I want to apologize for missing my last post and not having something more topical for this post. I have lots going on so I have not been able to live up to my schedule. I was trying to complete my book: Brewing Sake – Release the Toji Within by the end of 2011while at the same time changing jobs. I didn’t make any of this work as planned.
I did get the book to the proof stage and am working through the proofs now. It is so exciting to see the proof. They are just a very limited printing of the book itself. Seeing the cover I designed and that I worked on with my son on an actual book is just about hart stopping. It took me over a day of adding little post-it notes in the book for things that needed to be corrected before I could bring myself to actually just write in the book. It is meant to be a proof right? It is meant to be marked up. Anyway, it should not be long now before I have completed it and it is available for sale.
I have a few ideas for future topics but they are not ready yet. One of the topics is sake oxidation. Many beer brewers that begin to brew sake are very concerned about oxidation and how to avoid it. However, many of the practices for making sake seem to actually encourage oxidation. This juxtaposition of concern and flagrant abuse confuse many brewers and so, warrant some discussion.
Another topic is the use of charcoal filtering. I need to do lots of work on this one but I have heard that there are 6 to 9 different types of charcoal that can be used to get specific types of results.
I am working on more information on special types of koji for making very high grade sake; that is the daiginjo. I have written about this before but need to firm up some of the details. Writing this last statement reminds me that sake brewing is done very differently by different people. One will insist on the need to stir the koji to break it up and get air to the koji while another, just as good brewer, will leave the koji in a single undisturbed bundle until done; creating one big clump that has completely grown together.
Another topic that I have worked on, off and on, but have not cracked yet is the different ways that sake brewing changes with different types of water; that is soft vs. hard water. The old stories of about how water differs across japan and how regions went from having, at best, so-so sake to having really good sake all hangs on learning how to brew with soft water. As this knowledge spread so did the number of areas with good sake. Despite this, it has been very hard to get the specifics of the differences. Well, I am pushing on this area again and believe that I will make more progress this time.
What would you like to know more about? Is there something you would like me to cover? Are you interested in writing a guest article? A little while ago Elise Gee provided an outstanding article. What is on your mind?