Sake Yeast – Home Brew Sake

To foam or not to foam, that is a question of the yeast?

Sake brewers have long used the appearance of the foam to tell the stages of the moromi’s progress (fermentation progress). The named stages are as follows:

Foam Stage	English Translation	Aprox. Timing
suji-awa (筋泡)	Muscle Foam	day 2-3 of Moromi
mizu-awa (水泡)	Water Foam
iwa-awa (岩泡)	Rock Foam
taka-awa (高泡)	High Foam	Day ~10 of Moromi
ochi-awa (落泡)	Falling Foam
tama-awa (玉泡)	Ball Foam
ji (地)	Land or Ground

Pictures for each of these stages as seen through the foam can be seen at the Daishichi’s site.

Continue reading “To foam or not to foam, that is a question of the yeast?”

More Sake Yeast

This article contains information on the yeasts that the Japanese Central Brewers Union collects and distributes.

Last week I wrote about sake yeast but the post got to be longer than I intended so I cut it short. I left off a little of the more commonly mentioned information about the yeast strains collected and distributed by the Central Brewers Union.

You may recall from the last post that back in the early 1900s the Central Brewers Union in Japan started collecting pure strains from particularly good batches of sake. The Central Brewers Union then made these pure strains available to all breweries. These pure strains where given numeric designations. So far there are from #1 to #16 and the low foaming strains. Many breweries now use these yeast strains but many also use of private strains. Continue reading “More Sake Yeast”

Sake Yeasts

Discusses yeast, sake yeast and what yeast need to do a good job fermenting.

Yeast: a single cell fungus whose activities have been known to man for far longer than we have known about yeast itself. We have evidence of yeast being used as far back as four thousand years ago in Egypt. They used yeast for both baking and brewing. Wine was also present in this period.

In 1857 Louis Pasteur proved that fermentation was the results of living yeast rather than a chemical reaction. In this work, Pasteur showed that as oxygen is added the growth of the cell count increases and fermentation slows. Not only did this show the significant of yeast but also its two distinct modes of operation: the aerobic and the anaerobic. In the aerobic mode, yeast reproduce by budding, a process of a child cell being created and split off from the parent cell. The anaerobic mode proceeds with little to no growth in the number of cells but with increased alcohol and CO₂ production. Alcohol and CO₂ are produced in equal amounts based on the following formula:

C₆H₁₂O₆ -> 2 C₂H₅OH + 2 CO_{2 Continue reading “Sake Yeasts”}

Basic Brewing Radio goes to Sake One!

A two part video of SakeOne, the kura and sake.

Basic Brewing Radio, on a trip to Portland, stopped by SakeOne and filmed their tour at the local kura (Sake Brewery). The tour is presented in two parts:

Part One, Jenifer introduces us to the sake brewery. She discusses the water, milling the rice and making the koji.

Continue reading “Basic Brewing Radio goes to Sake One!”