SMS 2 - Sake Across the Seas

Intro — Why “Sake Across the Seas” (and why it matters)

0:00 · I joked that I was tragically diagnosed with the sake brewing disease, which is Once you get into this, it's very hard to walk away from it.

0:08 · It's we've already talked a bit about like the American gall and like our own sort of manifest destiny and how we're going to make things our way.

0:15 · But I but just like, here's my Bodai Moto.

0:18 · And we're like, you started with a Bodai Moto?

0:22 · Like, A, I'm not drinking that.

0:25 · US.

0:26 · But to be honest, that's not a thing most people know.

0:28 · You know it before a lot of the American breweries.

0:30 · Yeah, there you go.

0:31 · Pro tip.

0:32 · you have to make what people will buy, whether or not it's the sake that you as a brewer want to drink.

0:36 · is tragic and hard.

0:38 · he's in the brewery, I was at, never prepared, just sort of like a wire wrapped around it and it was dangerous.

0:46 · That's right.

0:46 · Emergency Amazake Welcome back to the channel everyone.

0:53 · Nick Lowery of Kitano Sake here with our second Sake Master session.

0:58 · It has been a bit longer than I would have liked since our first video.

1:03 · If you know me, you know I live in Minneapolis and you are probably aware that things here at the beginning of 2026 were turbulent.

1:13 · They're not back to normal, but I have gotten enough bandwidth back that I can get back into recording and editing these videos.

1:21 · Our second session today is also going to be a bit of a format departure.

1:26 · So instead of the one-on-one interview, we are going to be sitting in on a live seminar.

1:31 · Back in the tail end of February, I and Lucas Smolik of the Sake Brewers Guild and Origami Sake traveled out to Portland, Oregon to pour sake at Puyu Fest.

1:43 · And while we were there, we gave a presentation on a topic that Lucas and I have talked about privately for years.

1:51 · What do we think as brewers is the difference between US sake and Japanese made sake?

1:59 · We tasted through a dozen American sake and used those as a case study for that discussion.

2:05 · Whether those differences come down to ingredients, equipment, know-how, or just plain American gall, as we called it, that willingness to experiment.

2:15 · Well, here in the Great Experiment, things can get pretty weird, for better or worse.

2:22 · I should also note that these sake were graciously provided with funds from the Sake Brewers Association of North America.

2:30 · And SBANA's continued support of both this series and events like this presentation are integral in making advanced trade level sake content like this possible.

2:41 · a heartfelt thank you goes out to SBANAfor their support.

2:45 · And lastly, one quick technical note before we dive in.

2:48 · Lucas and I were mic'd for the seminar, but I did not account for how much audience questions and interjections from our host, Nina Murphy, would not be picked up by the mics.

3:00 · So there are some audio dips, some quality issues when someone other than Lucas and I are talking, and I did have to cut a few parts that were just completely inaudible.

3:09 · Sorry, Nina.

3:11 · So with that, all that said, let's jump into my presentation with Lucas Smolik, Sake Across the Seas.

3:19 · I am super, super stoked that these two folks, good friends of mine, folks I respect tremendously in the industry, able to make it here.

3:27 · Lucas traveled from Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he currently works with Origami Sake and maintains the Sake Brewers Guild, which is a very informative website uh and collection of information and resources for American brewers or non-Japanese brewers.

3:43 · And Nick here runs a consulting company called Kitano Sake, but for many, many years and also led the brewing program at moto-i in Minneapolis, which is something we really cannot get anywhere outside of Minneapolis because of laws associated with the state.

3:59 · Unfortunately, it's not something that can be distributed or sold elsewhere.

4:01 · So all of these samples were shipped to us directly.

4:05 · And as soon as we received them, we caught them in the refrigerator, kept them in good condition.

4:09 · We just poured them for you just now.

4:11 · And they were all shipped to us from each of the individual breweries.

4:15 · And so they are about as fresh as it can get.

4:19 · And this was done with the support of SBANA, the Sake Brewers Association of North America.

4:24 · Their information is referenced in the bottom right.

4:27 · They were the ones who helped contribute funds to get these folks here to talk about this, not only at this class, but also at Fuyu Fest, and also to view for the shipping to get these sake to us too.

4:38 · So a million, million thanks to words of gratitude to SBANA and words to you guys.

4:45 · This is to all more, slightly more of a casual car talk discussion format.

4:49 · It's an open layout for, they have a bunch of points that they're going to be going through, but please pipe in anytime you have a question and they'll get right on it.

4:58 · introducing Lucas Smolic and Nick Lowry.

5:02 · Thank you, Thank you everyone for being here.

5:06 · We'll jump right in.

5:08 · So our goal for today is really just to have fun, enjoy sake, and then to hopefully give you a perspective that you don't often get on North American sake.

5:21 · And that is from a brewer's perspective, when we are talking about the cumulative things that go into making sake, whether it's ingredients, equipment, process, philosophy.

5:34 · What is different about things on this side of the ocean compared to back in Japan, where we're drawing our inspiration from?

5:44 · So as Nina mentioned, this is going to be fun, casual.

5:48 · We're going to be kind of going off the cuff for a lot of this.

5:51 · We could talk for hours.

5:54 · have already.

5:56 · Until we're blue in the face and lost our voices.

5:59 · So Nina has...

6:00 · graciously offered to keep us on track, which I'm sure she will have to do at multiple points.

6:04 · But at any point as well, absolutely interrupt us.

6:07 · Throw your hand up, ask a question.

6:08 · We want to take things where your interests are.

6:11 · So if we say something that we just kind of blow past and you want to hear more about it, let us know.

6:15 · We'll pull the thread.

6:16 · At one point of sort of like the detail in here, she mentioned about the Sake Brewers Guild and the sort of reasoning for that to exist is exactly what we're talking about here today, which is when I started brewing, as a home brewer getting into this, I was a software engineer beforehand, got into this.

6:32 · There was maybe one or two books in English that described anything about the sake brewing process.

6:37 · And most of the examples were actually in how to make Honjozo or aruten and when you actually brew, that's very different from making a Junmai sake or a daiginjo So it can be very, very different.

6:50 · And so we actually started just compiling Google Docs of information with friends.

6:56 · And then before we knew it, started meeting more people and meeting more people.

6:59 · And then actually some Japanese brewers started getting involved in helping us just organize information.

7:04 · We translated a bunch of stuff.

7:06 · And so when she said it initially North America, it's actually, have about 144 countries of brewers that are all involved in learning together and building sort of reference materials.

7:18 · so, so this is really exciting to have all you here to talk about this.

7:22 · It's really a cool topic.

7:25 · Anyway, okay, you like it started?

7:27 · Yeah, before we talk about sake, let's talk a little bit more about ourselves.

7:31 · So, so yeah, 20 years as a software engineer, before I got into this, I wanted to work with my hands, I wanted to do something that was more tangible, that wasn't just building an app to bring you food faster, or something like that.

7:47 · I joked that I was tragically diagnosed with the sake brewing disease, which is Once you get into this, it's very hard to walk away from it.

7:55 · It's so much of a...

7:57 · There's actually a weird connection between brewers and engineers, like a very strange amount of engineers move into brewing for some reason.

8:05 · Like every time we meet a new one, go, what do you do right now?

8:08 · And they'll go, I'm a software engineer.

8:10 · We'll go, what is that?

8:12 · So I apprenticed under Dr.

8:14 · Chiaki Takahashi, who is the...

8:15 · head brewer and owner of Islander Sake in Hawaii.

8:18 · If you've never been, please go try her stuff.

8:20 · She does all nama, lot of daiginjo heavy specialty.

8:24 · She taught me all the things you don't need to worry about and that helped a lot.

8:28 · I interned at Taketa Shuzo in Niigata.

8:31 · I'm the former head brewer at Wetlands Sake in New Orleans.

8:34 · I only left there to go apprentice under Chiaki.

8:37 · I run BrewSake.org, which is how a lot of people find our organization.

8:40 · It's ultimately a 501(c)(3) Sake Brewers Guild is what that is.

8:45 · I am currently the VP of Operations and R&D at Origami Sake and Hot Springs.

8:50 · I'm a Formula One forklift driver and a third stage spreadsheet survivor.

8:56 · So here we are.

8:59 · And then my name is Nick Lowry.

9:03 · My education is in food science uh and I spent before I tragically fell in love with sake like Lucas.

9:10 · My career was in public health doing food safety audits, dietary supplements, quality systems.

9:15 · And then due really to one of the few breweries in America being located in my home city in Minneapolis, I kind of...

9:23 · just changed careers on a whim and then fell in love with sake through my employer at moto-i From there, it was a very precipitous fall into the rabbit hole of just learning everything I could about sake.

9:35 · So in the time since joining moto-i I've done every course that I can, Advanced Sake Professional, Sake Scholar.

9:41 · I've also gone through SBANA to the advanced sake brewer certification course, a program with.

9:48 · Niigata University in Gakkogura on Sado Island in Niigata.

9:53 · While the company was still located in Minnesota, was the operations manager for Minnesota Rice and Milling, as Nina mentioned, where really the vast majority of rice that was being used to make sake in North America was coming through that building.

10:07 · So getting to see rice firsthand from Isbell's taking it at 90 % semaibuai the white rice, taking that all the way down to 70, 60, 40, 35.

10:18 · It was an incredible experience.

10:21 · Very noisy and very dusty, but to get to see a sake not only to mill the rice, but then take that rice to moto-i and then brew with that rice to see it for as much of the chain as possible was an experience that not many brewers get to have, let alone brewers in North America.

10:40 · Make a comment on that for me.

10:42 · This is primarily because of what they did there.

10:46 · This only could happen because of that.

10:50 · We were never able to get polished rice in the US, and it was Blake buying that and Nick running that, that ultimately allowed home brewers in the US to access one kilogram, five kilograms of rice.

11:05 · No one will sell you one kilogram of polished Yamada Nishiki.

11:09 · They would.

11:10 · And that was huge.

11:12 · Granted, shipping was like $300.

11:14 · But you'd get it.

11:15 · And that was what mattered.

11:16 · It was.

11:17 · None of it financially made any No, it didn't at all.

11:20 · But they're all engineers, so it doesn't matter.

11:22 · It was all wildly necessary.

11:24 · then, so for eight years then, I also was in the brewery at moto-i and eventually was the lead brewer there, sort of bringing my quality mindset to try and systematize and improve the sake there.

11:35 · Left in 2024* started my company, Kitano Sake, where now I consult with up and coming breweries, established breweries, I help trade groups like SBANA to just promote sake broadly.

11:46 · Yeah, love to squeegee and every once in a while I'll pull a shirt out of the closet and there'll still be some rice stuck in the pocket from the days at the mill.

11:54 · um So kind of our goal for today, or the roadmap for today, as long as we can as much as we can stay on a path, which is not guranteed It's very hard We tried doing this before we came here, and it was like, we never got past this slide for like 25 minutes.

12:11 · We'll kind of take a look through a couple different lenses.

12:14 · First, like the raw materials, the ingredients that go into sake, and then how those are different.

Ingredients — Rice reality, yeast access, and what the U.S. has to work with

12:19 · We'll talk about equipment, what access we have to tools that can change the sake, and then we'll talk about the process, just what things that we do over on this coast, how those compare.

12:33 · And then lastly, we'll sort of talk about philosophy, sort of everything else, like all the just wacky ideas that we have that sort of shape the way that we make sake.

12:41 · So I think to start with rice, are, maybe to give you like a little bit of direction so you can start drinking some sake, there are, let's see, one, two, three, three sake's that I would...

12:52 · particularly point out because of the unique rice that they have on your tasting sheet.

12:56 · So first and foremost, number two, Sawtelle Sake.

12:58 · This brewery is using Lopes Family Farms rice, and this particular rice farm is unique in the United States in that they follow the aigamo rice cultivation process.

13:12 · So they're using flooded rice paddies, and they are using ducks.

13:17 · to naturally keep the rice weed and pest free.

13:25 · If my understanding is correct, this is their very first batch that they have used or that they have brewed with rice from this farm grown in this way.

13:33 · We've also talked already a little bit about, we've referenced the Isbells in Arkansas, fifth generation rice growing family that really, in my opinion, grows the best sake making rice that you can get in the United States.

13:47 · There are a handful of breweries on here that are using rice from the Isbells but one to note in particular, number three, Shojo's Dojo, they're using a relatively newly available rice strain in America, Omachi so very old heirloom variety of rice, but really only recently available to brewers here stateside.

14:08 · Has anyone ever visited the Isbell's farms before in Arkansas?

14:13 · A few of you?

14:15 · And then has anyone visited any of the farms up in Northern California?

14:20 · Sun Valley.

14:21 · Sun Valley, and then well, any of the ones I'm to mention here.

14:23 · One of the cool things about in terms of talking about rice and general availability, it was about 20, 25 years ago, something around there, that Chris Isbell had a bizarrely hysterical conversation with at a ping pong tournament that happened to be a rice conference.

14:41 · I think it was like an after party kind of thing, but they were like at a rice conference and there just happened to be a Japanese guy there and I will not go into the whole thing, but he was a rice farmer.

14:50 · They made a challenge, like a basically a friendly bet that he couldn't grow Japanese rice in America.

14:56 · And Chris was like, well, it just so turns out we're on the same latitude as Hyogo.

15:02 · So I think we should give it a go.

15:04 · It worked and somehow through, I'm assuming some other friendly wager, Yamada Nishiki ended up here as well.

15:11 · And so then he started growing Yamada Nishiki.

15:13 · And so that's really the first sake rice that we know of that was grown here.

15:17 · It's possible that Hawaii had that going on at some point, but it's really hard to track that back unless someone has that history.

15:23 · But that is kind of cool because again, if it weren't for that, this doesn't exist.

15:28 · It weren't for the rice mill.

15:29 · That doesn't exist.

15:31 · That is to me a large portion of what we're talking about is We started off with basically just table rice you get at a store.

15:39 · I mean, I'm assuming that was some of moto-i's first.

15:43 · Yeah, tons of Calrose, which is still very common in American sake to see Calrose.

15:50 · And then Koshiakari was also common.

15:53 · Nowadays, you still see quite a bit of table rice in the form of Titan, a very plentiful rice variety that's grown in Arkansas.

16:03 · And like both of those rices, I think it's probably worth talking a little bit about like how brewing with them is different.

16:10 · Sure.

16:11 · They tend to be harder rice varieties.

16:14 · They tend to be harder to digest.

16:16 · So we really have to be considerate of our water uptake in the rice, of our brewing temperatures to make sure that we're giving enough time for our koji enzymes and our yeast to be matching their paces.

16:29 · You know, we talked about this a little bit earlier that like there's some similarities across the board.

16:33 · This is more of like a process technique thing.

16:35 · But but just going with the high level of ingredients, there are some similarities across the board.

16:40 · Like you hear in Japan, rice is, you know, that it's hotter in the season, the summer when they don't have cold nights.

16:46 · So the starch structure is different.

16:49 · The protein structure is different.

16:50 · The amount of starch is different.

16:52 · So even the yields you get on sake, those are shared problems.

16:54 · We all have them.

16:56 · They deal with it here in Arkansas.

16:57 · They deal with it in um in California, so that's across the board a thing.

17:02 · But then there are the varietals, and it's important to note too, there are some varietals we have here in the States, but they're more the table rice eating varieties of those, not necessarily like the hand-selected large grain versions of those.

17:16 · And if you have a rice book that shows all the sake mai, like the sake mai varietals, you'll see similar names to things that you can buy in the store, but they're very different.

17:25 · One is actually selected to have a very beautiful grain, be white when you cook it or soak it, right?

17:31 · And then the whole concept, you might've heard the term shimpaku.

17:34 · don't know, I mean, obviously this is very common, you're sake people, but even the concept of like, what is that and how often do you have that nice sort of like core uh of a grain?

17:45 · It shows up a lot more in highly selected, graded rice in Japan.

17:50 · We tend to get something that's a little bit more hodgepodge.

17:53 · And in some cases, and here's the thing, we're talking in terms of like different producers.

17:59 · I'm not gonna call out producers by the way, it just is what it is and it's how we know it to be.

18:04 · In some cases you have multiple farms, multiple fields, multiple everything just being grouped together and even multiple varietals.

18:11 · So Calrose has a lot of different types of Calrose and they've been selected every year to kind of get better and better at growing for rice.

18:21 · they're not being selected every year for sake.

18:24 · So while it might be a lower plant that doesn't lodge and fall over in the rain as much and stuff like that, it also means that we're losing, for instance, shimpaku, and we're losing things that we want as brewers.

18:36 · Believe it or not, it spawned a lot of conversations in the industry with the three main sake rice providers and having a conversation about creating like, let's call it a certificate of analysis.

18:48 · which is what they call it in the industry for malt and barley and things like that.

18:52 · We don't have that in our industry.

18:54 · So Japan has a very regulated concept of like ito, nito, and all these different concepts of like grading their rice.

19:01 · We're left with more, hey, there's four different varietals of Calrose in this bunch that we delivered to you.

19:08 · And imagine trying to figure out a soak rate on rice when a quarter of it has this soak rate and a quarter has this soak rate and they're two minutes different.

19:16 · you end up getting an average.

19:19 · And so the challenge we have in many ways is like, when we discussed this with Japanese brewers, they're often like, whoa, that sounds tough.

19:28 · And it's like, yeah, it's not great.

19:30 · So there are challenges that we're facing here that are probably similar to a hundred years ago in Japan.

19:36 · And so it's kind of an interesting discussion to have with other brewers, put it that way.

19:40 · I think another trend that you're starting to see in North America that has been present in Japan, this idea of more locally grown rice, that's a trend that I think we're starting to see more and more in the United States as well, is people are more, well I shouldn't say more, but we can talk about this later in the philosophy part as well, but that the idea of the story behind the product of like knowing the source of where things are coming from, you're starting to see more breweries like Den using single lot, single origin rices where they're naming the farmer, Sawtelle where they're partnering with a specific farm to grow their rice.

20:17 · So that their sake is a unique sake to them and where the product comes from, as opposed to, with all due respect to the Isbells, opposed to having that sake or that rice be grown and milled in one part of the country and then shipped thousands of miles somewhere else.

20:34 · I think the other one that's doing that a lot lately and has been very prolific about it on social media is Kato Sake Works in Brooklyn, where they're, know, New York has been starting a whole bunch of local growing there and there's a company that imports some, but also grows some there.

20:49 · Very interesting stuff to see as the industry grows.

20:52 · And this is an American focused thing, but because I represent the sake brewers guild, like Europe is actually just now starting to do their own They have their two sake rice that they have created.

21:04 · And just about a month ago, the first sake polishing mill went online in France.

21:09 · So it only does about 100 kilograms at a time, but they're actually gonna start supplying brewers in Europe with polished sake rice.

21:18 · And believe it or not, they're about 10 years behind us or more.

21:21 · So they just are getting that now.

21:23 · They're all working with.

21:24 · um color, not coral, arborio and these Italian varietals or French varietals, but they're not really there.

21:31 · And so it's sticky, it's hard to work with, it gets kind of contaminated in the Koji.

21:36 · There's lots of challenges.

21:37 · We face those.

21:39 · And now that the industry has grown to this point, we are able to kind of be in between what Japan has, maybe like 90 to 10 % of it, but like, we're at that 10%.

21:49 · And it's like Europe is just now getting into that.

21:51 · 1%, 2 % of where we are here.

21:53 · So it's kind of interesting to see this kind of progress.

21:56 · And then I think, you know, we're like 20 minutes in and we're still We're still on the first part of the presentation.

22:04 · last, just move on.

22:05 · Just go.

22:06 · Last last sake that I think is worth highlighting from the perspective of rice is uh Uka number 12 on your list.

22:13 · Just because they're in such a unique situation of the Koda family that that owns the brand, Uka.

22:20 · They have a rice farm in California where they grow their own rice and then ship it to Japan, have it brewed into sake, and then ship it back for distribution.

22:32 · I'll admit that I'm not sure what the current state of the company is because recently the Koda family had to sell their farm, so I'm not sure what the latest...

22:40 · News is there, I know, I've heard that they're trying to keep the operation going, but I'm not sure what the future holds for them.

22:46 · It's also worth noting too that I've personally been in discussions with Japanese brewers, importers to Japan and rice growers in the US about, because of all the issues currently with rice in Japan and the price and the availability, they're looking to ship sake rice to Japan from the US, which is very...

23:05 · interesting state of the world right now.

23:08 · And what that might do, who knows?

23:11 · And also to keep in mind, one of the interesting things that we're actually going to focus on in the next year is Japan is switching over a lot of breweries to 80 and 90 % polished rice because of the availability of rice.

23:22 · And so what does that mean?

23:23 · And where is that going?

23:25 · And in a lot of ways for us, like I said, Europe and the US, for home brewers, for commercial brewers that just want to save some money, trying to figure out How do you produce a quality product with 80 % 90 % polish that isn't just umami heavy, that isn't just thick mouth feel and all that?

23:42 · How do you do that well?

23:44 · And there's a lot of studies coming out right now that are very interesting.

23:48 · mm.

23:49 · Yeah.

23:50 · as soon as we get one.

23:53 · Yeah, We're still waiting on the flat polishing machine.

23:58 · Right, right, right.

24:00 · Show us.

24:01 · different since like Kojima is not working on.

24:05 · Yeah.

24:06 · 70 and equal 50 minutes.

24:09 · That's incredible.

24:10 · Awesome.

24:10 · It's really incredible.

24:12 · So, yeah, some places are using crack, right?

24:15 · So we just.

24:17 · Right.

24:18 · Totally.

24:19 · We've been experimenting with it as well.

24:20 · mean, it's there's several of our batches where we did like 30%, 20, 30 % with Broken Titan or Broken Yamada and not for Koji, but for the Kakemai, no difference.

24:34 · You really couldn't taste any difference.

24:37 · moto-i was doing the same.

24:39 · They have a brand, Call to Mend that's designed with that purpose of taking these.

24:43 · broken grains and still making something worthwhile from them.

24:45 · And I think Proper Sake has been doing that for years as well.

24:48 · Yeah.

24:49 · The big difference in terms of raw materials is when you're soaking it, it throws everything off.

24:54 · If you soak a normal Titan 70, let's say you get the 30, 33 % whatever it is you could soak the brokens and it will register as 40 or something else and you'll go, oh my God.

25:08 · But really if you actually go and do like a moisture test and like, I don't know if you've ever seen a halogen lamp moisture tester, but they kind of like cook the rice down until all the water's out.

25:17 · And it may only be at 30, 31 on average.

25:20 · So then you have to kind of figure out when do you pull the rice out of the soak.

25:25 · It's a whole other challenge.

25:26 · In a lot of ways, you just kind of go, who cares?

25:29 · I think there's a lot of things about these that is something we've been learning more and more.

25:33 · You can go to Japan, you can talk to brewers.

25:36 · But a lot of the reasons when they say, this is the way we've always done it, the reason you get that answer is, A lot of things were just practical.

25:42 · They weren't scientific in nature.

25:44 · They were practical.

25:44 · It made sense to do that.

25:46 · And you have back to back to back brews.

25:48 · You just don't have time to finesse.

25:50 · So the schedule is what it is.

25:52 · And I can guarantee you, even if someone tells you one thing, the actual production schedule, that determines the flow.

25:59 · And a lot of times you'll end up with a batch that ended low on alcohol, one high, your SMV's off, and you blend and figure out how to do things.

26:07 · But it's, yeah.

26:08 · A lot of challenges.

26:09 · Anyway, should we move on?

26:10 · Yeah.

26:11 · Okay.

26:12 · Well, let's try and rip through the next couple of sections So moving on to water, think, Water doesn't matter.

26:20 · Move on.

26:20 · Doesn't matter.

26:21 · Water is wet.

26:22 · It's wet.

26:22 · You got it.

26:23 · I think that really the only point that I would like to make on water is that, you know, in contrast to Japan where breweries were sort of built around good sources of water, you know, maybe that's a bit of a myth and like retconning it, but...

26:35 · In the US, really, breweries are just opening wherever people want to make sake.

26:39 · And so people are just dealing with the water that they have.

26:41 · So you'll often see also because there are a lot of sake brewers that are coming from the beer brewing industry where water adjustment is so standard and part of the scenario that you're seeing more more sake brewers adjusting their water, taking it to RO and then adding back in the specific profiles that they want via mineral additions.

27:01 · so number 11, Farthest Star.

27:02 · Todd Bellamy, he cut his teeth for Boston Brewing Company.

27:06 · Sam Adams.

27:07 · And so he loves to say, OK, this style, I want to go more of a Miyamizu profile.

27:13 · And this next sake, I want to go in a different direction with different mineral ratios and additions.

27:18 · And then kind of at the opposite end of the spectrum, you do see some breweries that are really leaning into what their natural water source is.

27:25 · I don't know that we have a great example of that here, but on the screen you see the pizza bagels and sake, the collaboration between Brooklyn Kura and Kato from a few years ago, where they really like sort of leaned into the profile of that New York water.

27:37 · I have a comment on water.

27:39 · Okay, got it.

27:40 · I do.

27:42 · I do.

27:44 · There was a study done recently, it's worth noting, because I think it's interesting.

27:49 · It tells a story of a lot of things that for a long time, there's been a lot of lore about how much water ends up in the final flavor of sake.

27:56 · And the reality is not as much as you'd think.

27:59 · But there's a big asterisk on that.

28:02 · It doesn't directly have as much.

28:04 · final influence, but it does influence the uptake of rice in terms of what's in calcium.

28:10 · Other minerals can affect the actual water uptake.

28:12 · In addition to that, that also affects how koji grows.

28:15 · So that has downstream effects.

28:17 · So water has a lot of downstream effects, but it's not as noticeable.

28:21 · You can't taste the water and then go, I definitely taste this in there.

28:24 · It's not a one-to-one and you can believe it.

28:27 · You can fool yourself into thinking about rice has a far more large effect on it.

28:32 · The water has an effect on the fermentation.

28:34 · The story of Miyamizu, all that goes back to it had a lot of minerals, so it fermented better, so you got less contamination.

28:42 · And from a brewer's perspective, even though that myth gets spread a lot, that lore is told, the reality for us is, well, we know how that really works.

28:49 · And if you have a slow fermentation, you get a contamination.

28:53 · If you have a good roaring fermentation, you get a good [idfk] You just slipped in here, I didn't even notice you.

29:02 · Anyway, that's a big thing to note on this.

29:07 · It doesn't necessarily have that, but it is a big piece of sake brewing.

29:10 · The water really does have an effect.

29:13 · It's just not so much like you can drink it and go, get how that affects it here.

29:17 · That's more of a like, is the brewer you could ask questions and say, hey, you have a lot of minerals in here.

29:23 · Do your ferments really, really rip?

29:25 · Do they really, they're really strong?

29:26 · say, yeah, we do.

29:27 · Or when you're talking like Hiroshima and a lot of water sources tend to be more soft, or like he's saying, bringing it back to like reverse osmosis water where there's no minerals in it at all, you then build back something to specifically tweak your yeast because certain yeasts respond better to certain minerals and other ones don't.

29:47 · So if one's going to produce a lot of acetaldehyde or, you know, if it's known to produce a lot of isoamyl alcohol, which is unfavorable to acetate, um You could adjust your water and affect that.

30:01 · So it becomes very technical, very fast.

30:03 · And I think that's why it's easier to just say, good water makes good sake.

30:07 · Yeah.

30:09 · Then on the topic of yeast, think this is one where there's maybe a lot of animosity for lack of better term.

30:17 · That in North America, we're at a severe handicap, I think, compared to breweries in Japan.

30:22 · from Jozo Kyoukai standpoint, we really only have access to number seven and number nine in their dry formats.

30:29 · So what we do tend to see is, well, for one, we tend to see a of sake is made with those, or if not, the official versions from Jozo Kyoukai, sort of the analogs that are made by...

30:40 · Yeah, well, no, I'm thinking like domestic yeast producers like Wyeast and...

30:47 · Someone ripped out of a Nama bottle like 20 years ago and they're just propagating it, which when someone says, oh, I got that 901, it doesn't taste good.

30:56 · And they go, well, it's not probably really as close to 901 as you think.

31:00 · then the other difference that I think you see is other producers of yeast, like for example, the Akita Konno as you mentioned, microbial producer in the Akita Prefecture, you tend to see a higher proportion of their products in American sake just because that's what's available.

31:20 · In Konno-san's direct words, I'm a commercial producer.

31:25 · I'm not a government.

31:26 · So I can sell you whatever I want.

31:28 · It's a very different perspective.

31:30 · And I think it's important because there is that, yeah, it is still capitalism and still trying to sell stuff.

31:36 · And unless Japan's specifically excludes it, you can very often find an analog to your point in a Akita Konno that is essentially what you may get in something else.

31:47 · So what we really look for is more, is it a high ethocaparate producer?

31:51 · Is it a high amylacetate producer?

31:53 · Is there a balance of ethyl, ethyl acetate and isoamyl acetate?

31:57 · Where's that balance?

31:58 · We ask them those questions.

31:59 · We talk about it's, is it strong fermenter, weak fermenter?

32:03 · And then we make a decision on, we buy it.

32:06 · it should be noted they're very expensive to acquire.

32:08 · You have to get it in a slant, which is like the pipe, know, the sort of like test tube.

32:13 · on agar you gotta use like, you know, a fume hood to properly propagate these things.

32:19 · So not everyone can do it.

32:20 · It's not easy and they cost about $500 a pop.

32:23 · So not every brewer can afford that.

32:25 · So yeah, we are very limited in that regard.

32:28 · And probably something as an industry, if there's like one change that you like most commonly hear from brewers, it's we want access to more yeast.

32:36 · That's a very common throughline that you'll hear.

32:39 · Tell your local Jozo Kyokai That's right.

32:42 · And both.

32:43 · And then last ingredient that at least is worth talking about is koji kin.

32:48 · I think here, I don't know if you agree or disagree, Lucas, but I think in terms of koji kin, I think there's a lot of parity compared to the other ingredients.

32:56 · I think that's the stuff that we as producers are able to buy here.

33:00 · We have very similar access to what Japanese brewers have.

33:03 · So really the difference in Koji I think comes down more to skill and technique than to raw materials.

33:09 · Yeah, I would agree with that.

33:10 · You have two main producers we buy from.

33:13 · Japan has about six major ones and then there's a bunch of smaller ones you never hear of.

33:17 · The biggest thing for us is actually trying to convince people or warn them to not try to propagate their own.

33:24 · because Americans for some reason have this idea or should say Western in general that like wild is best.

33:30 · It comes from beer probably and sort of like the Belgian styles and all that.

33:34 · But like several, several times and I've done a lot of research on this and Japan's done a ton of research on this because of actual issues that have occurred in the US, or sorry, in the wild where like animals have died and they discovered, yeah, we're good, got it.

33:49 · We gotta move on from this topic.

33:52 · I would say one last note about koji though.

33:56 · I think the US has been more willing to experiment with this.

34:00 · Maybe again you disagree, using different koji different tane koji, different koji kin, using white koji or black koji as a great example.

34:10 · We have Eclipse from Nova Brewing, which uses a mix of black and yellow koji.

34:15 · And I think you see more of that willingness to be experimental, whether it's growing your own Koji, which is probably the bad way to experiment, or using different varieties in your product.

34:28 · All right, then sort of the next tranche of like differences between what how we make sake here and how you make sake in Japan is access to equipment.

Equipment — Steam, scale, and the DIY economics of making sake in America

34:38 · As you kind of already mentioned, there's uh tons of brewers that come into the sake world from beer brewing, some from winemaking, and there's tons of just ingenuity and do-it-yourself, make-do-itiveness attitude about making things work when you can't just buy things off the shelf or either because you don't have access to it or you don't have the funds for it.

34:59 · These are sort of like the three specific areas of equipment that I think are probably most different between North America and Japan.

35:07 · Steaming I think is a big one.

35:08 · Really just the cost of buying a dedicated purpose-built sake rice steamer is very inhibitive for certainly an upstart brewery.

35:19 · So you tend to see a lot of self-made options.

35:22 · So you can see here Den, Yoshi has his sort of like dumpling rice cooker stack that he's able to make great sake from.

35:30 · And then you can sort of see at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of like his is very tall and skinny, but if you were to go to North American sake in Virginia, his rice steamer is like big and wide.

35:39 · It's kind of like what he had access to in terms of parts and equipment to make his steamer.

35:44 · At moto-i we used a big commercial tilt steam kettle, like the kind you would see in prison cafeteria for making 50 gallons of chili or something.

35:59 · So there's a wide variety of stuff out there and some of it does the job and makes good steamed rice and some of it makes steamed rice.

36:09 · So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

36:11 · of, I just think there's a lot of like, the things you see in Japan tend to be the older breweries that where someone's like hand making something, whether it's shaku or something like that.

36:21 · They're pulling something to get it out of wood.

36:23 · often, never, he's in the brewery, I was at, never prepared, just sort of like a wire wrapped around it and it was dangerous.

36:31 · know what, Nova, well you guys use the, you made a steamer out of a keg.

36:37 · Right?

36:37 · Yeah.

36:39 · So that's cool.

36:40 · And I think there's a lot of jury rigging things in order to make it work.

36:46 · And I think to the point, we're not subsidized by the US government to make this.

36:49 · So when you need to upgrade your steamer, you don't always have like a state of the art.

36:54 · The one thing we mentioned was like, people talk about dry steam and trying to get that fine finish on rice.

37:00 · And we're like, our options are, this is how much moisture comes with the steam.

37:05 · And that's what you get.

37:06 · There's not an adjustment a lot of the times unless you can afford the super heater, right?

37:13 · And that's, think maybe Brooklyn Kura might have one of those now.

37:18 · But there's a lot of things we don't necessarily have, so you just make it work.

37:21 · And I think that's the story overall, even between both, is like, everyone just makes it work.

37:26 · Whether in Japan or here, you figure out your balance and then go.

37:29 · Yeah, and like an anecdote along those lines is, like at moto-i when I started, there had been a particular way of running that steamer.

37:38 · And sort of all the processes before and after were sort of built around the product that we could get out of the steamer.

37:44 · in general, the rice, probably if you were looking at just purely a textbook definition, the rice was absorbing too much moisture during the steamer.

37:52 · But so the processes were, we were able to dial back our soak rates before steaming the rice.

37:59 · and adjust how we cooled the rice after to sort of accommodate that level of moisture that was taken up.

38:04 · Then as we started to like learn more about, maybe we can use our equipment to get something closer to that dry steam at the end, we started to make those changes and realized, okay, well now our rice is, in theory, we should be getting better rice, but we're actually getting slightly worse rice because of the stuff that we did to adapt before to our equipment work.

38:23 · So it's like you change one thing and then suddenly three other things you need to change as well.

38:26 · There's so much.

38:27 · interconnectedness that it's like...

38:30 · Going back to the phrase, why do you do this?

38:32 · Because we've always done it.

38:33 · Once you got it to work, don't change it.

38:35 · You just leave it that way.

38:37 · Again, the schedule determines the production.

38:40 · So if you've got another tank starting today or two tanks or three to four tanks, you just go, right?

38:46 · So like in terms of like, know, Tsuki no Katsura, like one of the oldest breweries really in the world, right?

38:52 · Their steamer is quite literally just a big boiling tank.

38:56 · And at the end of the day, if they can do it, you can do it.

38:59 · But whatever they figured out, they haven't told us.

39:02 · We're working for them.

39:04 · And that's the important part, right?

39:06 · That's the tough part is it always comes down to you can visit every brewery in the US.

39:10 · Every one of us is going to do it differently.

39:11 · Every single one of us is going be completely different.

39:13 · Even if you have the same exact steam machine.

39:16 · And a lot of people do use like there's a company called Electro Steam, which produces like a tiny little thing.

39:22 · the little hose coming off of it, you plug it into a big, you know, koshiki and that's your steam.

39:27 · Everyone's steam set up even with that is different.

39:30 · yeah.

39:32 · The other sort of tranche of equipment that I think you'll see quite a bit of variety between stateside in Japan is in the finding in the filtration of the sake.

39:41 · Really, there are very few.

39:44 · I don't know that I can name confidently off the top of my head.

39:47 · maybe some of the Japanese-owned breweries that- Who are regularly doing finding.

39:51 · That use charcoal in their sake.

39:54 · Gekkeikan does Ozeki does or Takara-like, and Ozeki for sure.

39:59 · Just because they're mass-produced stuff and how they're cleaning up the rice is there.

40:03 · But yeah, there's very few that really are doing it.

40:06 · We've stopped largely the filtration plate.

40:09 · It just takes too much time.

40:11 · can, newer solutions now like lenticular filters, which are like large cartridges and things like that.

40:16 · But charcoal, and this is the note I made to you earlier, Gekkeikan told us when we were out there having a chat with them that the only thing that they really source still from Japan is charcoal.

40:26 · And largely because all the things that they try to get from the US still contain iron.

40:31 · And only Japan has sort of like removed that from them.

40:35 · I'm sure there's other countries you can get it from, but that's a big no-no for us obviously is introducing iron, especially at that stage.

40:42 · So that's a big thing for us.

40:44 · And now knowing that...

40:45 · I would not be buying charcoal from the US.

40:47 · But to be honest, that's not a thing most people know.

40:49 · You know it before a lot of the American breweries.

40:51 · Yeah, there you go.

40:53 · Pro tip.

40:53 · Yeah.

40:54 · We can probably skip testing unless you really want to get into testing.

40:57 · Yeah, I mean, think just the industry built around analytical equipment just doesn't exist here in the United States.

41:04 · you can get purpose-made equipment from places like KEM.

41:08 · And there are like a growing number of companies like Anton Parr that are making equipment that has been standardized to analyze sake.

41:17 · But I think probably the bigger.

41:19 · bottleneck there maybe for lack of a better word is more in the use and timing and understanding of the testing results right then being able to get that information right Yeah, those this this is one of those we could talk for hours.

41:31 · Yeah, your biggest thing is is even like Yep, I think Brandon was the one that figured that out first.

41:37 · Yeah, it's really smart It's like trying to figure out how to test and like using a blood glucose meter is it does work for glucose especially when you're trying to figure out like some things but it's but Even with that, you need to know the procedure.

41:50 · There's a whole lot to learn.

41:51 · And I was on the phone with him my first year brewing, commercially going, how do you do this again?

41:56 · So yeah.

42:00 · Then from a processing standpoint, this is just like very roughly like starting on the left is kind of the beginning of the sake making process.

42:08 · Going to the right is sort of the finished product.

42:10 · Not all of these, is there really much, is there necessarily a a bunch of difference between the US and Japan or North America and Japan.

42:18 · there are a handful of things that I think are worth mentioning.

42:21 · Continuing on that point of testing and knowing how to test, when to test, what's worthwhile.

42:26 · Washing, soaking, moisture uptake and rice management, I think is one area that is not consistent in the United States.

42:34 · Some people reference the absolute moisture of their rice.

42:37 · Others are strictly doing how much water as a percentage is being absorbed.

42:41 · We touched already on steaming about how that's kind of whatever you're able to get for steam is what you got and you kind of build everything else around it.

42:48 · But then moto the yeast starter think from a process standpoint, things are maybe...

42:54 · I wouldn't say that there's anything absurd happening.

42:56 · Well, I shouldn't say that.

42:58 · It's not like crazy different, but maybe the ratio of people...

43:03 · how they choose their methods is different here from Japan in like- I process is the different.

43:09 · Maybe process or timing, schedule.

43:12 · Like a lot of breweries in Japan do like their shubo's like is like what you start almost with.

43:16 · You just crank out your shubo's and then after you'd like two, three weeks of prepping shubo's, which are all now in a room that are being attended to every day, you then again, cause you're making quantity, right?

43:29 · Whereas a lot of American brewers are not making quantity.

43:32 · like they do one- brew Shubo and then they have this time where they're doing other stuff and prepping things, then they begin Shikomi.

43:39 · A lot of them aren't large enough to have eight Shubos going on at the same time.

43:44 · And then they start Shikomi as they're building more Shubos.

43:48 · Like the seasonality of it doesn't exist in the same way.

43:51 · guess that's largely how I see Shubos being different because there's a lot of attention on that as like a process part.

43:56 · Well, and I think, you know, something we were talking about before as well is that you tend to see more Kobo-Jikomi in the U.S.

44:04 · as like a relative portion.

44:05 · Does everyone know what Kobo-Jikomi is in the room?

44:08 · Anyone not know what it is?

44:09 · It basically means you don't do a shubo.

44:12 · You basically just pitch a lot of yeast.

44:14 · It's very much kind of like beer.

44:15 · You just like a large amount of dry or liquid yeast you have to prop up and put in.

44:20 · Japanese breweries use dry yeast largely at the start of the season because they're just like you show up, you don't have time to prop yeast for a week, so you just...

44:30 · put a bunch of dry yeast in and go.

44:31 · Once you have the time to start propagating it in your lab or whatever else or building a shubo now you can start working from shubo.

44:38 · So actually some of the stuff that's early on in the season will be entirely just not a different product, but it's just, there was no conditioning of the yeast.

44:47 · that's a, it does actually change the flavor, but it's maybe when it's blended, you don't even notice.

44:52 · But that's big one.

44:53 · Yeah.

44:54 · And I think there's, I guess I can't confidently say what proportion of breweries are doing this compared to those in Japan, but I think there's less confidence here with styles like Yamahai and Kimoto.

45:06 · There's a willingness to experiment with those things.

45:09 · That might be the American part of this.

45:12 · The one thing we haven't said yet, which is very American, which is the gall.

45:16 · I can do this.

45:19 · You would not believe how many first-time home brewers come to us at various things and we'll name names, but just like, here's my Bodai Moto.

45:29 · And we're like, you started with a Bodai Moto?

45:33 · Like, A, I'm not drinking that.

45:35 · B, you know, like, and that's the scary part is you can't believe that, but there's, again, what has been, this is partially the industry's fault, if I'm being honest.

45:46 · Because what does the industry do?

45:47 · They show a bunch of topless Japanese men, still at 90 years old, sitting in things and making their kimoto and all this.

45:53 · And they myth, they make a mythology of it.

45:56 · It's immortalized.

45:57 · It's this like glorious process.

45:59 · So all these, you know, American kids see this stuff and they're somewhere in their mid-20s.

46:03 · They have tons of cash to blow and they go, I'm gonna buy all this equipment and I'm gonna make bodai-moto.

46:08 · And you're like, whoa.

46:09 · So they come to you and they have no clue about half the steps.

46:12 · They haven't researched anything.

46:13 · They haven't even read the books yet.

46:14 · you're like, I don't know how you know that's safe to drink.

46:17 · And they know, we know that it's not safe to drink, but so that's a big piece of that is just an American sort of audacity to take on these kind of, you know, large projects and just not know what they're doing as they get into it.

46:33 · And I think that's to some degree, some of the things as a part of this, they have come up with their own procedures and it is a lot of kind of packing it together as you go.

46:44 · And so if you actually do ask someone, like, how do you do your Kimoto?

46:48 · It's kind of a wing and a prayer.

46:49 · Like, it is not necessarily a thought process behind it or like a this is why and I'm measuring my nitrogen and I'm measuring my acidity No, there's kind of like, tastes acidic.

47:01 · Let's pitch.

47:02 · It's time to go, you know, and you're like.

47:04 · Or it's day 14.

47:05 · It's day 14.

47:06 · It must be good.

47:07 · And you're like, does it taste good?

47:08 · Does it smell good?

47:09 · Well, it kind of smells like beans.

47:10 · would not use that throw that away right and that is running the guild we have a lot of people on it you get a lot of people showing like one of the coolest channels we have on it is people it's called show off and then we have another one called watch me brew and people will create their own thread and they'll post photos and all their data and everything they've you know acquired and going with the equipment from the previous page is actually a French company called Anton Paar that provides a very tiny little densiometer.

47:37 · Let people check their baume on a very small amount of liquid so they can make a little one, two gallon ferment and actually test as they go through it.

47:46 · And we figured out ways of doing it.

47:47 · But at the end of the day, it's very much a wing and a prayer in a lot of these.

47:52 · But it's cool to see them make mistakes and learn as they go.

47:55 · Yeah, it's cool to watch them.

47:57 · It is.

47:57 · It's kind of cool because you remember doing it yourself.

48:00 · I have the audacity to try this.

48:02 · That's right.

48:03 · You're fine.

48:05 · You kind of know like one of the mistakes people always make and this is a koji thing.

48:09 · When you're making your koji, a lot of brewers will build their little like refrigerator to use as insulation and they think through a lot of the process.

48:18 · But then what they do is to know how to keep it hot.

48:20 · keep it warm at 30, 36 degrees, whatever, whatever temperature they want to keep their Koji Muro at, they will put a thermometer in the rice and just let that kind of keep it at temp.

48:32 · The problem is rice is a natural insulator.

48:35 · So if you put the probe in the rice that controls the heat, it will read like 26 degrees Celsius when the chamber is actually at like 50.

48:45 · So a lot of them murder their first five batches, come to us and go, what's wrong?

48:49 · And we say, did you read any of the material out there?

48:52 · Which properly says, put a thermometer outside of it and then you do this.

48:56 · So some of it is the audacity of what they're doing, but eventually people do kind of figure it out and I think eventually read the books.

49:04 · I'm realizing we didn't even include Koji on this.

49:07 · uh But probably because I don't think there's any brewer in North America that uh would confidently say they've nailed their Koji process.

49:15 · I think it's sort of the golden ring you're sort of always reaching for.

49:18 · Moromi, like the actual main mash management, very well mirrors the conversation we were just having about Moto.

49:24 · I think the process here is just broadly there's...

49:30 · Misunderstanding.

49:31 · Yeah, people sort of chasing a knowledge gap of like, how do I really analytically know?

49:35 · Yeah, it's the least talked about thing in any book.

49:37 · Yeah, it really is.

49:38 · How do we and this kind of dovetails as well on the Yodan and Aruten discussions of like, we do all this work of like, making a moto, making Koji, making a moto, building up our Muromi.

Process — Where technique adapts (and where it shouldn’t)

49:48 · And then we're just like, now we'll just let it run until we decide we're going to press it.

49:52 · And like what not what decisions are being made in between?

49:55 · And that knowledge has not completely disseminated in North America.

50:00 · even like, people, probably all understand the concept, like you've seen a temperature or a fermentation curve, temperature curves, right?

50:07 · These graphs that show how we measure the fermentation.

50:11 · Part of that, as you get later in a ferment, is managing the amount of alcohol and the amount of sugar.

50:17 · And you add water both to lower the alcohol, but also lower the amount of sugar.

50:23 · And sometimes it's also to lower the acidity or do other things.

50:26 · And so you're trying to figure out in your head through experience a lot of times how to end at a very particular ABV, mouthfeel, sugar content, acidity and all this.

50:38 · And every batch is different.

50:40 · It's literally like you're, but in Japan there's a lot more precedent.

50:45 · They know what it's kind of been at for hundreds of years.

50:47 · And if you've ever seen their like fermentation books, and they open up those giant white pages that show it all perfectly, they kind of know where they should be on day five, day 12, day 25, right?

50:58 · They don't have that.

50:59 · So it's a complete, the joke for a lot of people is the AB graph, which is measuring your alcohol versus your kind of gravity, your bomb A.

51:07 · And that's how you track your ferment.

51:08 · And when you look at the book, it says, just draw this line on your ferment.

51:12 · And a lot of brewers go, What do you mean?

51:14 · How do I determine it?

51:15 · And they go, just draw it on your ferment.

51:17 · And the thing that we all miss that we have to connect eventually is they're expecting you to have done many ferments.

51:24 · You already have the data.

51:26 · You already know what to measure.

51:27 · And then you can draw your line and know how to repeat it every time.

51:31 · So it's like a catch 22 where you need to do the ferment to figure out what your ferment should look like.

51:37 · There's also, I think, a sort of philosophical difference that I don't know is intentional, but there is like that experience to say, this is the finished sake that I want and now can I work backwards at every step through the process to define how I'm going to get from like my very first wash soak to this finished product.

51:58 · And that this kind of includes like talking about Yodan, the last addition to a just sweetness and alcohol content or even Arutan like adding the alcohol to the mash like that often those steps are sort of like, okay, well, I'll know what to do when I get there and I have the data.

52:17 · But in reality, it's like you should be, you're not gonna like look up directions when you're halfway to your destination, you're gonna like have your route mapped out from when you pull out of the driveway.

52:28 · Can't believe that analogy came together right on there.

52:31 · You got it, it.

52:32 · It's nailed it.

52:32 · Thanks, Seth.

52:33 · Yodan is one, we were talking about this earlier, Yodan is one of the large ones where it's probably the One of the bigger differences actually in recipe establishment, you'll see someone's recipe and it will say, here's my recipe, here's how much rice I put in it.

52:47 · The reality is they actually sometimes at the very end put in like, let's say it's thousand kilogram batch, at the very end they'll still put in an extra hundred kilograms and more water and more koji.

52:56 · And you'll go, see your recipe is actually like 1200 kilograms total, right?

53:02 · And they go, no, no, no.

53:03 · And you're like, yeah, it is, cause that's your recipe.

53:05 · So yeah, thinking about it is like, how do you practically quantify a recipe?

53:10 · And even in the way you were talking about it, we don't have the plan because we don't know the process yet.

53:15 · And a lot of it is sort of like, whoops, this one fermented way too dry.

53:19 · Whereas I think that's a little bit more understood that in Japan, if you were to have to add that, it's probably dealt with in blending and other situations, especially on a pressing schedule.

53:30 · In America, it's really just sort of like a...

53:33 · We gotta back sweeten this and it's very much thought of like beer in that way.

53:36 · Beer is back sweetened, right?

53:38 · [from the crowd, "Emergency amazake?"] Yeah, exactly.

53:44 · That's right.

53:45 · Emergency Amazake You said about the schedule of the product is that they don't know that the fermentation is going to be the same every year because sometimes it changes.

53:53 · Yeah.

53:54 · It's that yodan but shit, it's not where I want it.

53:59 · Additions to get us to where we know our sake wants to be.

54:02 · Right.

54:03 · Like you just said, we don't have that yet because we're only making sake this long Yeah.

54:07 · You can't see on day three of fermentation that I'm not going to be where I need to be on day 20.

54:12 · Right.

54:13 · Yeah.

54:13 · Yeah.

54:14 · And you also deal with the fact that as we went back to the climate is changing and as a result of which, even if you start the year the same way you did it by day four, go, ooh, that baume is not where it's supposed to be.

54:24 · What do we do now?

54:25 · And in Japan, and I think this is a thing that's like the worst kept secret, but like enzyme preparations are often used for that.

54:32 · There's a whole business on enzyme preparations.

54:34 · If it wasn't, it wouldn't be a thing.

54:36 · But trust me, Higuchi, Akita Konno you can buy tons of enzymes and they're all Koji replacements, Koji additives, things you add on Tome only or only in your Shubo.

54:46 · There's lots of that stuff because we have to deal with the reality of the ferment.

54:53 · Yeah.

54:53 · Yeah.

54:54 · Oh, man.

54:55 · Is that the end?

54:55 · Yeah.

54:56 · Well, yeah.

54:56 · And the myth that like, this is it.

54:58 · This is Junmai.

54:59 · Just these things and nothing else.

55:00 · Like that myth is prevalent too.

55:02 · Yeah.

55:02 · Yeah.

55:02 · There's about 30 additives you can put in sake that are legally defined in the law.

55:07 · yeah.

55:07 · But OK.

55:08 · So then to maybe just speed up a little bit in terms of pressing, like I think the biggest difference that you see between the two is that in the US, I really can't think of anybody that is taking dedicated cuts of their presses.

55:21 · Maybe they exist or maybe people have done it.

55:23 · Kato.

55:23 · For example.

55:23 · I think Kato.

55:24 · does he?

55:24 · Okay.

55:25 · Yeah, he does one tank in like five products.

55:28 · Got it.

55:28 · Okay.

55:28 · Because he does this Juku Seishu and then, right?

55:31 · Not Juku Seishu.

55:31 · What's it?

55:33 · But you don't know the word in Japanese is why I can't think what it is.

55:36 · You know his, does anyone know?

55:38 · You ever know Kato Sake's like fresh out the press?

55:42 · well it's.

55:42 · Shibori I thought was what he called it.

55:45 · it's it.

55:45 · I guess I don't know.

55:46 · Anyway, the idea that like from one press you can take your Arbashiri your first cut, you can take your hearts, you can take, can just squeeze the ever living crap out of it and take what's left.

55:57 · Like that process just like is not common in the states at all.

56:01 · It's we press it all and that's our sake Yeah.

56:04 · Also just how people think about pressing pressure matters when you apply too much pressure.

56:09 · In Japan they use atmospheres a lot to describe it, like, or least you'll get, they'll be one of the gauges or millipascals.

56:17 · use PSI in America, so that's always like a conversion, first of all, of this challenge.

56:21 · But then on top of that, the concept of your first, like what you'd normally take as arabashiri or nakadori, as like your different cuts, so to speak, those are all different pressures.

56:34 · So your first one, you're just literally putting it into the press.

56:37 · And as it's going in, kind of giving you this like sediment that's coming out, right?

56:41 · You get rid of that.

56:42 · And then you have this other one, you start to like just let it kind of run for a while at almost atmospheric pressure.

56:49 · It's not until the very end you start cranking that thing up.

56:51 · But a lot of Americans will be like, they'll pump this in.

56:54 · Let's say they have a Yabuta or a Yabuta style, which are the plates that press like a membrane press.

56:58 · They'll put that thing in there and just like turn it on.

57:01 · Just crank it up to like the highest pressure can go.

57:03 · And you end up getting a lot of bitter flavors.

57:06 · I wouldn't say shearing, but a lot of like proteins and stuff get kind of squeezed and broken.

57:10 · You end up with these bitter peptides as a result of which none of that is really considered yet.

57:15 · So there's a lot this side, especially in the conditioning, if you were to go there, who does charcoal filtration?

57:22 · Who knows how to do charcoal filtration?

57:24 · Who knows that there's levels of pore size that determine everything from, are you pulling color out?

57:29 · Are you pulling aroma out?

57:30 · Are you pulling flavors out?

57:32 · What are you pulling out?

57:33 · And so this is a whole thing we don't.

57:36 · We're not in yet because that's just not an education that exists here.

57:39 · Yeah, agreed.

57:40 · ah Philosophy, then.

Philosophy — Tradition, experimentation, and what “The Great Experiment” produces

57:48 · This was your AI generator?

57:49 · Yeah.

57:52 · This is not from Arkansas.

57:53 · I'm just telling you right now, this is not.

57:55 · It may look like that.

57:57 · And I've been at this bar, but that's not from Arkansas.

58:00 · Yeah, this is Canadian.

58:02 · You can tell that I like the American flag shirts with the Canadian hat.

58:06 · Yeah.

58:06 · Yeah.

58:07 · They would not be pleased with this right now.

58:09 · So I think like a good place to end the discussion is, know, we've already talked a bit about like the American gall and like our own sort of manifest destiny and how we're going to make things our way.

58:19 · But I think there is, it's like a worthwhile to sort of mention the philosophical differences of like, what do North Americans actually like prefer in terms of their sake?

58:28 · Because the cuisine we eat is not, I mean, it's not monolithic by any stretch of the imagination, but like the cuisine.

58:34 · even across the country is different from the cuisine in Japan.

58:36 · The sake that we get here is also not truly representative of all the sake that's made in Japan.

58:43 · So we also have a skewed perspective of what sake even is to begin with.

58:48 · And I think all of these things sort of like culminate into just a different concept of what people like to drink.

58:55 · There's also a big...

58:57 · big component of running a sake brewery is that it's a business.

59:01 · You have to be able to sell your sake.

59:03 · So you have to make what people will buy, whether or not it's the sake that you as a brewer want to drink.

59:08 · is tragic and hard.

59:10 · It is.

59:11 · So like we were talking really about how Brandon from Brooklyn Kura is like, I made Occidental.

59:17 · One time I put the hops in the tank and then I wasn't setting out to do it, but now I have to keep making it because everybody keeps asking for it.

59:24 · And then you start to, you also see like to that end breweries that are making sake that are flavored and that are designed to be approachable and palatable to non-sake drinkers to try and court them into the beverage.

59:38 · Whether that be, yeah, seltzer, uh carbonated, flavored sake.

59:43 · Things that like touch on wine, which is really interesting because you, you also like, we were talking about this recently.

59:50 · figuring out who the customer is and who the closest customer that drinks something else is to you.

59:55 · There's still a big, I think it's a missed hit to some degree to target Wine because of the fact that what I've seen people actually, the people that seem to be more adventurous and want to try sake and are excited to try actually tend to be more beer drinkers.

1:00:13 · It's an interesting thing that I'm curious to see if everyone agrees with that as you see more, but.

1:00:18 · We recently had our experience at a beer festival where we were the belle of the ball.

1:00:22 · Everyone wanted to come try sake.

1:00:24 · They waited in line for hours to try sake and no one else had a line.

1:00:29 · We had 150 people in a line at a beer festival for six hours and it never went away.

1:00:36 · No one else had a line and they were all, all the beer brewers are going, how do we do what you're doing?

1:00:40 · And we were like, start.

1:00:44 · But there is a question of, yeah.

1:00:46 · Who are we targeting and what is that end consumer?

1:00:49 · What do they want?

1:00:50 · What are they pairing it with at home?

1:00:52 · What do they take at home and drink it with, eat it with?

1:00:54 · Is it alone?

1:00:55 · Are they just drinking it on its own?

1:00:57 · Or what's the behavior look like?

1:00:58 · And one of the things we actually heard, which sounds like a really cool place to also go with in the future is as a palate cleanser for beer, which is interesting because people that are trying something that's very heavy and they're drinking that and then they drink sake, a lot of us do that anyway.

1:01:14 · we'll be able to drink, we'll have a beer and we'll have our sake.

1:01:16 · And it sounds like more and more people are discovering that's a way to drink sake.

1:01:20 · So we could also target that too.

1:01:22 · And I think that's cool.

1:01:23 · Yeah, totally.

1:01:25 · And then, you know, just I highlighted on the on the slide, just like some styles that I think you tend to see like a more a higher percentage of representation in North America than you do in Japan.

1:01:39 · But, you know, looking at the sake that we have on our tasting.

1:01:44 · know, Den Sake is an example, does not do any finding.

1:01:48 · All of his sake, of Yoshi's Sake, he just lets naturally settle and then racks off from a higher port on the tank.

1:01:56 · So even though that sake, like to the eye, looks crystal clear, it's still, you can get more of that body, more of that flavor.

1:02:02 · You know, from the void, the sake that you have there, the sparkling, La Pelle de Vide, like, That is probably like one of the tamest of Justin LeVaughn's sake.

1:02:16 · He's known for like really going big bold with his flavors of nigori's with chocolate, cherry, banana cream, squid ink and gold.

1:02:26 · from the beer world, which is kind of, you know, his perspective on And then, you know, you see, you tend to see a lot of like play with acid as Lucas mentioned.

1:02:35 · So you know, the playing with different Koji varieties.

1:02:38 · Even like, Tsuki Sake um has a bit of higher acid profile.

1:02:42 · um moto-i's mioko again, on the higher acid side.

1:02:46 · All of those, different tacks to sort of approach the Western palate.

1:02:52 · Yeah.

1:02:52 · Yeah.

1:02:53 · that, that's such like the biggest like thing in this whole bit is like there's no data.

1:02:59 · You you look back on the Jozo, Kyokai, J stage and all this, and there's literally back in like the 19, like early 19, like 1910, like consumption of how much like the tax agency runs it all.

1:03:10 · It's very well, you know, documented, like who drank what, where, what types, all that.

1:03:17 · We have none of that.

1:03:18 · Yeah.

1:03:18 · The only people we've been able to, yes, through resources, getting Nielsen data, which is a strange thing to use, Nielsen data, but believe it or not, it has data that lets us know the top three growing categories are like non-ALC, RTDs, and sake oddly enough, and we're like, interesting.

1:03:36 · Now, it may be a percentage that just is because there was not much at all, and now it's a lot more relative, but nonetheless, it is.

1:03:44 · And so what we're trying to do now is we see that challenge.

1:03:47 · and then break out from there and do things.

1:03:49 · To be honest, no one really wanted to do, again, to your point.

1:03:52 · It's not always our choice.

1:03:53 · It's what the market wants.

1:03:55 · So we're introducing RTDs that are made out of sake.

1:03:58 · We're doing them carbonated, but then we learn that Gen Z doesn't want to drink carbonated stuff.

1:04:03 · So we go, okay, how about a green tea base that's flat?

1:04:07 · And across the board, like I said, at a competition or at a conference or some of that, when you pour all of these, what's really interesting to us is amongst beer drinkers or sake drinkers, they're equally liked Like, even hot sake, like even introducing that as an option, we had all of those products I just described, the ones that are carbonated are flavored too, and they're low alcohol, like 4.5.

1:04:33 · So very much Japan's doing the stuff as well.

1:04:35 · And so like, looking across that and saying, what is the American audience looking for?

1:04:40 · All of it.

1:04:41 · And they are different people.

1:04:42 · So to introduce sake to people as their first thing, we're kind of bending the knee a bit to like, okay, your first experience is going to be a carbonated RTD that has a flavor in it.

1:04:55 · There's a lot of like sadness and tears, but at the same time, like, but believe it or not, those people that came for that, they went back, waited in line for another half hour, came up and said, now I want to try the traditional stuff.

1:05:10 · And we said, yes, that is exactly the point.

1:05:15 · So.

1:05:16 · I think that's like we have marketing challenges, have equipment challenges and process challenges and resource challenges, it's people challenges, We didn't even talk about staff.

1:05:28 · That's a dissertation right there on American worker versus Japanese worker and the concept of it's five, goodbye.

1:05:39 · And the obvious like it's five, what's next, right?

1:05:44 · Totally different mentality.

1:05:46 · And so when you're Justin coming over from Japan to work here, his big shock was like, what do mean you're going home?

1:05:54 · Or what's, he literally uttered this once, what's the 4th of July?

1:05:58 · And I said, what do mean what's the 4th of July?

1:06:00 · You know the 4th of July, but is it a holiday?

1:06:02 · It's a holiday.

1:06:03 · They get off that holiday.

1:06:04 · We had a whole discussion on which holidays people get off in the US.

1:06:07 · Like that's a thing.

1:06:08 · Like, do you take Christmas off?

1:06:10 · Do you give Christmas off?

1:06:12 · These aren't things that are very standard, Like you have brewers that work for six months straight, don't get a day off.

1:06:17 · so accommodating for that, we know that's also changing in Japan.

1:06:21 · But how you do that and when and who's willing to work it, especially when you're in the middle of nowhere and hot springs, Arkansas, I can tell you, you know, their last job was working at Burger King.

1:06:32 · And now they're working at, you know, picking up 50 kilograms of wet rice and running it across a brewery.

1:06:38 · And it's a very different job.

1:06:40 · things you have to pay attention to.

1:06:42 · And you think about it, we didn't talk about this either, but the context of understanding sake exists in Japan.

1:06:49 · In America, a lot of our brewers, some of them don't even drink it.

1:06:52 · They don't even drink sake.

1:06:54 · They don't even like sake.

1:06:56 · But they're doing it because it's a job, and that's what's there, right?

1:06:59 · Eventually we get the minua, but they'll still be like, I prefer to drink a beer.

1:07:02 · We're up against a lot of things where even if someone were to taste it daily, are they able to determine that it's bad?

1:07:09 · if they're using an instrument and they're using a Kaibo and they're doing this, did they clean it properly?

1:07:15 · Do they know what back to like, are they aware of it?

1:07:18 · So there's a lot of interesting American Japanese differences in terms of how we make this.

1:07:24 · We'll leave you with that thought.

1:07:26 · So with that, any questions, any thoughts, concerns?

1:07:32 · Lots of What do you guys personally each of you, which brewery are you looking at a lot these days and excited about what they're doing and it feels like there was like a good energy there?

1:07:45 · Kato's mine.

1:07:46 · I always look, I know he's not represented here, but as a small business who figured out how to start small.

1:07:55 · I put Yoshi in the same like in terms of like, in terms of how long they've been there, what they've been doing.

1:08:00 · Nova, obviously, because Nova started as a not like an established thing.

1:08:05 · And that's the that's the key.

1:08:07 · You got to build a business.

1:08:09 · It's a lot of the things people don't understand.

1:08:11 · You have to build a business.

1:08:11 · We never talk about it.

1:08:12 · It's not spoken of enough, but it's a business at the end of the day.

1:08:16 · And as much as we'd love it to be a passion project, it needs to actually make money.

1:08:21 · And so you take North American just as a little like put it up with the ability to figure out within about a year or two that You can't just be a brewery in the middle of Charlottesville, Virginia.

1:08:33 · You have to have a reason people discover you.

1:08:36 · And so they put in a ramen thing, but then even then people still didn't come.

1:08:40 · They even went so far as to get mixed drinks and all these things and appease customers.

1:08:44 · They still didn't come.

1:08:44 · They couldn't figure it out.

1:08:46 · And finally, someone said to him, well, no one's Googling sake at lunch.

1:08:51 · And he went, my God.

1:08:53 · Yeah, no one's looking for a bar at the time that we're like, should be our most busy.

1:08:56 · So on Google, they switched over and now they're Black Cat Ramen.

1:09:00 · And lo and behold, people are coming in to have that and they go, are you guys a brewery?

1:09:05 · And they go, yeah, you make sake.

1:09:07 · You make sake?

1:09:08 · Think about how different that is, right?

1:09:11 · In the mentality, no one's looking for it, no one wants it.

1:09:13 · And then you have to find a creative way.

1:09:16 · So Andrew's done that.

1:09:17 · Kato did it very slow and steady, wins the race, brewing out of plastic buckets for like three years.

1:09:24 · Didn't even have a tasting room, really.

1:09:26 · He kind of like poured shit on a...

1:09:29 · Yeah, like literally his, he had a Koji closet.

1:09:33 · it was like a foot.

1:09:35 · The actual Koji was made in a one foot by like two foot tray.

1:09:39 · And you had to like do this to get into it.

1:09:41 · And now he has a fairly large brewery, but you think of that progress is saying that Brooklyn Kura starts small, gradually grow up.

1:09:47 · So I would say there's a lot in Brooklyn that's a great example of that because they've had to, it's kind of a matter of necessity.

1:09:54 · It's very expensive there.

1:09:55 · You have to like start small and grow.

1:09:57 · But I think anyone else too, James, like I call you out on this, I think you've done a great job building out Nova and like, what are you done with that?

1:10:05 · Yeah, I mean, I would agree.

1:10:06 · think Kato is one that I look forward to and admire if for no other reason than their philosophy of like, you don't see Kato here because Shinobu can't be here to represent his sake and he does not...

1:10:20 · He wants to keep his sake very close to the chest and represent it truly and honestly everywhere that it goes.

1:10:24 · So he won't distribute if he can't be there to distribute to it.

1:10:28 · then- I respect that.

1:10:29 · Yeah.

1:10:30 · then another brewery that I admire is Gekkeikan for like, there's so much that they do that is unseen.

1:10:37 · They're such huge supporters of the industry that just like the consumer doesn't really see.

1:10:42 · But if you're in a brewery, like just the openness and willingness to like work and support.

1:10:47 · their peers is just, I think, unmatched.

1:10:50 · Even more than that, their desire to support the industry.

1:10:54 · It's a thing that's kind of hard to really truly understand, but like they've shown up, myself, Justin, and JJ and another brewer with us right now.

1:11:02 · We all went to visit there and had like, you know, the straight up like deep conversations.

1:11:06 · They're willing to sit down, bring their toji in, talk about everything and really get into the weeds.

1:11:11 · And we asked them, why are you doing this?

1:11:13 · And they're just like, we just feel it's very important to support the industry right now.

1:11:17 · And so we're willing to do whatever it takes.

1:11:20 · that's, actually it's almost like an emotional thing, like an issue like we're not given that credibility.

1:11:30 · And so whether I'm at this brewery or at Wetlands or wherever I've been, like it's always that challenge of like you're up against.

1:11:38 · It's the like when you see it, it just holds lesser value somehow.

1:11:41 · And I appreciate that.

1:11:43 · I do.

1:11:43 · I really appreciate it.

1:11:44 · I feel I think I felt the same thing in my life.

1:11:47 · That's why I think it's so incredible that I'm definitely like patting you in the back here.

1:11:51 · It's so incredible that you you go out of your way to make that happen.

1:11:56 · Like yesterday I was in this we were getting inebriated over here with Molly and and there was a Couple there and I saw one of the [A Thousand] Cranes sitting there, you know, and I was wondering why it was pulled out at one point and I was explaining like, you know, it's, they always, like that's going with them and that they always get one of these.

1:12:15 · And then they started talking with me, you work at Origami I mean, like, we love this.

1:12:19 · We get it every time we come in here.

1:12:20 · We always get a bottle with our order.

1:12:21 · And I was like, really?

1:12:24 · It was such a shock, not for anything else, but then like, it was cool to have, see what else was in their order and go, that's good stuff.

1:12:32 · And you're also getting this.

1:12:33 · That's cool.

1:12:34 · So you can you you include us in that.

1:12:36 · And hopefully that word of mouth gets out.

1:12:39 · But you're starting it.

1:12:40 · And to be honest, we don't see that a lot.

1:12:43 · We know it's challenging.

1:12:45 · We know that the we don't have cold chain here, for instance.

1:12:49 · So things arrive warm in the middle of the summer.

1:12:51 · You would not believe how much product we've had to pull back from places that we sent in the middle of the summer.

1:12:56 · Sat hot in a warehouse, about 30 Celsius for, you know, a whole three weeks getting somewhere and it doesn't hold up as well.

1:13:03 · Even as pastuerized it's a challenge.

Closing — Key takeaways for brewers and trade

1:13:06 · so thank you.

1:13:07 · We cannot possibly tell you how much it means to us to have someone look outside the norm and say, we support this because look, in 10 years, it will be different.

1:13:17 · We will be on par with many things.

1:13:19 · And if you don't believe that, mean, how?

1:13:21 · It's the whole, what's the decision of Paris?

1:13:24 · What is it?

1:13:24 · The, Judgment of Judgment of Paris.

1:13:26 · This will happen.

1:13:27 · It will happen one day.

1:13:28 · We'll be in something, someone won't realize it and they'll go, damn, this is really good.

1:13:32 · It's really exciting, but we can't thank you enough.

1:13:35 · Thank you.

1:13:35 · Absolutely.

1:13:38 · It's about 2.30.

1:13:38 · So I'm sure that y'all are down to hang out for a minute.

1:13:42 · Chat with folks if you have any questions.

1:13:44 · Please feel free.

1:13:46 · We don't have anything else we're using this room for for a while.

1:13:48 · But thank you all for coming.

1:13:50 · I'm so happy to see so many familiar faces here.

1:13:52 · And thank you for talking to us.

Outro — Notes, credits, and what’s next

1:14:02 · uh You'd think I would...

1:14:05 · You'd think I'd like come up with a script for the end, but no.

1:14:08 · I really hope you guys enjoyed that video.

1:14:11 · I know Lucas and I both had a blast just talking about all sorts of wackiness.

1:14:17 · You know, it takes us 20 minutes to get through one quarter of one slide, so you know we really care about this.

1:14:23 · We had lot of fun talking about it.

1:14:24 · I really hope you enjoyed it.

1:14:25 · ah If you did, please be sure to subscribe to all the channels here on the video.

1:14:32 · BrewSake.org, Sake Brewers Association of North America, Kitano Sake.

1:14:37 · Stay tuned for more videos like this, other one-on-one interviews, short form stuff.

1:14:44 · Be sure to shout out in the comment section below.

1:14:47 · What do you think is different between US and Japanese sake?

1:14:51 · And if you're really jonesing for it, what other videos do you want to see focused here on the channel?

1:14:58 · All right, until next time, Kampai, cheers.

1:15:01 · Sorry to the Canadians that were wearing star spangled banners and sorry completely to other countries in North America that weren't represented by AI.

1:15:11 · Bye.