Sake Talk Anyone?

I think @bulavinaka suggested a dedicated Sake thread. Most liked the suggestion. But how to start? Who does it? Do I know enough?

How about we start something informal? When you come across an interesting Sake post, link it to this page. If you find a nice bottle, post it here. If you have a question or need a suggestion, come here. We can go from there.

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Iā€™ll start with this gem.

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Plus a couple of starter questions. Is Sake actually a wine? Is it proper or necessary to put a mark (diacritic?) over the e?

Hi @beefnoguy -

Uh, yumm! So the thing to do is order a Honjozo or Junmai with Tempura and request it warmed? Would Draft also be good with this food?

We are definitely drinking Sake at home, one bottle at a time. Itā€™s better for learning to distinguish the flavor profiles, as opposed to ordering a flight at a restaurant or buying a plethora of small bottles.

Iā€™m a little confused as to which types are considered ā€œtraditionally madeā€ - lower polish?

Iā€™ll store the Sake & Guts pairing suggestions for future reference. :hugs: Calling @theoffalo and, of course, @PorkyBelly.

Thanks!

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First, thereā€™s no need to accent the e in sake, maybe thatā€™s more for French?

Second, people refer to places of manufacture and processing as sake breweries, so in that sense sake making is closer to beer. Rice wine is a generic term but itā€™s technically inaccurate. Akin to beer, rice is used with yeast and water where the fermentation creates sugar which converts to alcohol.

Third, yes itā€™s ideal to order warm or hot sake at a tempura specialist restaurant in Japan. Or at most go with a Junmai or Junmai Ginjo sake if having it cold. The problem over in the States is that a lot of places actually put less thought and care in curating the right sake for pairing with tempura, and they use the wrong kind of cheap generic mass produced sake for hot sake, and to top it off the warming/heating process is dubious at best. And of course very few tempura specialist places. For me I would be very particular about what sake I would want for warming, and how the restaurant handles and sources their sake for that purpose. A restaurant who puts in the effort to carefully warm the sake (eg in a hot water bath) and monitors the temperature (and knows the optimal temperature to serve, eg warm or hot) is rare these days.

There are some exported Sake that are great for warming, Iā€™ll list a few later.

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Okay, Iā€™ll change my posts. :wink:

Do you ask how a restaurant warms its Sake?

No mention of koji, my sake brotha?

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@TheCookie: Thank you for starting this thread!
Iā€™m excited to talk sake!

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Gotta keep it a bit simpler sometimes, but yes you are so right sake senpai!!

Thatā€™s what you get for me not being certified :sweat_smile:

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I think I am going to address these questions in short posts:

Let the learning begin!

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Agreed. The ā€œĆ©ā€ was/is used sometimes at the end of sake for the sake of differentiating from ā€œsakeā€.

Also in hopes that the pronunciation would more closely resemble the Japanese pronunciation ā€œsah-kehā€.

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Of note: in Japan, what we call ā€œsakeā€ is in most cases referred to as nihonshu ļ¼ˆę—„ęœ¬é…’ļ¼‰
Sake ļ¼ˆé…’ļ¼‰ is a catch-all for alcohol and also includes beer, wine, shochu, whisky.

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I wonā€™t go back and edit my title again. :slight_smile: But I do like using the ā€œĆ©ā€.

One neighborhood sushi problem would be when people order salmon sushi in Japanese.

In English it would also be written as sake, but some deliberately made the pronounciation shift a little to SHA-keh (emphasis on the first tone) to differentiate SA-keh. So people wonā€™t get confused if someone wants sake or salmonā€¦

The best part is when Hong Kongers in their Cantonese centric pronounciation call the drink sa-KAY and I try to maintain composure. It would sound like the way Mr Mackey in South Park say ā€œmmm-Kay?ā€

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I just read that yesterday. Good info.

Re: koji

Yeast consumes sugar and creates alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Rice does not contain sugar that is consumable by yeast.
Rice does contain starch.
Koji mold converts starch to sugar that can be consumed by yeast.

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One major pet peeve and limitation Iā€™ve observed, and Iā€™m sure this is prevalent in Southern California as well, is that a lot of Japanese restaurants, including sushi places, put together a sake list that focuses more on a wider spectrum. But it has the effect of throwing darts hoping some would stick on the board, rather than precision.

A lot of business owners and chefs, they get a lot of credit for at least doing the food right, and in some cases very, very well. However they themselves are not as knowledgeable on sake and rely on wholesalers/vendors/reps to come over to introduce new releases or updated portfolios to try, as well as those annual major food and beverage trade shows that are only open to industry people.

There are reps who really know what they are doing and serve the general population and a popular restaurant fairly well, and perhaps help them further with building the right sake list. The alternative is for restaurants to hire a sake somm, but that does not come cheap. Ultimately the business owner is faced with the challenge of selling the product, and training their staff to also go above and beyond to increase sales (but not being pushy), of which the latter is extremely difficult. I noticed this very recently at a place where the sake list is well thought out, but the staff were really clueless and had to ask me three times if I ordered a specific sake (of which their question of what I ordered was wrong).

Granted this is not an easy subject at all. Iā€™ve seen waitstaff attend the food and beverage trade shows where their employers want them to learn/experience, but ultimately what they do with that knowledge, how much they absorb, rate and willingness to learn, what they like vs how they can sell something they may not like but may work for the food and balancing that with customerā€™s needs, is also up to them.

The Japanese sensibility and way of doing business is on the premise of relationships where manufacturer (or harvester of the seas e.g. fishermen) want to make sure whoever is carrying the torch of a product from the wholesalers down to retailers not just takes good care of it, but also pass down the knowledge/deliciousness to the consumer. This is one key takeaway from the movie Tsukiji Wonderland, and in some ways I can see how some sake are so limited and sought after in Japan, and while the need for making money and expanding is important, so would be the ideals of treasuring the product in a way that a consumer truly appreciates what went into it, and maximizes enjoyment out of it by finding the right occasion, food, serving it at the sweet spot temperatures etc. Of course thatā€™s a silly thought for many consumers. This is where sake somms, izakaya, sake bars (in Japan) shine and do out of the box things, sometimes to slight dismay of sake brewers.

Which leads to warm sake and tempura. Sure you can ask how a restaurant warms its sake, thatā€™s a good start. The next would be what kind of sake they use to warm it. Itā€™s easier to actually try a variety of what the restaurants have to offer, then perhaps find a bottle that is great for warming, and try it at home (the right away) to compare.

If I take worldsake dot comā€™s portfolio, for example, and look at some sake that structurally would be excellent warmed up, unfortunately the restaurants that carry them are mostly sushi places. And it is possible they will likely just serve it cold/in an ice bucket, and may not have hot sake equipment (with thermometer)ā€¦you could ask.

So I suppose if you want to experience warm sake in Southern California, you need to find a place that is willing to offer it properly and it probably wonā€™t be a place that will also have tempura. Maybe some izakaya, so long as they have the right equipment. Kinjiro has a nice list, and they do have one warm sake that I really enjoyā€¦itā€™s Kenbishi Kuromatsu Honjozo, and their 180 mL is a great size. It does come in a specially designed bottle that will work in a microwave (though better in a hot water bath), and normally you should not microwave sake. Maybe Nijiya or some other Japanese supermarket might sell that, and itā€™s a great intro to warm cost effective sake. The other is Hakutsuru Toji Kan (Yamadanishiki) which looks like the new hot sake offering at Shunji, itā€™s very affordable everyday type sake by the bottle if you can find it retail (my local Nijiya has it), and you can definitely serve it warm/hot and it will be excellent too.

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