Скачать или смотреть Making a better quality of rice wine (sake)

Sake is a quintessential and arguably staple fermented drink. Especially in Asia where variations on sake are everywhere. The core and common element is that they all use rice as the base and ferment the sugars within.

The diversity of rice wine also means a wide range of possible advantages and disadvantages. That also leads to a drastic change in quality.

For that reason this video focuses on only sake but the lessons and information can be extrapolated out to a lot of other similar fermented rice beverages.

There are several grades or levels of sake. Each has it own meaning and status. The grades of sake are:

Ginjo
Daihinjo
Junmai
Junmai ginjo
Junmai daiginjo
Tokubetsu junmai
Honjozo
Tokubetsu honjozo


The simplest way to summarise these titles is that they describe the degree of rice polishing, additives such as alcohol and adherence to traditional sake brewing.

For that reason you also have at least 3 distinct ways a bottle o sake can differ in quality from another bottle of sake.

Rice polishing is of course the first and likely most common kind of variation. The more polished rice is the less is available to ferment. That does provide a cleaner, nicer and more refined taste. It also means less alcohol and sake as a whole can be made from the rice. That makes it a more premium version.

The less polished rice is the more sake can be made. That greater volume doe shave a less refined taste and aroma.

Additives are another major element. Sometimes it is just prior sake brewing. Other times it is ethanol. Sometime sit is other things again. Each will alter the taste and aroma.

Finally we have traditional brewing or a lack there of. The traditional ways can be nice but they can also limit creativity. That leads to new and interesting methods that also alter the flavour.

While true that that this overlaps with the use or choice of rice such as using atypical rice cultivars it goes further. It can be the shape and type of fermenting vessel. The yeast strain and even the apergillus species.