Sake is one of the most popular beverages on the market today.   Several years ago, there were only a few brands on the market.   Today there are hundreds of brands available for sale in the United States.   Despite the popularity of sake, it is perhaps one of the most misunderstood alcoholic beverages on the market today.

What is sake?  Anyone who has been to a sushi restaurant knows the answer, or thinks he knows.  There are several myths about sake that need to be dispelled.  For example: (1) sake is NOT rice wine.  While it can be enjoyed like wine, it is a fermented beverage, much along the lines of beer. (2) Sake is not distilled. The average bottle of sake is 15% ABV (3) Sake is best enjoyed slightly chilled or at room temperature.  Sake is heated usually to mask bad flavors.  (4)While most sake is produced outside the U.S., there are producers in country.

A person should approach sake using a point of reference familiar to him.  For example, a wine connoisseur may find a great many similarities in sake to his favorite wine.  A dedicated beer drinker may find that sake is crisp and refreshing like his favorite beer.  Essentially, however, sake is a beverage made from rice and water.  Of course, there are other elements involved such as the milling or polishing of the rice grain, the koji and yeast.  Yeast is the most obvious, because we know that yeast turns sugars to alcohol.  First, however, the starches in rice need to be converted to sugars.  That is where koji comes into play.

Koji is a special mold, cultivated fresh for each stage it is used in during sake brewing.  The mold contains special enzymes which break down the starches into sugars, so that the yeast added later can convert those sugars into alcohol.  As mentioned before, sake is not rice wine.  Instead it is similar to beer.  In the beer making process, barley is washed and soaked and allowed to germinate.  Once “malted”, the barley is soaked and washed, and the resulting sweet liquid is boiled and allowed to ferment with the addition of yeast.  Since the rice used in sake brewing is stripped of its hull in the milling process, germination is impossible.   The koji is used to break down those starches into sugars. The rest of the sake brewing process is similar to that of beer in that yeast are added to the mixture, allowed to ferment, then filtered and bottled.

Sake is classified by three major designations.  These designations tell the purchaser about the rice used in making this sake was milled.

• Junmai-shu means that the rice used has been milled or polished to the point where at least 30 percent of the grain of the rice has been removed, or at least 70% remains.
• Junmai ginjo-shu is sake that has had at least the 40% of the outer grain removed, or 60% of the grain remains.
• Junmai Daiginjo-shu is sake that has had at least 50% of the grain removed, or 50% remains.

There are similar designations for sake that has added alcohol; however the milling specifications remain the same.  Those designations are  Honjozo (70%), Ginjo (60%) and Daiginjo (50%). What does all this mean?  Basically these are designations used in the pricing of sake.  The rule of thumb in tasting any kind of alcoholic beverage is to find one that suits your palate.  The rest is relatively unimportant.

This brief article is meant to give the reader a small glimpse of the information that is available about sake.  For a drink that is steeped in tradition and has been produced for thousands of years, it is a basic understanding at best.