiable appetite for sake-related knowledge, then this is the course for you.  The course is recognized by the Sake Education Council, and those that complete it will be qualified to take the exam for Certified Sake Specialist, which will be offered on the evening of the last day of the course. Go here for more information. To reserve a spot, send an email to sakeguy@gol.com .

“Perhaps a hundred.”

That is the simplest answer to the question, “how many types of sake rice are there?” At any one given time, there are about a hundred.

Why the vague answer? First of all, because we are dealing with sake. It’s just the way it is. But also, I say “perhaps a hundred” because at any one time, there are about a hundred being grown across Japan. Each year, few more sake rice types are created through crossbreeding or spontaneous change, and a few are abandoned by the growing and brewing communities. So, it might be 90, it might be 110, but about a hundred are used each year.

Of those one hundred or so, kind of like grapes used in winemaking, if you know of the top dozen or so, you’re fine. Those dozen will make up the lion’s share of the rice used. The usual suspects: Yamada Nishiki, Omachi, Gohyakumangoku, Miyama Nishiki, Hattan Nishiki – these are the most visible and oft-encountered varieties.

A natural progression along the lines of this topic will eventually meander to, “Do they ever blend these rice varieties?” And the short answer is, “no.”

Basically, a sake will most often be made with one rice and one rice only. Are there exeptions? Of course there are. There are always exceptions in the sake world. But most of the sake out there is made with one and only one rice.

Why? Why not blend? The biggest reason is that different rice types behave differently. The way they behave when being milled, being soaked and steamed, having mold grown upon them, and most importantly the way they dissolved in the moromi (fermentation mash) are different. And if brewers want one thing during sake making, it is some semblance of predictability, a way to know that things are proceeding in the way they hope.

Living things like moromi (fermenting mash) do not always behave like we expect, so the way to counter that is to remove what variables you can. And if you have two different rice types going about their own business with their own idiosyncrasies in the same tank, it is much harder to deal with the other countless variables, and create the sake with an aimed-for level of consistency.

There are other reasons as well, but in the end, more than one rice is not usually used in a given tank. But as stated above, there are exceptions. What of those exceptions? Why and how? In short, very often a better rice is used for the koji, and a lesser rice is used for the kakemai. In other words…

Many readers surely recall that about 25% of all the rice going into a

given batch of sake has a mold (aspergillus oryzae) grown onto it. The resultant moldy rice is called koji, and from it come the enzymes that chop the starch in all the rice into sugar, which can then be fermented by the yeast. The remaining 75% of the rice added to the batch contributes more starch albeit no more enzymes, and is known as kakemai. And it is the koji, and by extension the rice used to make it, that holds much more leverage over the nature of the final sake.

So back to our blending topic, in the rare occasions that we do see more than one rice used in a single batch, the most common example is that a better rice is used for the koji (the more important moldy stuff), and a lesser for the kakemai (the still-important-but- less-so starch-contributing stuff).

Stated conversely and perhaps a bit less appealingly, one way to lower the cost of a sake is to use a lesser rice for the kakemai. And this is when we might see blending.

Note that rice is almost never blended for flavor-related reasons, like grapes might be. Sure, while different rice types do have differing flavor profiles, the rice-to-sake flavor connection is not as tight as the grapes-to-wine flavor connection. So the practice of blending would not yield such pronounced or predictable results. But note, to this principle too, there are some exceptions.

Also, as a quick yet deceivingly important point: note that sake brewers are not obligated to list the name of the rice used on the label. Many do, especially for premium sake, but there is no obligation to do so. But if they do in fact choose to list the name of the rice, they are then obligated to say what percent of the total amount of rice used corresponds to the listed rice. “Yamada Nishiki 100 percent,” for example. Or “Yamada Nishiki 25 percent, Kita Nishiki 75 percent,” might be another commonly seen example.

Finally, this might change. I have heard from more than one brewer that – especially for small, boutique brewers, blends of individual tanks that yield the most enjoyable, unique and premium sake – may be the way of the future. There is nothing preventing this, and I personally think it would be a welcomed move that would improve sake’s appeal and specialness.

Still, at least for now, blending rice types and blending discrete tanks for one-of-a-kind flavor reasons is not at all a common practice in sake brewing. Just beware the exceptions.