Way back in April of this year I was in London as a judge for the International Wine Challenge’s Sake Competition. On the morning of the third straight day of tasting sake, it was down to a few sake and a few judges. We were assessing whether or not the sake that had made the cut thus far were worthy of a gold, silver or bronze medal, or whether they were to be relegated back to the quagmire of mediocrity.

Our tasting panel of four included Mr. Satoshi Kimijima, a prominent and passionate retailer and more from Yokohama. He is outspoken to say the least, but he has the experience, knowledge, and tasting prowess to back that up. He tastes pretty much constantly and travels around Japan doing so more than anyone I know. And he plays in a rock and roll band when not tasting. In fact, sometimes I worry about him; but I digress.

The four of us were assessing a sake, and we did not come to an immediate agreement. At least one was concerned that it was too light, with not enough presence or umami, to justify a shiny medal.

Kimijima-san, who was for giving the medal, shook his head tersely and said, “douse wase da kara.” The best translation of this would be, “It is, after all, an early-harvest rice.”

He did not go any further. And as soon as he said that, it all became clear to me. Of course! It should get that medal.

At this point, he deemed it necessary to clarify the reference. So he continued. “Because this sake was obviously made with an early-harvest rice, not a late-harvest rice, we should not expect much more out of it. This is about as rich or deep a profile as we can expect, and because it was a deliberate choice on the part of the brewer, we should acknowledge that and give it a medal.”

First of all, bear in mind this was a blind tasting. None of us knew what the sake before us was. Yet this guy was able to blindly taste the sake and tell us just when the bloody rice was harvested? Can he really do that?

Yes. He can. Like I said, he has tons of experience. How could he know? Well, he couldn’t have, not for sure anyway. But by tasting it and noting the lightness, subdued umami, resonance and depth, he intuitively knew. It could have been a chapter in the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell.

Showering heaps of adulation on Kimijima-san is not really the point here. Rice varieties and their effect on sake is the point.

There are literally hundreds of varieties of rice used in sake brewing. Some are proper sake rice, others are not. Each one is ready for harvest at a different time. Some are harvested as early as August, others not until November. While it is not a clear delineation, early harvest varieties are referred to as wase (pronounced wa-seh) and late harvest types are called okute (oku-teh). This nomenclature applies to both sake rice and table rice, by the way.

Most, but not all, sake rice tends to be okute; this includes Yamada Nishiki, Omachi and a few more well-known types. Gohyakumangoku is a typical example of a sake rice that is wase. And there are of course many rice varieties that are neither early nor late harvest, but rather somewhere in the middle.

More relevantly, early harvest rice tends to lead to lighter flavors, and late-harvest rice yields sake with much more umami, breadth, flavor, and resonance. This is not to say that okute rice types are always and unequivocally better than wase types. Perish the thought! Nothing is ever that simple in the sake world.

Rice is a challenging topic. It is the main ingredient of sake, but the connection between rice and sake flavors is not nearly as tight as that between grapes and wine. Still, great rice leads to great sake. Some say the better the rice, the more the toji (brewmaster) can get it to behave during the brewing process and create the aimed-for flavor profile. While different varieties of rice, including wase and okute amongst those, can lead to identifiable flavor profiles and styles, a dozen different brewers can take the same rice, milled to the same degree, and make a dozen completely different styles of sake. Go figure.

But there are generalizations with which we can work. Yamada Nishiki (which is okute) tends to lead to billowing, broad, resonant, umami laden sake. Omachi (which is also okute) tends to give rise to higher sweetness and acidity, and a decidedly herbal touch. Gohyakumangoku (which is wase) often yields light, airy, delicate flavor profiles. Remember that one is not better than the other. It is simply a choice on the part of the brewer. And we are free to have our preferences, but any sake can be more enjoyable if we taste it knowing it was the result of a chain of conscious decisions by the brewer.

The name of the sake rice used in a given brew is often written on the bottle, but not always. However, no sake label includes information regarding wase or okute. So it may take a while to learn to discern them, but the learning curve is a fun one.

What it is, and how much it’s used

If you have gotten this far – getting to this blog – then you surely know that sake is made from rice. So let’s start with that base assumption. No other fermentable material is used: no sugar, no grains. But much changes in the sake world, which is not always so proactive in presenting information to begin with. So let’s look at a handful of fun and interesting observations about rice and how it is used in the sake world.

First of all, there is sake rice and then there is everything else, rice-wise. Sake rice is known as shuzo koteki-mai, or less officially, sakamai. Often, regular rice is referred to as table rice. Shuzo Koteki-mai is a legal definition, i.e. there are officially registered sake rice varieties; not just any rice that aspires to it can in fact be a sake rice. There are physical differences.

Just about four percent of all rice grown in Japan is sake rice. And this is split across about one hundred varieties. About. It goes up and down a bit each year as new ones are tried and old ones fall off the list. And, much like grapes, if you know about a dozen, you are amongst most cognoscenti. But in truth, knowing about half that number will serve you well in eighty percent of premium sake situations you encounter.

But here is the thing: most sake is actually not made from proper sake rice.

Looking at the breakdown of the sake market, about 35 percent is considered premium, which means it qualifies for a special designation. What special designations would those be? Honjozo, junmai-shu, and the four types of ginjo. The remaining 65 percent does not qualify for those terms, and that 65 percent is considered just regular sake. Note, much of it is very enjoyable! ‘Tis not to be dissed, at least not outright. But the point here is that this 65 percent of all sake produced is not made with sake rice, but rather run-of-the-mill table rice.

However, almost all premium sake is made using sake rice. Doing so leads to much better sake with much less effort. Note, however, that this is not a law or even a rule. It is not at all obligatory to use sake rice for any sake, not even lofty daiginjo.

Why would a brewer not do so? Simple: cost. Sake rice is two to three times more expensive than normal rice, especially after some special rice-pricing breaks the distribution system allows sake brewers to utilize. So cost is huge. Another reason could be availability. In a low-yield year, there just might not be enough good sake rice to go around.

But for all intents and purposes, premium sake is in fact made using proper sake rice, whereas cheap sake generally is not.

As mentioned above, sake rice and table rice are physically different. Sake rice is larger: the grains themselves and the plants as well. Sake rice has more starch, and less fat and protein. Starch becomes sugar; sugar becomes alcohol. So more starch is good. You can eat sake rice, but that extra fat and protein make table rice taste better.

Sake rice also has those desirable starches physically located in the center of the grains, with fat and protein around that, near the surface. This makes it easy to mill away the outside of the grain and take that fat and protein away, leaving starch behind.

It is harder to grow, or at least to grow well. It calls for more effort and specific climactic conditions. And all these factors combine to make sake rice more expensive as well.

As mentioned above, there are about 100 varieties of sake rice registered. About. The most commonly encountered – and widely considered the best – is Yamada Nishiki. Other names to learn and remember are Gohyakumangoku, Miyama Nishiki, Omachi, and Hattan Nishiki. There are many more, but this small sampling will be found in much of the sake you enjoy. Still, you will encounter dozens of others if you pay attention to such things.

Rarely are they blended. Most often a given sake is made with one rice only. There are, of course, exceptions. One such exception is that sometimes Yamada Nishiki is used for the koji (the 20 percent of all the rice in a given batch that has enzyme-producing mold propagated onto it) since koji exerts the most leverage on the nature of the sake. A less expensive sake rice can be used for the remaining 80 percent, onto which the mold is not grown.

This method walks that fine line of quality and cost control, and walks it nicely. But again, it is not so commonly done. You could say that those that do it are going “against the grain.” (Sorry.)

An important concept related to sake and rice is that the choice of rice does not affect the final flavor and nature of the sake in quite the same way that the choice of grape might affect the nature and flavors of a wine. Yes, the choice of rice is very important. And yes, different rice varieties do lead to flavor profiles that can be associated with them – in general. But two toji (master brewers) can take the same rice, milled to the same degree, and make totally different sake in every way.

How? By creating the koji differently, or through the choice of yeast, or fermentation temperature or time in the tank. There are dozens of options at every step of the brewing process, and those choices hugely affect the nature of the sake. More so than the choice of rice? Perhaps; perhaps not. It depends on who you ask.

But using proper sake rice – and carefully selecting the right one for the job – is still a massively leveraging and important aspect of making great sake. Why? Because good sake rice allows a toji to express his or her skills through the sake. Proper sake rice lets the toji do his or her best work. It is predictable in how it behaves, and just which one is best depends on the style of sake, the region, and the experience of those that will handle it.

There is much, much more to be said about sake rice. There are trends, economics, politics, developments, history, culture and climate changes. Nothing ever sits still in the sake world.

But we can. We can sit still and enjoy the sake in front of us. That’s all we really need to do: enjoy sake. However, should it interest us, we can also begin to pay attention and take notes about rice types and the lore that surrounds each. It certainly enhances sake enjoyment.

Sake Professional Course in San Francisco, April 3 ~ 5, 2017

From Monday, April 3 until Wednesday April 5, I will hold the first Sake Professional Course of 2017 at Bentley Reserve in San Francisco. If interested, for more information please send me an email at sakeguy@gol.com. “No sake stone remains left unturned” in this very comprehensive course. Learn more here.

In the April issue of  blog, archived here, I wrote comprehensively and effusively about Yamada Nishiki, the current king of sake rice varieties. It is the most widely grown, and – amongst the 100 or so sake rice varieties in use today – it most easily lets brewers make the best sake they can.

Note the choice of wording. That diction was chosen to represent what most brewers and sake professionals try to convey. Yamada Nishiki itself does not necessarily lead to great sake; however, in the hands of a good toji, it is much easier to make great sake using that rice than any other. While certainly there are many opinions, most would agree on this, methinks.

What that really implies is, in the end, the skill, intention and techniques employed by a brewer contribute more to the final nature of a sake than the choice of rice. But the rice is also an extremely important factor, as that allows the brewer to work his or her craft to the utmost.

Curiously, many a toji (master brewer) will insist that it is his or her main role is to create a good environment for the koji and yeast so as to allow the sake to brew itself, and then basically get out of the way. But even through that interpretation, great rice like Yamada Nishiki makes that job easier.

As much adulation as I lavished upon it a few months ago, there is more to say that is historically quite interesting. Let us look at that here.

Before launching into its history and roots, let’s quickly review why it is significantly easier to make good sake using Yamada Nishiki. The grains are large, which means more potential for fermentable starch inside. The starches are concentrated in a ball of starch in the middle, and well centered, meaning it is easy to mill the outer fat and protein away, revealing only the starch. And, that protein and fat are at low levels to begin with, lowering the potential for off-flavors.

And again: it is favored by brewers less for how it ends up tasting than for how it behaves and how it can be handled in the fermenting mash. For example, it dissolves at an ideal, manageable speed. If the rice breaks down and dissolves and ferments too quickly, it can lead to a lot of off-flavors. But if it does not dissolve fast enough, the flavor has no character, or breadth or depth. Neither extreme is good, and Yamada Nishiki walks that fine line.

Looking back, there are a number of events and political changes that brought about the phenomenon of Yamada Nishiki.

The first big change was in 1874, six years after the Meiji Restoration, when the government changed the way rice growers were taxed. Until that time, rice farmers paid taxes with rice itself; a certain chunk of all that one grew was shipped off to the government for their use.

But after that change, tax was due in money based on the amount of land they owned. This means that all of a sudden rice was a commodity, a product to be sold on the marketplace that would lead to revenue to pay such taxes and cover living expenses and savings. As such, the more one grew the more one made, and farmers were all of a sudden very motivated to maximize yields and to do that by growing high-yield rice varieties. Sake rice varieties are decidedly not that kind of rice. So, even though demand for rice was increasing, the production of sake rice with its low yields began do prodigiously drop.

Then, in 1893, the government undertook research to identify and develop strains of rice more conducive to modern times and cultivation methods.

They formed a national agricultural research center and gathered all the rice types from all the localities they could, selected from amongst them a lineup that was particularly good, and got going with the research. The next year, Hyogo Prefecture started their own version of that research center that aligned their work with that of the national government. They then started looking for varieties that would be suitable to be selected as main ones to be used in a wider expansion that would benefit Hyogo’s agricultural economy.

Still, as mentioned above, sake rice production was on the decline. Compared to the easy to sell table rice, sake rice was hard to grow, it is quite tall and therefore falls over easily, and yields per field are much lower. It therefore costs farmers more to grow it, and there is less of a market for it. So in order to secure the high quality sake rice they needed, the brewers of Nada (modern day Kobe and Nishinomiya cities in the same prefecture, Hyogo, where the largest breweries have been for 250 years) created a contractual system with the farmers in the region (then known as the Harima region, now just a part of Hyogo) to secure a stable supply at a price that made it worth it to the farming community.

From about 1897, farmers and Nada brewers worked back and forth and hammered out these agreements that led to an system called muramai seido, which still exists to some degree today. It identified the best rice fields in Harima and set relative prices on rice from the surrounding fields as well. Once this was established, rice producing towns and villages or Harima began to sell their rice as a group, and the big brewers of Nada would purchase rice from those villages. This close cooperation helped the sake brewers to train and raise great rice farmers nearby. Note, though, that this all began even before Yamada Nishiki was created, and the rice from the Harima region was not as valued as it would later become.

Next, in 1912, the first rice varieties suitable for sake brewing that would promoted by the government as suitable for both large-scale cultivation and good for sake brewing (i.e. “sake rice”) were selected: Yamadaho and Wataribune. (Remember those names!)

Then in 1923, they manually crossbred Yamadaho and a version of Wataribune called Tankan Wataribune (“short-stalk” Wataribune) to create one strain that would be used for research. It was given the unglamorous name of Yama-watari 50-7 during that research stage. It did in fact get selected for as a rice the government would promote, and was in 1932 certified as a bona fide new rice type. Next it went into feasibility testing to assess its suitability to large scale production. Obviously, it passed, and was finally christened Yamada Nishiki in 1936.

However, it was not immediately recognized for its greatness and languished for a few years.

This is because the Nada brewers strongly preferred to use rice from what was then called the Hokusetsu region, which is now the northern part of neighboring Osaka Prefecture. They insisted it was softer and that it was easy to make koji using it. It was also considered to be fragrant and encouraged vigorous fermentation.

While this also may have been true, the truth is that they were very accustomed to the rice they had been using, and they were concerned that if they tried a new rice, it might be hard to get it to behave as they wanted to. It was easier to stick with what they knew. The risk of sake spoiling during fermentation, rendering the entire tank wasted, was higher in those days, and throwing another variable into the mix only increased the possibility of that happening.

Yamada Nishiki’s big break, so to speak, came in 1942, when the war necessitated rationing of rice. The rules surrounding this dictated that the brewers were not allowed to bring in rice from other prefectures, and had to use rice grown in their own prefecture. This seems natural considering the circumstances of the day.

So that meant that Nada brewers (remember, Nada is in Hyogo Prefecture, the next prefecture westward from Osaka) had to use Hyogo rice, not Osaka rice. And this meant that the brewers had no choice but to try this new Yamada Nishiki stuff from Hyogo.

Once they began to use it, though, they be like, “whoa, this stuff is good!” Using it, they found it was even easier to make good sake, and so turned their attention toward using increasingly more Yamada Nishiki. While it can be expensive, and while there are other great rice types, Hyogo-grown Yamada is still most brewers’ choice for at least their most extravagant sake.It has gradually grown in usage, but has always remained comparatively expensive. Although it is now the most widely grown sake rice, but it only took this lead in the mid-90s. Currently in Hyogo alone there are 5500 people growing it.

One reason it remains so good is that Hyogo growers take very good care of the DNA, so to speak. If one grows any rice and just haphazardly uses last year’s seeds to grow this year’s rice, pollen et al from other rice types will naturally get mixed in and the sake will lose its purity and its erstwhile main characteristics will become diluted. So at the sake rice research center in Hyoto, each and every seedling is inspected one at a time to be sure it has has maintained the original and necessary characteristics of Yamada Nishiki.

These are then grown to yield more seeds, which are then grown to yield even more seeds, that are then distributed to seed cooperatives, who then distribute the seeds to the farmers to use to grow the rice. So count ‘em: that is only three generations from purity each year, no seeds are any more than three generations from individually inspected and assessed purity. Dig that.

Of the myriad ways to enjoy sake, of course appreciating its flavors and aromas and its relaxing benefits are the most accessible. But the behind-the-scenes history, anecdotes and conversation fodder equally enjoyable. Well; almost.

Remember the roots of the rice the next time you enjoy Yamada Nishiki in a cup.

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

Sake Professional Course in Japan

From Tuesday, January 10 through Saturday, January 14, I will hold the annual Japan-based running of the Sake Professional Course in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. For more information and/or to make a reservation, please send me an email to that purport.

More information about the course, the schedule, the syllabus and the fun is available here, with a downloadable pdf there as well, and testimonials from past graduates can be perused here as well. The three-day courses wrap up with Sake Education Council supported testing for the Certified Sake Professional (CSP) certification. If you are interested in making a reservation for a future course, or if you have any questions not answered via the link above, by all means please feel free to contact me.

Rice is not, as most readers know, simply rice. Good sake is made from proper sake rice, and cheaper sake is made from much less expensive rice. In fact, most run of the mill average sake is made with rice bought from the local agricultural co-op, and often the purchaser knows nothing about it other than it came from within that prefecture.

Among the 100 or so types (a few are added and subtracted each year) of officially designated sakamai, or sake rice, there are many differences that make each type more suited or less suited to sake brewing: size of the grains, starch content and location within the grain (if it is not centered, it cannot be milled properly!), and physical hardness are but a few of those considerations.

And even within one sakamai type, there are greater and lesser manifestations. Let’s look at some of these differences, as well as how they are measured and conveyed.

When the rice arrives at the sake brewery, it comes as genmai (unmilled, brown rice) in 30 kilogram brown paper bags.

Stamped on each bag will be the name of the strain of rice, its prefecture of origin, and the inspected grade, which indicates which of the five classes of rice for which it passed inspection. The five grades are Tokujo (the best), Tokuto (the 2^nd best), Itto, Nitto and Santo, in descending order. (The bag on the right shows Tokujo grade Yamada Nishiki rice, by the way, from a Special A designated field in Hyogo; this is as good as it gets!)

The differences between the various grades are characterized by things like size. And while the size of grains is indeed important, other things matter too, such as a lack of broken grains, and a lack of aomai, or grains that have not ripened and remain green. Size, by the way, is measured by the weight of 1000 grains.

Note, that just a bag of rice says tokujo does not mean that every grain in that bag is of tokujo class. There will always be a certain amount of smaller grains, cracked grains, and un-ripened grains as well. This is evidence of the fact that, within any one field, there will be greater and lesser grains, so to speak.

There is much, much more to the rice world than most of us are aware of, and the methods of quality control and selection for sake rice can be interesting.

 More in common than you might think!

Soon after beginning to study sake, one comes to realize there are many varieties of sake

rice. And while not all sake is made from “official” sake rice (and it is a legal definition – as compared to “regular” rice for eating), most premium sake is indeed brewed from one of the hundred-odd strains of sakamai, or sake rice.

Note this does not mean that without proper sake rice one cannot make good sake. It is, actually, quite possible to make decent sake with run of the mill regular rice. But it is just much, much easier to make good sake from proper sake rice. And in truth, to make the best sake, you must use proper sake rice.

Much like grapes used in wine, while there are many varieties of sake rice out there, if you know about a dozen, you will know most of the rice varieties you will encounter. And rice varieties do contribute greatly to the flavors of the final sake, not surprisingly. However, the connection between rice and final sake is not nearly as tight as the connection between grape varieties and the final flavors in a wine.

This is, methinks, an important point. Sake rice leads to sake flavors; yes. However, as important as good rice is, it is but half the battle. Just how the rice is handled – milled, soaked, steamed, propagated with mold, coaxed via temperature et al along a particular fermentation path – will have a huge amount of say in determining the nature of the final sake.

As a very simple example, the same Yamada Nishiki rice milled to the same 40%, for example, might go to two brewers. One would let it absorb more water, thereby helping it dissolve more quickly in the fermenting mash, thereby leading to a richer, broader, heavier flavor than the other. Or, one might have more koji mold propagated upon it, thereby dosing it with more sugar-creating enzymes, thereby enabling the yeast to go on a feeding frenzy, leading to a significantly drier sake. So the process itself contributes so much to the final sake. It is about much more than just the rice, although that is important as well.

I often liken it to coffee beans, and making coffee.

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

Coffee is my second favorite liquid on the planet, with pure water beinga d-i-s-t-a-n-t third. Kind of the yang to sake’s yin in my daily life. And it recently struck me that good coffee beans are to good coffee as good sake rice is to good sake.

In other words, to make good coffee, you need to start with good beans. These will come from one of a handful of good growing regions. And each of the major varieties of coffee beans will have its own main characteristics: some are more acidic than others, some are fuller and richer. But the bean alone does not the coffee make!

We can start with the same coffee beans and end up with a very wide range of coffees. For example, beans can be lightly roasted, more thoroughly roasted, or mercilessly charred. This will lead to light coffee, richer coffee, or charred-flavor coffee.

On top of that, one can use an espresso maker, or drip press the coffee.

And even among those two extremes – and everything in between – there are little choices and decisions, like the water temperature (too hot, or just right?) or one-holed or three-holed cones. There is no one right decision; rather, each choice will lead to a different taste in spite of having started with the same beans. Even before that comes into play, bear in mind the grind: a find grind and a coarse grind will affect things massively as well.

So, you have the roast, the grind, the method, the machine, the water temperature, the apparatus, and the “touch” of the person making it all. You can start with good beans, but you have to do everything else right too. And what is right is not set in stone either. Very often, what one “master” considers anathema is precisely what makes another’s coffee so good. Go figure!

With good tools and methods, you can make a decent cup of coffee with mediocre beans. However, it is much, much easier to make good coffee if you start with good beans. And, to make the best coffee, you must start with good beans. And therein lies the connection between good sake and sake rice.

Restating: It is possible to make decent sake with run of the mill regular rice. But it is just much, much easier to make good sake from proper sake rice. And in truth, to make the best sake, you must use proper sake rice.

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

Sake rice’s tenuous connection to its soulmate, the coffee bean, notwithstanding, the above might naturally give rise to the question, with all the manhandling of the rice, and the variations used in brewing methods, it it possible to assign “typical” flavor profiles to rice types, and is it possible to identify them in blind tastings like wine grapes?

The answer is yes, it is possible, but not with great accuracy, and it does take a bit of experience. I recall a tasting put on by the Japan Agriculture Co-Op of Okayama Prefecture, wherein we tasted about 100 Yamada Nishiki-based sake, followed by about 100 Omachi-based sake, from all over Japan. What they had in common was that the Yamada Nishiki and Omachi used were both grown in Okayama. After tasting one hundred sake made from one rice, you got a feel for that rice. Then moving on to the other rice was like entering a totally different universe.

However, if I had just one or two of each, and was asked “which is the Omachi, and which is the Yamada?,” it perhaps might have been more difficult.

So yes, the rice-to-sake connection is there; but no, it is not as tight as the grapes-to-wine connection. And yes, the rice is massively important in making great sake. But no, it is not the only factor involved. As is usually the case in sake-related topics, it is delightfully vague.

Sake is, as we all know, brewed from rice. Rice, in turn, is a very focused expression of soil, climate, and each year’s weather conditions such as sunshine, rain and typhoons. Every growing season is different, and there are good years for sake rice and bad years for sake rice.

In most breweries, the toji (master brewer) will begin the brewing season with lower grades of sake. One goal in doing that is to be able to feel out the rice, to test it, to see how easily (or not) it will absorb water and, ultimately, dissolve into components while fermenting in the mash. The more easily it dissolves, the more flavor it will impart to the resulting sake. The less easily it dissolves, the lighter and more insipid the resulting sake will be. Finding the middle ground is key.

One great thing about sake brewing is that brewers can do a handful of things that can help the rice behave the way they want it to behave. In other words, they can make up for a bad year of rice and help the sake taste great again this year, at least to a certain degree. And naturally it helps tremendously if they know what is coming, and how to expect to have to deal with it.

 
Wouldn’t it be great if someone analyzed it for them? Sure, brewers might know the weather of their immediate vicinity. But since rice can be brought in from other regions, wouldn’t it be great if the brewers could learn what to expect from each season’s rice, each of the main varieties of rice, from each region of Japan? Then they could use such data to determine how to tweak their brewing methods to adapt to each year’s and each region’s rice.

OK: Done.

The National Research Institute of Brewing is a research organization that has over its 110-year history been under the wing of multiple branches of the government of Japan, and also semi-privatized. Much could be written about this significant organization and what they do, and you can learn for yourself at www.nrib.go.jp if you like. But one thing they do each October is prepare a report for the brewing industry called the “Expected Suitability of This Year’s Rice to the Brewing Process.” （清酒原料米の酒造適性予測)

The short, four-page report talk firstly about its aim, which is explained above. It then runs down the average temperature in Japan for each ten day period in the two months of the growing season after the ears of rice appear, August and September, which are the key months related to the maturing of the grains. It briefly compares these to historical averages.

Next, the report runs down the eight major regions from northeast to southwest, commenting on the solubility of the rice for each, compared to both an average year, and to the previous year in particular

Then, it waxes technical. It explains in excruciating detail how higher averages temperatures lead to longer Amylopectin (one of the two components of starch) chains. This means that the starches will dissolve very easily in the moromi (fermenting mash), which means more flavorful sake if controlled, but big-assed sloppy flavors if not reined in. It also accordingly means that resulting sake will be more susceptible to aging the adverse effects of aging.

Conversely, lower temperatures lead to shorter Amylopectin chains, meaning the starches will not dissolve very quickly or easily in the moromi, leading to lighter sake if done right, but tighter, shallower and less flavorful sake if its idiosyncrasies are not compensated for properly. Colder temperatures also lead to sake that will mature much more slowly, being reticent to give it up to the passage of time.

Curiously, one would think that the average reader of this report would not need to bone up on this stuff, so they must have had the intention of broadening the appeal of sake when they determined the content.

Summer in Japan this year was again hot, just about as hot as last year was. The warmer temperatures of the past decade and then some have continued. Furthermore, the islands of Japan were pummeled with typhoons this fall, meaning lots and lots of rain. Factoring in all that and more, the prognosis was that this year’s rice will be not dissolve very well; not too bad, mind you. Just not so well.

What does this mean in more concrete terms? It means that the brewers will need to do things like help the rice absorb a bit more water than usual so that it dissolves a bit more easily. This will ensure that sufficient flavor presents itself.

However, fear not! All is not lost! So much is involved in the complex sake-brewing process that a skillful brewer can often make up for a bad rice crop with effort, experience and intuition. In fact, what brewers strive for year after year is consistency in their main products out on the market. Naturally, there are inevitable changes each year, but a truly skillful toji will minimize these.

That’s the cool thing about sake: in making it, we can meet nature half-way. What will most noticeably suffer are the highest grades of sake, contest sake especially. But for most of us, what we will be drinking will be as good as it usually is; but we should not forget that added burden that will be on rice farmers and brewers to make it that way. Sake, like wine, remains an integral expression of nature.

It’s complicated…

Last time, we looked at the idiosyncratic rice distribution system in Japan, and how that affects the 1.4% of all rice that sake rice represents, with the main points being that brewers themselves almost never own the fields, and that the majority of sake rice, by far, is distributed by powerful agricultural cooperatives, a system that has its attendant strengths and weaknesses.

As rice distribution in Japan is deeply rooted in all that Japan is, a comprehensive study would extend beyond the interest and attention span of even the most ardent readers and sake fans. So let us keep close to how it relates to sake in what follows here.

In truth, there is a lack of clarity related to all things rice-distribution in Japan, much of which affects the sake world. For example, while the rice for top grades of sake is fairly easy to order and trace, remember that most sake is not premium, and the rice that goes into that lion’s share of sake on the market – while cheaper than top-grade sake rice – is a driving element in the sake industry. In other word, most of the sake on the market is made of this somewhat lesser, significantly less expensive rice. So when the supply of that is threatened, the effect on the market is huge.

And that is what we have happening right now. There is a system of supplying rice within the current distribution system in which brewers can specify a minimum of information about the rice as a request, but what they get may be different. But it won’t matter, at the level at which they are using it. The system refers to such rice as “kakomai,” but let us call it the “cheap rice system” here, abbreviated CRS.

So, what is purchased through the CRS is somehow subsidized by local prefectural governments. And the rice itself can be a blend of stuff that was left over from higher than expected yields or lower than expected orders, or perhaps some of the less-carefully grown stuff. And all mixed together as well. But it is very inexpensive, comparatively speaking.

But in truth, as mentioned above, it won’t really matters as it will be used for cheaper sake, and it will do fine. Having said this, though, remember that cheaper sake is 65 percent of the market.

Who can grow what, and how much of it, is strictly controlled by the government so as to avoid having excess stock and thereby adversely affecting market stability. However, there are some gaps and loopholes and options open to the farmers. There is no obligation to grow rice that would be used in the CRS system. And over the past couple of years we have seen more farmers move away from rice that could be used for sake brewing and growing vastly inferior rice that can be used for animal feed.

Why? Because government subsidies for fertilizers and insecticides and the like are higher for fields allotted to the animal-feed rice. On top of that, fields on which such animal-feed rice are grown do count toward the allotment of land upon which a farmer is permitted to grow rice. So, they get more subsidies, and can grow as much as they want. No wonder they choose that over rice that could go through the CRS and be used for sake.

Why would animal-feed rice be favored? Because that limits the need to import it, helping to offset trade imbalances, as well as assisting local agricultural. Good reasons to be sure! But the effects on sake could be big. How big? Hm. Once source has said that only 30 percent of the orders can be filled with inexpensive CRS rice, and that the cost of said rice would increase by as much as 25 percent. That will undoubtedly affect the brewing industry in both profitability (to the degree that it actually exists!) and consumer prices too. Apparently the situation is fairly grave.

Note too that not absolutely everyone is affected. A few large and stable breweries have the economies of scale in buying power to negotiate cheap enough prices for high enough volumes where they do not need such rice. So they are immune. And some premium brewers do not mess with that rice either, using only contract-grown rice or top-grade sake rice. But most of the 1350 breweries remaining will be affected.

Also, the impending developments related to the multinational economic agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, may drastically affect things as well by opening up Japan to very cheap rice imports – if, that is, Japan chooses to fully participate. When I asked one brewer about it, he insisted it was a very good thing, and that Japan’s rice system desparately needed to change, and that despite the short term pain in would be good for Japan in the long run. However, became so passionate (read: irate) that I could not longer understand his rant, fading off into a local accent as he did. So the details were lost on me but I got the gist.

Next, remember, brewers have to buy all that rice up front. Which means, every autumn, many have to significantly strain their finances just to start the season, the return on which they will not begin to see for a year at least. Securing and backing the requisite support in a fragile economy for a contracting industry is another big issue.

There are more vagaries that the rice growing cartel, er, communities employ, and often the sake brewers themselves do not fully understand. I remember one brewer from Shiga, near Kyoto, telling me that they were finally able to grow Yamada Nishiki in Shiga. “You mean, you could not grow it here before? But I know I have had Shiga sake made with Shiga-grown Yamada Nishiki,” I asked inquisitively.

“Well,” he stammered, “you can, but you cannot put it on the label – until now.”

“Oh?,” I continued. “Who controls that?” I asked out of sincere interest. Rice growing is controlled by one industry, sake labeling by another. I sensed a disconnect. And so did he.

He thought a second, and said, “Wow. I don’t know. That’s just what the farmers told me. Let me check on that and get back to you!”

Yet another brewer from Yamagata told me that he had been told that one could not put the name of the rice on the label unless the seeds came from an official source, i.e. the cooperative. Huh? Sez who? And enforced by who? Is this the law, I asked?

“It’s, uh, vague,” said my Yamagata brewer friend. “And the frustrating thing is that the folks distributing the rice keep it that way. Those that know keep it vague! I could explore it further, and challenge it, but I have other higher priorities. So we just deal with it,” he acquiesced.

Sake is unique in many ways. For better or for worse, the extremely high cost of the raw material is one of those ways. And the byzantine distribution system – while it serves some purpose indeed – is yet another. Let your understanding of this add to your appreciation of all that goes into the glass of sake before you!

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

Dallas, Texas, August 8~10, 2013

The next Sake Professional Course will take place August 8-10, in conjunction with TEXSOM 2013 at the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas in Irving, Texas

More about the seminar, its content and day-to-day schedule, can be found here:
http://www.sake-world.com/html/spc_texsom_2013.html

The Sake Professional Course, with Sake Education Council-recognized Certified Sake Professional certification testing, is by far the most intensive, immersing, comprehensive sake educational program in existence. The three-day seminar leaves “no sake stone unturned.”

The tuition for the course is $825. Feel free to contact me directly at sakeguy@gol.com with any questions about the course, or to make a reservation.

It’s complicated…

One of the more idiosyncratic aspects of the sake world is the distribution system via which brewers get their rice. It certainly is not simple, and at one time it probably made sense. Certainly there are many that benefit from it – both brewers and farmers – and others for whom it serves them less. And, of course, there are those that have the means and cleverness to work around it if need be. Let’s look at it a bit more closely.

The place to begin is to realize that sake brewers do not grow their own rice. Fundamentally speaking, since just after World War II, companies, i.e. business entities are not permitted to grow rice. All rice is grown and sold by individual farmers. Business entities are basically not allowed to be involved. Things have changed a little bit recently and there are some exceptions, but basically sake brewers cannot own their own rice fields, or grow their own rice.

Why is this the case? It is to prevent the reconsolidation of farmland. Long ago, owners of huge tracts of land controlled things, rather than the peasants living on it and growing on it. For reasons beyond my comprehension (although my sense of common decency says it’s not cool) this is not a stable situation economically. Regardless of the reasoning, this keeps rice plots spread out and small, with the average being about 1.65 acres, compared to farms typically 160 times that in the US.

Rare shot of rice when flowering (Psst! It’s Yamada Nishiki!)

This lead to the creation of agricultural cooperatives, about which more could be written than the scope of this newsletter can hope to contain. But in short, local farmers have their rice distributed to the market through local agricultural co-ops, from whom they are often obligated to buy fertilizers, insecticides and more. But these co-ops then negotiate prices and secure livelihood for the local farmers and others. They are also necessarily competitive organizations, and do their best to promote the brands of rice that grow best in their region.

And for many brewers, this is the easiest way to go. They order a certain rice grown in a certain region, and almost always, they will get it. They cannot specify just who the grower is, just the variety, inspected grade, and region. And while sometimes shortages do occur, almost always they get what they ordered.

Then, a scant 15 years ago or so, laws changed that allowed brewers to bypass the co-ops and form contracts with farmers to buy rice directly. This is great for a number of reasons. They can “see the faces” of the producers, dictate a bit more about how it is grown if they want to, and see it at every step of its evolution. However, there are downsides as well to going with single producers via contract.

For example, what if there is a bad year, and harvested amounts are low? When one buys from an agricultural co-op that draws from many growers, it is easy to cover those shortages. Sure, somebody somewhere gets stiffed, but it’s a game of supply and demand, and who orders first.

But if they buy from one farmer drawing from just a few fields, a bad year means less rice, which must then be bought later, elsewhere, and may be neither the quality level or price that was initially sought.

And what if there is a bumper crop? While that sounds great, it might not be. Again, buying from a co-op is no problem. “You ordered this much, you get this much. The surplus is our problem.” But if you buy it via contract on a field, if they have bumper crop, you are stuck with paying for and then dealing with all that excess rice that grew on that field. After all, the grower reserved it all for you. And while you might be tempted to think, “Well, just make more sake with it!” it is not that simple practically, economically or even legally.

Of course, there are ways to work around both of the above issues; the point here is simply to show the pros and cons of each, and how big an issue procuring rice is for sake brewers.

Only about 1.4% of all rice grown in Japan is sake rice. Obviously, it is not a cash crop, nor the priority for most farmers, or the co-ops. Wide plains are reserved for more lucrative-to-grow table rice, and often sake rice gets relegated to the harder-to-till parcels. Not always, mind you; but often.

Also, a few years back, it became legal for brewers themselves (actually, some business entities) to grow rice. One would think, “Hey, now this changes everything, duddn’t it!” But in reality, very few have begun to do that. A few have, and surely others welcome the idea in concept. But gearing up to farm when you do not have the people, experience and tools is major hassle, and on top of that, the relationships with those that can do it well are in place. Let it ride.

But in truth there are many patterns. One brewer I know well maintains about 25 fields around his region, small parcels of land that are owned by folks too old to work them anymore. My brewer friend rents them for very little, and it is win-win as he gets to grow his rice his way, and he keeps the land arable too, which the owners like.

“It has its attendant issues,” he lamented hesitatingly. “Often, those old folks can be a pain in the ass.”

Why then, I suggested, do you not just buy the land from them? The terseness of the wave of his hand with which he dismissed that suggestion clearly conveyed its ridiculousness.

“Land prices are high; profit margins on rice and sake are miniscule. It would take me well over a full century to reap a return on my investment!”

So while many brewers might the romantic notion of growing their own sake rice, it is often not a practical option.

As rice distribution really is a murky and vague topic, let us look at it again in next month’s newsletter, when we will see how government allocations of land, and the subsidies related to that, can significantly affect rice supplies. That, and more murky rules. For now, suffice it to say that procuring rice for sake in Japan is significantly different from procuring grapes for wine, anywhere.

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

Sake Professional Course Sake Pro Course NYC 2013

Kikizake-joko – Official Tasting Glasses

Dallas, Texas, August 8~10, 2013

The next Sake Professional Course will take place August 8-10, in conjunction with TEXSOM 2013 at the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas in Irving, Texas

More about the seminar, its content and day-to-day schedule, can be found here.

The Sake Professional Course, with Sake Education Council-recognized Certified Sake Professional certification testing, is by far the most intensive, immersing, comprehensive sake educational program in existence. The three-day seminar leaves “no sake stone unturned.”

The tuition for the course is $825. Feel free to contact me directly at sakeguy@gol.com with any questions about the course, or to make a reservation.

“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.