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CHAPTER 2

THE TEN THOUSAND METHODS: HOW GREAT SAKE IS MADE

SAKE-MAKING STEPS

The steps of sake making appear simple: wash and soak the rice, steam it, inoculate it with the koji-kin fungus, mash the koji with rice and water in multiple stages, press the resulting brew and bottle. But the chemistry is so complex and the skill required is so high that it’s a wonder good sake is made at all. Yet, walk into any liquor store in Japan, pull a bottle of sake off the shelf, and most likely you’ll end up with something that tastes good. How do brewers do it?

The saying sake zukuri banryuu means “ten thousand methods of making sake.” Throughout Japan, sake makers put their own spin on the process. Even within the same region, there are differences that come down to rice polishing ratios, yeasts, or fermentation times—all resulting in varied sakes. Heck, significant variations can be found between breweries on the same street! But the basic brewing framework is largely the same everywhere.

The process of making sake is a seemingly endless series of choices, with many of the steps occurring simultaneously and influencing each other. Some of the decisions are already made for the brewery, such as the climate and water supply. However, with climate-controlled rooms and complex water filtering, even those have become increasingly negligible. The brewery needs to decide what kind of sake it wants to make and then make choices during the production process that move toward that goal.

Polishing the Rice

First, the rice is polished to the desired percentage. Many breweries outsource the polishing process, as rice-polishing machines, which are several stories high, are expensive to buy, run and maintain. The machines also must be housed separately from the brewery so the powder from polished bran doesn’t accidentally mix with the fermenting sake. The outer layers of a rice grain are packed with vitamins, minerals, proteins and fats. While these might make rice taste good, they can adversely affect sake’s flavor. That said, some brewers might want the flavors produced by those outer layers. Outer layers are removed for ginjo and daiginjo, whereas breweries aiming for rich, full-bodied flavors keep the polishing to a minimum.

THE RICE-POLISHING REVOLUTION

“Early brewers were driven by a desire to make better sake, and realized that improving the rice polishing ratio was essential,” says Isao Aramaki, vice president and general manager at Kamotsuru Sake Brewing in Saijo, Hiroshima. Aramaki sits in a leather chair, the tea before him untouched. He’s too busy talking rice polishing.

Images of rice being pounded are among the earliest in Japanese art. Bronze bells from the Yayoi period (300 BC – AD 250) depict stick figures pounding rice to remove the husk and the bran. For the next 2,000 years, Japanese people would gradually develop better technology to polish those grains, taking unpolished brown rice to highly polished white rice, from stone mortar to wood, from foot-powered milling to water-powered milling, which polished the grains like never before.

It was in Hiroshima that rice polishing was revolutionized forever. In the Edo period (1603–1868), the region’s sake simply wasn’t as good as the booze flowing from Kobe’s Nada brewing district, where rice polishing contraptions powered by waterwheels helped produce truly delicious sake. But the Hiroshima town now known as Saijo would become one of Japan’s most famous brewing districts in the 20th century thanks to the advent of high-tech rice polishing machines. While Saijo’s good medium-soft water makes excellent ginjo sake possible, it doesn’t have anything to do with the town’s technological feats. “There is no direct connection between soft water and the development of the rice polishing technique,” says Aramaki. The main reason was the way locals embraced the new machine-driven tech. In Saijo, Riichi Satake started it all.

Riichi Satake, inventor of Japan’s first modern, mechanical rice polisher.

The son of farmers, Satake was born in the Saijo area in 1863. He excelled at school and was hailed as a child prodigy. In his teens, he began thinking there had to be a better way to polish table rice than the exhausting foot-pedal-powered method originally imported from China. During his 20s and early 30s, Satake oversaw public works projects, including the construction of train lines. He met Wahei Kimura, the founder of Kamotsuru Sake Brewery, by chance. The two struck up a friendship, and Kimura became a surrogate father to the younger engineer and inventor, who had lost his dad at a young age. In 1895, Satake began working on what would become Japan’s first power-driven rice-polishing machine. A year later, Satake had developed the “quadruple-mortar machine,” with custom parts he made himself. His first customer was Wahei Kimura.

This Hokusai woodblock print is taken from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. For sake making, brewers would harness waterwheels like this to achieve previously impossible polishing ratios.

Japan’s first power-driven rice polisher didn’t come out of nowhere. Hiroshima was rapidly industrializing by the late 19th century. In 1877, for example, a massive state-of-the-art textile factory opened in Hiroshima, outfitted with thousands of the latest English-made mechanical looms. By the late 1880s, Hiroshima was home to a large military base, so there were plenty of thirsty troops ready to drink locally brewed sake. In 1894, when war broke out with China, Hiroshima was connected by rail to Tokyo, providing a flow of troops into the city and, as Hiroshima’s sake improved, a way for Hiroshima brewers to reach larger markets; furthermore, the city’s harbor was bustling with boats. That fall, as the military conflict with China continued, Emperor Meiji and the imperial court temporarily relocated to Hiroshima until the following spring so the court could keep a closer eye on the war. Hiroshima was more important than ever.

The power-driven rice polisher was not invented in Japan, but in the United Kingdom, in the early 1860s. The country was not a major producer or consumer of rice, but untapped Asian markets offered lucrative opportunities. In 1888, the Engelberg Huller Company of Syracuse, New York also launched a smaller machine for grain hulling and rice polishing. With new technology flowing into Hiroshima, and inventive minds eager to embrace it and develop and adapt their own, it was not surprising that Hiroshima came up with Japan’s first power-driven polisher.

Riichi Satake handmade all the parts for his first rice polisher. At that time, the resulting machine was twenty times more effective than other manpowered rice-polishing contraptions.

“Satake’s power-driven machine paved the way for the development of the vertical rice polishing machine,” says Aramaki. As Hiroshima grew and modernized, Satake continued improving his rice polishers, developing a new abrasive roller in 1922. Everything changed eight years later in 1930 with the Vertical Abrasive Power-Driven Milling Machine Type C. Unlike horizontal polishing machines, which are used for table rice, the vertical design used gravity to drop the rice through the center chamber, which was outfitted with a center grindstone coated with carborundum. Horizontal polishing machines have the rice grains rub each other, but the Type C polished the grain with the abrasive center roller to achieve a 40 percent polishing ratio, removing 50 percent of the rice grain. In comparison, the water wheels of the previous generation, which helped make Nada’s sake the best in Japan, could only achieve an 80 to 70 percent polishing ratio, buffing away 20 to 30 percent of the rice. The Type C revolutionized everything and became the standard, resulting in more uniform, finely polished grains that didn’t chip or crack. The sake industry can be divided into pre– and post–Type C. Without it, ginjo-shu and daiginjo-shu as they’re now defined would not be possible. The Satake Machinery Factory, now the Satake Corporation, has become a global giant with a 50 percent share of the Japanese market.

All of which shows that Aramaki is right when he states, “We can say that the history of sake is the history of rice polishing.”

Satake continues to innovate, making advanced, high-tech rice polishers. The company is now a multinational corporation with branches and offices worldwide.

Kenbishi in Nada can do its own rice-polishing in-house. Many breweries cannot.

Polished rice at the Daishichi Brewery.

Rice used to be hand washed, but now compact machines like this at the Kamotsuru Shuzo Brewery in Saijo, Hiroshima make the job easier.

Not all rice polishing is the same, either. Typical milling results in little beads of rice for brewing. However, the starchy white cores in, for example, the Yamada Nishiki rice variety are not round, but flat spheres. If you cut open a grain of Hyogo-grown Yamada Nishiki, the starchy core looks like the filling in an ice-cream sandwich or a moon pie. If Yamada Nishiki is polished to 40 percent with a typical mill, the tips of each grain will be removed, but the midsection, with all its unwanted proteins and oils, remains. The flat rice-polishing method, devised by Tomio Saito of the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau in the late 1980s, aims to reduce that by polishing away the middle. The Daishichi Brewery in Nihonmatsu furthered that technique with its in-house method known as “super-flat rice polishing.” The average width of a Yamada Nishiki grain is 2.1 mm, and according to brewery president Hideharu Ohta, conventional rice polishing only brings that down to 1.9 mm. “So for Yamada Nishiki, with a 35 percent polishing ratio, lengthwise it’s actually polished to 20 percent, but the middle is only polished to 90 percent,” says Ohta. “It’s like you’re blending rice with two different polishing ratios.” Instead, the super-flat method can bring the width of a 2.1mm grain of Yamada Nishiki down to 1.5mm.

Washing, Then Soaking

The rice is washed to remove any fine powder (called nuka in Japanese) that may have been left on the grain during polishing, which would negatively affect fermentation, because the point of polishing is to remove the outer layers. Rice can be machine washed or washed as it’s piped through the brewery. The delicate grains of polished rice can be washed by hand or by hi-tech rice-washing contraptions.

After washing, the rice is soaked. Soaking slightly polished rice takes a bit of time, while finely polished ginjo grain soaks up water in minutes; the process is monitored by stopwatch. Brewers must make sure the grains absorb the desired amount. If the rice soaks too long, it becomes sticky once steamed, making it hard to work with during the koji making. Soaking is one of the most important steps in making sake.

Rice steams at Tamanohikari in Fushimi.

A brewer scoops out steamed rice at the Miyoshino brewery in Nara.

A peek inside an enclosed brewing tank.

Steaming

The soaked rice isteamed in a large tub or tank called a koshiki for around an hour. Water is not added, because the rice has already soaked in water and contains the necessary moisture. Ideally, the resulting steamed rice has a hard exterior and a soft inner core. The steam breaks down the crystalline molecular structure of the rice starch, setting the stage for the enzyme reactions that follow. Koji-mai is the steamed rice destined for koji making, while steamed rice that’s cooled and added to the main-mash is called kake-mai. Out of each steamed batch of rice, the breakdown between koji-mai and kake-mai is around 25:75, but a percent is also set aside for the yeast starter rice.

Koji Making

Steamed rice is high in starch, but doesn’t have enough sugars for yeast to eat and produce alcohol. Enter koji. In English, the word “koji” is used interchangeably to refer to the mold and the inoculated rice. In Japanese, koji-kin means the koji mold spores; in sake making, koji refers to rice inoculated with the mold. The term kome koji (rice koji) is also used, typically shortened to simply “koji.”

Around 20 percent of the steamed rice is cooled to 86–95°F (30–35°C) and transferred to a sauna-like room paneled with cedar or stainless-steel called the koji muro, where the temperature is 82–86°F (28–30°C) and the humidity is 80 to 90 percent. It is placed on a large table and covered with a cloth for a few hours so the temperature and moisture can equalize.

The steamed rice is unwrapped and spread out. Koji mold spores are then sprinkled over the rice; the mycelium will work its way inside the grain, seeking moisture in the starchy core. The rice is kneaded into a mound and covered with a cloth to prevent loss of heat and moisture. Another method is for breweries to sprinkle koji-kin on the rice as it comes down the conveyor belt on a cooling machine. For mass-produced sake, rice is inoculated mechanically with koji-kin spores as it passes through tubes.

Over the next 20 hours, the rice is unwrapped and kneaded twice more. When white mold dots the grains, the rice is moved into wooden trays or boxes. During the next eight hours, the rice is moved around in the trays, which are stacked and restacked in the koji muro to ensure uniform heat and moisture. Some breweries use cedarwood trays; others use plastic or metal. Koji for mass-produced sake can also be made in automated temperature-controlled koji chambers with large combines that turn the koji. There’s more than one way to make koji.

The chemical process continues to give off heat until the temperature surpasses 100°F (38°C). The koji muro becomes a sauna, fogging up your glasses and drenching your shirt, explaining why some brewers work shirtless and barefoot. Once koji-kin covers most of the grain and koji’s telltale chestnut aroma hangs in the air, the koji is removed from the room, spread out on cloths and raked. Some breweries make patterns in the koji to indicate that it’s finished, or to indicate which batch of sake the koji is slated for. Sometimes, however, the designs are just that—designs.

This is the traditional koji-making process. Another method is to place hand-inoculated rice in special temperature-controlled chambers that look like ovens. There are also automated machines that stir massive amounts of rice with giant rotators. Ultimately, what matters most is the quality of koji produced.

Yeast Starter

As previously mentioned, the Japanese word for yeast starter is moto (which means the “base” of sake), or shubo (which means “the mother of sake”). Good shubo means good sake, so brewers aim to make excellent (and healthy) yeast starter for brewing. This is why starter is used to create a small, pure yeast culture of lactic acid that protects the starter from undesirable bacteria. Lactic acid either propagates naturally or is added. The main starter styles are kimoto, its offshoot yamahai, and sokujo-moto.

Kimoto

Kimoto (literally “pure yeast starter”) is one of the oldest styles of moto still used, dating from the 1600s. There is no official definition of how to make kimoto, nor are there any regulations that define the style. Generally, it’s characterized by mashing the rice and koji together with the oar-like poles in a technique known as moto-suri (often translated as “grinding the yeast starter”) or the more evocative sounding yama-oroshi (“grinding down the mountain”), referring to the mounds of rice in the mixing tubs.

To start the kimoto process, steamed rice is wrapped in cloth and cooled for 10 hours. (This step is essential; if skipped, sticky, glue-like rice will result, leading to subpar starter.) Once cooled, the rice is mixed with koji and water in small tubs called han-giri oke. When the rice has absorbed the water, brewers begin the work of mixing by hand or with small paddles.

Depending on the brewery, the next day can start with moto-fumi (or “stepping on the moto”) when brewers cover their boots in plastic and stomp on the rice to help break up the clumps. Since modern sake rice is polished more (and thus is softer), many breweries skip this step in making kimoto. Next, the process of pounding the rice mixture with oar-like poles, which must be done every three to four hours, begins.

In the past, brewers sang songs to stay awake during late-night moto-suri; the rhythm and tempo of the song helped make sure everyone was moving in unison. Moto-suri is carried out until the mixture reaches a puree-like state. The puree is then put into a single starter tank, during which nitric acid is converted into nitrous acid; this, along with sugars from the koji and the low temperatures, inhibits the growth of undesirable wild yeasts. Microorganisms living in the brewery, as well as in the wooden tubs, also contribute to the kimoto sake’s flavor.

Temperature control is paramount. It is accomplished by placing small sealed containers filled with ice or hot water into the tank. Dakidaru canisters containing hot water are used to raise the temperature. (It’s also possible to use heating plates, but they don’t ensure the same even distribution of heat.) The mixture starts at 46°F (8°C) and is slowly raised to propagate healthy lactic acid bacilli. These bacilli create the lactic acid that prevents the propogation of undesirable bacteria, and produces an optimal environment for the yeast. However, the mixture is so acidic that it first inhibits the nitrate-reducing bacteria and then the lactic acid bacteria.

Koji making involves inoculating the rice with koji-kin, checking the aroma of the rice, and placing the koji-innoculated rice into wooden trays.

Toji Yuji Nakamura of Eigashima Shuzo inoculates just-steamed rice with koji-kin as it’s transported down the cooling machine. Nakamura is the only toji who is also a master whisky distiller. When not brewing sake, he’s making Eigashima Shuzo’s White Oak–branded whisky.

THE ELEGANCE OF TRADITIONAL SAKE

The Daishichi sake brewery is unlike any other in Japan, with vaulted ceilings, wood paneling and marble floors. Landscape paintings cover the walls, and beautiful sculptures adorn nooks and crannies.

Daishichi’s specialty is the kimoto method. It uses this starter for its full lineup of sakes, which all feature good acidity and excellent umami. They’re sturdy, well-put-together brews that, if stored properly, improve with age. “Sometimes we get calls from customers who turn up old bottles of Daishichi, wondering if they’re still drinkable,” says brewery president Hideharu Ohta. “Our reply is, ‘If we still had that sake here, we’d sell it at a premium price.’”

Located on a quaint main street in Nihonmatsu in Fukushima Prefecture, a town that is famous for furniture making, the current brewery was built during the 2000s. Over the course of several years, production was moved into this new structure from the old brewery so the microorganisms clinging to brewers and employees gradually made the move too. “With kimoto, it’s not just the yeast, but the lactic acid, in addition to the numerous micro-organisms, that make a sturdy sake.”

The first-generation owner, Saburoemon Ohta, founded the original brewery in 1752, making Ohyama- branded sake. The third-generation owner, Shichiemon, focused the family’s business exclusively on sake, using the kimoto method. The brewery’s eighth-generation president, Ohta’s grandfather, made the fateful decision to continue that tradition.

“My great-grandfather passed away young and my grandfather took over the brewery when he was only 16 years old,” says Ohta. “Around that time, sokujo-moto was invented. According to the government, sokujo was easier than kimoto and harder to mess up.” Countless breweries went under due to bad batches produced by the kimoto method, which requires superb technique and impeccable hygiene. “The government directed breweries to use the sokujo method, and my grandfather thought it might be the future.” The brewery became the first in the region to begin test-brewing the new quick starter. “My grandfather found that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make the flavors he wanted with sokujo, so he decided not to give up kimoto,” says Ohta. “Daishichi was quick to try sokujo and quick to say it was no good.”

During World War II, the brewery had to temporarily abandon the kimoto method because the brewers were enlisted to the army and there wasn’t sufficient manpower. After the war, Ohta’s father was keen to return to kimoto, but there still weren’t enough brewers, so he decided to try yamahai. “Yamahai sake, like sake made with kimoto, has personality, but it’s heavier and the acidity stands out noticeably,” says Ohta. With the yamahai method, the rice is left to dissolve, but according to Ohta, the starch might not completely saccharify, leaving a starter with a high percent of dextrin, which results in in a heavier sake. It wasn’t the Daishichi style, and the brewery soon returned to kimoto.

Later, I watch toji Takanobu Sato work a pole into a small stainless-steel tub of starter. His movements are controlled, but he’s not crushing the grains into a paste; rather, he’s moving them around into a puree. The Japanese word Ohta uses to describe the mixture is “sara-sara,” which is used to describe silky hair or smooth grains of sand. Looking closely, I see that the individual rice grains are intact as Sato carefully wipes the end of the pole and sides of the tub.

Around four weeks later, this finished starter will be taken to the main brewing room at Daishichi, where it is added to uncovered tanks. The in-house yeast is a foaming yeast, allowing the brewers to check on the fermentation progress. When the brew is ready to be pressed, the brewery has different options, including modern Yabuta automatic presses and traditional wooden presses.

“At first, when I was still in my 20s, I thought using sokujo would be better because it can easily make prize-winning sake,” says Ohta over a plate of sushi at lunch. “But by the time I was 30, I realized even though no one then respected kimoto, one day they would, and kimoto would again become the pinnacle of sake brewing.” Ohta knew Daishichi had to be ready. “I wasn’t sure if I’d be alive when that day came,” Ohta says. He pauses, takes a sip of warm sake. “I didn’t found this brewery. I’m following in the footsteps of those who went before. My father left this brewery for me, and I am going to leave something for the generation that follows.”

Brewery president Hideharu Ohta.

The sake-making process at Daishichi includes hoisting steamed rice into a cooling machine, innoculating the rice with koji, mixing it and wrapping it. Daishichi brews some of its most special sake in kioke wooden tubs. The oldest of these is about 90 years old and made from Fukushima cedar.

NIIZAWA BREWERY’S SUPER-PREMIUM, SUPER-POLISHED SAKE

It’s unseasonably warm for February. Patches of snow dot the soggy earth. Nestled against a lush green mountain, Niizawa Brewery’s metallic silo glimmers in the morning light as a monkey scampers across the clearing. Here in the remote reaches of Miyagi Prefecture in the north of Japan, some of the world’s most expensive sake is being brewed—costing upward of $1,000 a bottle—as well as award-winning budget sakes such as Atagonomatsu.

Iwao Niizawa, the burly fifth-generation head of the brewery, strides through the building as workers raise a net filled with freshly steamed rice. All the brewers are young—in their twenties and thirties. “Sake breweries are unfair,” he says bluntly. “They ask people to work for low wages so they can make a profit.” Niizawa is different. Brewers are paid a living wage and given the opportunity to manage the brewery’s subsidiary companies, such as its rice-polishing business. Promotions aren’t based on age or gender, but skill. The toji (head brewer), a 22-year-old woman named Nanami Watanabe, is speaking to other brewers through a headset to ensure they’re all in constant contact.

Niizawa, who took over the family’s brewery at the tender age of 25 in 2000, knows that greater age doesn’t necessarily make one a great toji—talent does. Niizawa was the youngest master brewer in Miyagi Prefecture, and the first not to belong to a toji guild. At that time, 90 percent of the family’s sake was inexpensive futsu-shu. But the younger Niizawa wanted to make delicious sake that would enhance meals. Once he started realizing his vision, sake lovers took notice. By 2005, Japan Airlines was serving the brewery’s Hakurakusei-branded junmai in Executive Class. Five years later, Hakurakusei was the official sake of the FIFA World Cup and being served to the world’s most famous musicians at the Grammies. Then, disaster hit.

On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake rocked the northeast of Japan, unleashing tsunami waves that left death and destruction in their wake. Fortunately, no one was killed. But the brewery was destroyed, as was its inventory. Niizawa moved to its current remote Miyagi location because of the prime, unspoiled soft ground-water.

Excellent water isn’t the only secret to Niizawa’s premium sake. The brewery has been blazing trails in rice polishing. In 2009, Niizawa released Zankyo Super 9, made from Kura-no-hana rice with a 9 percent polishing ratio, milling away 91 percent of the grain. Zankyo means “reverberation”; true to this name, its impact was felt throughout the sake industry.

Niizawa wanted to make a sake a transcendent experience. He used the brewery’s in-house rice mill to see just how low the polishing ratio could go. At that time, the number was 9 percent. In 2014, the brewery had reached Super 8. Two years later, Niizawa hit a seimaibuai (polishing ratio) of 7 percent. Polishing the rice alone took 350 hours. The super-premium sake won fans, but drew denunciation for the amount of rice that went unused. “People criticize the 7 percent polishing ratio because they haven’t drunk it,” Niizawa says. “It’s like explaining what a Ferrari is to someone who’s never driven one.” Super 7 also had copycats. “When we were the first to release the 7 percent,” Niizawa says, “everyone ripped us off.”

Things had turned into the sake industry equivalent of the arms race. Tatenokawa, the first junmai-only brewery in Yamagata Prefecture, released its own 7 percent super-premium sake called Shichiseiki (the name refers to a seven-starred samurai battle flag) in 2017. That same year, Tatenokawa released a sake with a 1 percent polishing ratio called Komyo, or literally “great achievement.” This was the first time a brewery had made sake from rice with 99 percent of the grain milled away.

Polishing rice down to these teeny percentages is costly. The brewers discard more than 90 percent of the grains, and thus have to use more rice to brew. Rice can also crack during the polishing process. Once the polishing ratio enters single digits, it becomes harder, though certainly not impossible, to use traditional sake rice.

Niizawa wasn’t content to give up the rice-polishing crown. “We’ve made a sake with rice that’s been polished even more—to zero percent,” he says. “It’s a limited release, with 500 ml (1 pint) going for 350,000 yen.” But how can the brewery release sake with a zero polishing ratio?

Released in November 2018, the sake was Reikyo Absolute 0 Junmai Daiginjo. “Reikyo” literally means “zero reverberation.” The reaction within the sake industry has been far from zero. But the name underscores the definitive and absolute quality the sake has.

Until July 1, 2019, Japanese tax regulations stated that decimal points for seimaibuai were always rounded down. So, for example, a polishing ratio of 6.9 would be 6 percent. Under the old regulation, when Niizawa reached 0.85, the sake’s label should legally read zero. “When we went to get the label approved, we were criticized for possibly leading customers astray,” says Niizawa.

It wasn’t Niizawa that was the problem, however, but the liquor regulations. “I wasn’t trying to mislead customers,” says Niizawa. “I was trying to be a rice-polishing pioneer.” His Absolute 0 sake showed that the old regulations needed updating, which they ultimately were. “Until then, I could sell my zero sake.” The rice polishing alone took over seven months, costing $200,000. Niizawa had too much invested to give up now. Since it takes so long to polish rice to this percentage, and since the window during which zero percentage sake could legally be labeled was so short, Niizawa knew he’d have the final word in the rice-polishing race. That he did.

Niizawa brewery’s shop and main office are located in Osaki, Miyagi Prefecture. Originally the brewery was located there too, but after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, it was destroyed. A new brewery was opened about an hour away.

Niizawa’s Hakurakusei Junmai Ginjo is reviewed on page 230.

The koji enzymes turn starch into glucose; yeast, whether introduced or ambient, will withstand the acidity and gobble up the glucose to make alcohol. These days, yeast is typically added to the starter mixture about 14 days after the process begins, but during the Edo period (1603–1868), ambient yeasts in the brewery naturally worked their way into the starter. Meanwhile, increasing amounts of lactic acid in the kimoto mix kill off unwanted bacteria and microorganisms, making a highly concentrated yeast culture. The increased acidity and alcohol levels make the lactic acid bacilli die off, leaving only the sake yeast. The whole process can take four weeks. The result is a robust starter ready to make durable and versatile sake.

The history of kimoto starter

Although kimoto dates from the 1600s, the word does not appear in that period’s brewing manual Domo shuzoki (loosely, “Brewing for dummies”), as the term had not been yet coined. Originally, it was called kanmoto (midwinter yeast starter). At that time, sake was made year-round, with different starters for different seasons. For example, bodaimoto (see page 24) was made in summer, because it thrived in hot weather. The kanmoto style, however, was tailored to saccharify the rice at low temperatures (41–42°F, or 5–6°C). But in 1673, the Tokugawa shogunate banned year-round brewing in a crackdown on sake making. In 1657, it had introduced a brewing licensing system known as sakekabu, essentially a “sake certificate,” which was required for a brewery to make sake. Once the system was instituted, however, the government would not grant new certificates. This allowed it to control the sake business and its rice consumption. Those who hoped to get into sake making had to either buy or lease a sakekabu from a mothballed brewery, although unlicensed sake continued to be made. The government also put a 50 percent levy on sake, causing a drop in production and a spike in prices, resulting in less sake to tax. In 1709 the tax was abolished.

Brewers at Kiku Masamune in Nada mix mounds of rice to prep for kimoto’s moto-suri step. Making kimoto is physically demanding.

However, the seasonal restrictions on brewing would shape sake making for the next several hundred years. It led to rise of the kimoto starter, which by the late 1800s was so dominant that it was known as futsu-moto or “standard yeast starter.” It also gave rise to the toji system, in which a toji (master brewer) and his workers would travel to a brewery, where they would live during the winter and make sake. Since the toji and his team were typically farmers, sake brewing gave them work after the harvest and often ensured that the folks who were making the sake had intimate knowledge of rice. This system worked well until the second half of the 20th century when sake sales dropped and brewery salaries fell with them. Young people left rural areas to live in cities like Tokyo and Osaka, and backbreaking work in cold, damp breweries lost its appeal in an increasingly wealthy country.

The earliest style of kimoto was developed in the Itami area, near Osaka, but was originally mixed by hand, not with oar-like poles. The late 17th-century brewing text Kanmoto tsukuri-yo gokuiden (The essentials of kanmoto brewing), which introduced Itami sake-making techniques, details how brewers mixed the starter using small hand-held paddles in small tubs in a technique called temoto, “hand yeast starter.” Even now rice and water are first mixed together by hand before being mashed with oars in the later stages. However, the pole-mixing technique, which turns the rice into a puree, is not mentioned in this text from the 1600s. That process seems to have been perfected in neighboring Nada during the next century, and it no doubt improved the quality of Nada’s sake.

Yamahai

Around 9 percent of all sake is made with yamahai-style starter. Developed in 1909, this technique omits kimoto’s laborious pole-ramming mashing process. “Yamahai” is short for yama-oroshi-haishi-moto, or “yeast starter that omits yama-oroshi.” Before the 1980s, yamahai wasn’t widely known; it started as an offshoot of the previous decade’s jizake (local sake) boom, which placed importance on older methods.

Process-wise, the difference between yamahai and kimoto happens in the first few days. For kimoto, the starter is mixed in multiple smaller tubs, while yamahai happens in one tank. Yamahai omits the mashing stage, but during the first few days brewers do mix the yamahai batch, using baseball bat–like poles to break up the rice so it can saccharify evenly. These initial mashing steps are how the kimoto and yamahai starter processes differ.

Note that there is also a spin on the yamahai method called kaisoku yamahai (high-speed yamahai) in which lactic acid is added to the yamahai fermentation tank. This isn’t a new process—it dates back over half a century—but it cuts the yamahai starter brewing time in half, saving time and money. Since yamahai doesn’t have a legally defined process, kaisoku yamahai enables brewers to feature the yamahai name, even as they sacrifice flavor nuances. Even with this shortcut though, flavors have more depth than typical sokujo-moto quick yeast starter, making kaisoku yamahai an interesting addition to the brewer’s arsenal.

This shubo yeast starter at the Kasumi Tsuru Brewery is made with the low-foaming version of association yeast No. 7. As is evident from this photograph, low-foam does not mean no foam.

A selection of kimoto sakes.

This Sakura Masamune kimoto sake is made with association yeast No. 1. See tasting note on page 232.

Maruto is a well-made kimoto from Nagano. See page 239.

Under current brewery head Yusuke Sato, Aramasa shifted to all its sake to kimoto. See page 215.

Are kimoto and yamahai different?

Yamahai is said to produce much gamier or wilder flavors than kimoto because it doesn’t use kimoto’s pole-ramming method, which affects saccharification, so more funky compounds end up in the starter. But according to Kazuhiro Fukumoto of the Kasumi Tsuru brewery—one of the few in Japan to brew exclusively with kimoto and yamahai starters—the difference between yamahai and kimoto is more nuanced.

“If you are making kimoto and yamahai, they end up resembling each other,” says Fukumoto. “That is if your brewery is like ours, and is trying to offer kimoto and yamahai at their best.” What he means is that at Kasumi Tsuru, there is a difference between kimoto and yamahai sake, but the difference is clearly understood. “Yamahai is easier to drink when freshly pressed, which is why we sell it that way,” says Fukumoto. “Newly pressed kimoto has a hard mouthfeel and a mineral taste, especially if the rice isn’t polished to less than 60 percent.” Kasumi Tsuru feels its yamahai is better young, while its kimoto can be put down for a year,. “But if the yamahai and kimoto are highly-polished ginjo or daiginjo sakes, there really isn’t this difference.” This discrepancy might be due to the way the fats and proteins in less-polished rice break down.

Tools called kaburagai are used to make kimoto. The ones pictured here are used by the Kasumi Tsuru brewery in Hyogo Prefecture.

This certainly doesn’t mean yamahai doesn’t age well. On the contrary, Philip Harper at the Kinoshita brewery (see page 127) is making excellent aged kimoto and yamahai sakes.

A selection of yamahai sakes.

Yuki no Bosha from the Saiya Brewery in Akita. See page 231 for tasting note.

This Tenon brew is a rich, well-balanced yamahai. See page 227.

The Furosen brand is synonymous with yamahai. Read the tasting note on page 247.

Sokujo-moto

Sokujo-moto starter is by far the most dominant yeast starter, used in 90 percent of Japanese sake. A lactic acid solution is added, so that the time needed to brew the starter is only two weeks. This is far less than the kimoto and yamahai methods; hence the name, which means “fast brewed.” The result is a clean, crisp sake.

Niigata brewer and researcher Goro Kishi conceived what would later become sokujo-moto. In 1894, Kishi published a technical manual on sake production that used science to explain brewing principles and to improve sake. At that time, the approach to making sake was shifting from the intuition of the toji to one based on empirical methods. Besides an in-depth look at soft-water brewing, which was invaluable to Niigata brewers, Kishi was the first to mention the addition of lactic acid to the yeast starter. Later, this idea was refined, and the National Institute of Brewing codified the sokujo-style starter in 1909.

Multi-step Brewing

The yeast starter makes up only around 6 percent of the total brew. So, much like concentrated juice or powdered milk, it must be evened out to create a full batch. This is accomplished through a four-day process called sandan jikomi, or “three-step addition.”

On the first day, steamed rice, koji and water are added to the starter. On the second day, known as odori (literally “dance”), the mixture is left as is so the yeast can grow. The next day, steamed rice, koji and water are added again. The fourth day sees another addition of steamed rice, koji and water. The sake mash, or moromi, is then left to ferment for up to four weeks.

A brewer at Eigashima Shuzo in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture, mixes the main mash.

Brewers at Yoshinogawa in Niigata stack bags of unfiltered sake mash for pressing.

Sometimes a “four-step addition” is used. Depending on the brewers’ aim, the fourth addition could be shubo, sake kasu (lees), amazake (sweet non-alcoholic sake), water or sticky rice. Ozeki, one of the country’s largest sake makers, even has a premium sake produced with a 10-step addition process.

Kai-ire: mixing up the brewing mash

One of the most common sights in a sake brewery is brewers jamming poles called kai into tanks and tubs of sake. This is called kai-ire, or “putting in the kai,” an essential part of the process that helps even out the mash, keeps a constant temperature and releases trapped carbon dioxide. Brewers have their own techniques for handling the kai and mixing up the mash. However, Shoichi Washizu, the legendary toji at Niigata’s oldest brewery, Yoshinogawa, figured out that by using massive tanks, the kai-ire process wouldn’t be necessary: so much gas would be created during fermentation that the mash would agitate itself during brewing. Others in the industry thought his plan would never work, but it did—and beautifully—allowing Yoshinogawa to keep prices low and production high. These fermentation tanks are as tall as three-story buildings. Each batch produces 5,000 isshobin (1.8-liter or 4 pint-bottles) of sake. “If you drank one isshobin everyday, it would take over 13 years to drink all the sake in one tank,” explains Yoshinogawa spokesperson Masayuki Yokomoto. While Yoshinogawa’s award-winning sake is very good, drinking an entire isshobin of it every day isn’t recommended, for obvious health reasons!

It’s easy to see why the fukuro-tsuri (hanging bag) style of pressing is also called kubi-tsuri, meaning “hung by the neck.” For more, see page 60.

Fresh sake passes through metal mesh.

Some daiginjo, typically pressed in hanging bags, is then added directly to 18-liter (5-gallon) glass jugs known as tobin.

Adding Alcohol

For certain types of sake, brewer’s alcohol is added right before pressing. Of course, it is not added to pure rice junmai sake. For more on brewer’s alcohol, see page 25.

Pressing

There are three basic ways to press alcohol once the fermentation is complete. One is by using an old-fashioned press called a sakabune (“sake boat”). Cloth bags are filled with sake, folded and stacked on each other in the rectangular sakabune box. Since only careful folding keeps the sake from spilling, even these initial steps take tremendous skill. Typically made from hard woods like cherry or gingko, these all-wood presses can impart a scent to the sake, which might impair certain brews. For this reason, some sakabune are lined with easy-to-clean material like stainless steel.

It can take up to three days to press the sake in the sakabune, after which all the bags must be cleaned. Most large sake breweries in Japan no longer use this method—though the Kariho Brewery in Akita has a whopping six sakabune in use! It’s not uncommon for smaller breweries to still use sakabune for various reasons. Some use them to achieve a certain nuance; for others, it is simply the equipment the brewery has (automatic presses are expensive!). These days, sakabune often sit forlorn and unused in the brewery, covered in plastic or moved to a permanent exhibit in the brewery museum.

DENSHU SAKE: THE RELENTLESS PURSUIT OF PERFECTION

A sprightly 59 years old, Tsukasa Nishida bounds through the Nishida Shuzoten Brewery in khaki pants and a pair of Adidas Stan Smiths. It’s not unusual to see a brewery president pulling double duty as toji, especially in a small boutique outfit like this. But Nishida isn’t the master brewer. His second gig is brewery worker, so he ties up canvas bags of steamed rice, pushes carts and cleans up. Don’t be fooled, though: he’s the one making the final call.

“The other brewers here don’t see me as the president,” Nishida says, taking a quick break after the morning brewing. When he’s working in the brewery, he’s just another hand. “But I have to be out here on the floor. That’s the only way I can know what’s really going on and make the necessary changes to improve what we do and what we make.” Nishida Shuzoten’s most famous sake is Denshu. Launched in 1974, the name literally means “rice-field sake.” The idea was that this was a brew made directly from rice. It was promoted and labeled as a junmai-shu, marking a return to the days when sake was made without any added alcohol.

Nishida Shuzoten uses interesting rice varieties, including Kojo Nishiki, a variety named in 1968 that was bred from the second-most-commonly used sake rice, Gohyakumangoku, and Benkei, a sake rice variety dating from 1924 that fell out of favor once Yamada Nishiki, the king of sake rice, arrived in 1936. What makes Denshu so good is that it is exceedingly balanced, with equal emphasis on in the rice, koji and yeast. There is umami and depth, but nothing overpowers or distracts. “The kind of sake that is popular these days is good for that first impact, but loses its luster the more you drink,” says Nishida. “Our sake is something that you can keep drinking, and it doesn’t get in the way of food, so you can finish the sake and your meal too.”

Tsukasa Nishida is all smiles after a long day of working in the brewery.

But Denshu wasn’t always this good. “When I came to this brewery in 1992, the stuff they were making was awful,” says Nishida. Denshu was cruising along on its brand name, not its flavor. “I knew things had to change.” Nishida, whose wife’s family owned the brewery, had been working at Toshiba in nuclear energy. “I never thought I was going to work here,” he says. “I wasn’t born into this brewing family.” He asked his father-in-law for a part-time gig. For the first three years, he was working in the brewery from the crack of dawn to 10 or 11 pm, staying overnight when necessary.

“My dad was a fireman,” Nishida says. Coming from a world outside the brewery he saw everything with fresh eyes. But he had to work harder than everyone else to catch up. While he didn’t have experience making sake, he did have loads of experience drinking it, and he knew that, at that time, Denshu was no longer up to snuff.

In November of 2004, Nishida took over the family business. “The toji in those days was getting old, and because what we made was still well received, he didn’t want to change anything,” says Nishida. “He was complacent, and I wasn’t.” Nishida asked him to step down, hiring a younger toji. “I’m never satisfied, and I always want to improve.”

Every year Nishida contemplates how they can make better sake. “If we make sake that’s only as good as the last, I think we can’t satisfy customers. We need to push forward every year.” But now that the brewery is making top-level sake, isn’t it getting hard to improve? “There’s always something you can fix,” he says. For example, he bought a new pressing machine because sometimes the batches would be ready to press at the same time, and one batch would have to be selected over the other. Investing in another Yabuta filtration press means that the brewery can now press every batch at the right time, ensuring they’re bottling the best sake possible. Over the years, continual changes—and investments—like this have improved the brews. “I didn’t get another press to increase the quantity, just the quality,” says Nishida. “I only spend money on improving quality. Customers want more sake, but if we increased production, then the quality might drop. If the quality were to drop, I wouldn’t want to make the sake.”

The sake-making process from behind the picturesque facade of the Nishida Shuzoten Brewery, including hoisting rice out of the steamer to place in the cooling machine, inoculating the rice with koji, and bottling.

The model here isn’t what the brewery has done before, nor is it another famous sake brewery. Heck, Nishida isn’t even thinking of Denshu and the brewery’s other brand, Kikuizumi, as mere drinks. He looks to France for inspiration—and not to the country’s wine industry. “France is famous for its bag makers with long histories,” he says. “What I’m aiming at is Hermès, not Louis Vuitton. The difference is that Hermès increases quality, while Vuitton increases production. Vuitton is no good, right? Me, I’m for Hermès.”

A collection of colorful Denshu bottlings. Denshu, however, isn’t the brewery’s only brand. On the far left is a bottle of Utou-branded sake.

The most common press is the rectangle-shaped accordion-style automatic press, which uses air compression to press the sake, leaving behind easy-to-clean sheets of sake lees between the mesh dividers. It’s faster, easier, doesn’t result in sake oxidation, and is the preferred method.

The Yabuta automatic press, invented in 1963 by Noburo Yabuta of Daiwa Sake Brewing, dominates the sake industry. It is also used to press soy sauce, rice vinegar and red bean paste.

In the fukuro-tsuri (“hanging bag”) style of pressing, bags filled with sake are hung so that the contents slowly drip out over the course of eight hours or so, with deeply elegant results. It’s also known as fukuro shibori (“bag pressing”) or shizuku-shibori (“drip pressing”) as well as the grim-sounding kubi-tsuri (“hung by the neck”). The modern version was codified in 1965 at the Kumamoto Prefecture Sake Research Center. However, it’s believed the style could be a modern take on a centuries-old method that made sumisake (refined sake). Bureaucratic records written on wooden tablets in the 8th century, unearthed in the imperial Heijo Palace ruins in Nara, mention sumisake. The assumption is that unfiltered sake, now called doburoku, was somehow run through a cloth. Since this gentle method isn’t ideal for large volumes, it’s often reserved for special daiginjo-shu.

A modern spin (literally) on the gravity-powered hanging-bag style of pressing is centrifugal separation, which speeds up the slow-drip method. Here, the sake is put into a stainless-steel centrifuge machine and spun around to press the sake. This produces a brew that is similar in character to drip sake. The process, was patented in 2005 and only around ten sake breweries own the pricey machine. Asahi Shuzo, maker of the brand Dassai, was the first in Japan to press its sake in this way.

A brewer at Miyako Bijin on Awaji Island wears a rain jacket while filling bags to press sake. To-be-pressed sake drips out of the spout as he folds the bags and stacks them one by one.

The old-fashioned tenbin shibori process at Miyako Bijin is helped along with a modern forklift.

The tenbin-shibori, or “balance press,” was common in the Edo period, but is now a rare way to press sake. Tenbin-shibori uses a sakabune-style press—bags of sake are filled, folded and stacked in a rectangular box. Unlike in modern sakabune, where the pressure is applied mechanically, the tenbin-shibori method uses rocks balanced from a beam to press the sake.

Miyako Bijin on Awaji Island is one of the few breweries in Japan that still uses this time-consuming method. “We had a sakabune and wanted to do something with it,” says brewery president Hirotsugu Hisada. The beam is kashinoki, a type of Japanese oak, brought all the way from Kyushu. During the late 19th century, when Japan modernized rapidily, much of the prime lumber, which takes over 100 years to reach suitable size, was chopped down for domestic needs and export. Finding strong, hard lumber of this size today is not easy.

Then, there’s the amount of time it takes to press the sake with the tenbin-shibori method. At Miyako Bijin, brewers spend an hour just filling all the bags with 1,000 liters (260 gallons) of unpressed sake. It takes 46 to 48 hours to squeeze it all out. During this period, brewers must move the weight and the position of the rocks on the beam to the correct balance so that the sake is uniformly pressed. “We have to do this slowly,” explains Miyako Bijin’s toji Kunihiro Yamauchi, “so that the bags don’t explode.” The whole process takes three days. In comparison, an automatic hydraulic press can squeeze 3,000 liters (800 gallons) of sake in just 12 hours. Tenbin-shibori is taxing, which is why Miyako Bijin only does it about seven times a year, using an automatic press for most of its sake. The effort is worth it. “Tenbin-shibori is more gentle than a modern sakabune,” says Yamauchi. “With tenbin-shibori, the sake is pressed slowly and delicately, so you end up with a very soft sake.”

This isn’t sake, but rather, bottles of Miyako Bijin’s brewing water. Sake makers are proud of their water and will often offer visitors a taste, or even bottle and sell it.

Miyako Bijin’s toji, Kunihiro Yamauchi, holds a cup of sake just pressed by tenbin-shibori.

The parts of a sake-pressing run

The initial sake that leaks through without any additional pressure is called arabashiri (meaning “rough run”). This happens before the pressing starts in a sakabune, as the sake-filled bags are laid on top of each other, or at the very start of the bag-hanging method. It’s called “rough” for good reason, but it’s certainly drinkable, and sake makers proudly bottle it.

The most desirable part of the pressing run is the middle phase, known as the naka-dare (middle drops), naka-gumi (the middle draw) or naka-tori (taken from the middle). It’s the heart of the press. When making premium ginjo-shu sake with the bag-hanging method, the middle cut is slowly collected drip by drip in glass bottles known as tobin, which means a “one-to bottle” (a “to” is an old measurement of volume corresponding the roughly 18 liters). The bottle has a small mouth, protecting the prized middle run from contamination and reducing air contact before sealing. The resulting sake, called shizuku-zake or shizuku-shu, is known for being both aromatic and subtle. Since the sake can slowly drip, drawn solely by gravity, flavors and compounds emerge, giving shizuku-shu complexity. All the time and effort that goes into the process comes across in the flavor, aromas—and the price tag. This ain’t cheap.

At the Taiyo Sake Brewery in Niigata, sake kasu (lees) are chopped into squares, weighed and bagged for sale.

When it comes to cleaning, hot water is used to clean tools instead of soap, which leaves a residue and impacts flavor. Pictured is the Kamotsuru Shuzo Brewery in Saijo.

Sake lees: the stuff left behind

The sake-pressing process leaves behind lees known as sake kasu. This by-product can be used to make a delicious winter soup called kasujiru, or to pickle vegetables, or as a marinade for fish or even to bake sake-kasu cake! The lees can also be used to make amazake, a sweet, low-or-non-alcohol drink. Typically, sake breweries have more sake kasu than they know what to do with. The modern automatic compression filter creates sheets of sake kasu that can easily be cut into pieces, bagged and sold.

Cleaning

If you visit a brewery, you’ll see someone is always cleaning something. This is to ensure unwanted bacteria don’t run amok and ruin the sake. In a country with a long-standing bathing culture and a native religion (Shintoism) centered on cleanliness, the incessant washing doesn’t seem out of place. During production, hot water is preferred, as it disinfects without adversely affecting flavor.

Filtering

All sake is filtered (except doburoku, see page 154) even nigori (cloudy) sake. Pressing sake filters it. Sake is typically filtered a second time to remove sediment and tweak the flavor. The filtering process may also remove the natural yellowish hue to give a crystal-clear sake. Filtering techniques can even out a sake, but may inadvertently reduce its character. This is why some drinkers prefer their sake muroka, or “unfiltered.”

Pasteurization and Bottling

Thanks to modern conveniences, such as refrigerated shipping, and technology like microfiltering that can rid raw sake of unwanted microorganisms, it’s easier than ever to enjoy unpasteurized nama-zake—at least in Japan, where sake makers have a close relationship with retailers and can ensure that a shop’s stock is properly stored and old bottles are switched out for fresh ones. But some brewers want fresh, nama-like aromas and flavors without the worry of dealing with unpasteurized sake, which will go bad if not properly cared for once it leaves the brewery.

In Japanese, pasteurization is called hi-ire. Bringing the brew’s temperature to the neighborhood of 150°F (65°C), will rid the sake of potential nasty bacteria as well as inactivating enzymes, changing the sake’s character. Pasteurization can be done prior to storage, right before bottling or once bottled. Originally a Chinese technique, pasteurization was utilized at least three centuries before Louis Pasteur. The Tamon-in nikki (Tamon-in diary), an account of Buddhist priests in Nara in the 1560s, mentions sake being boiled. Buddhist priests who traveled to China for religious studies often brought back the latest learning; it’s very likely they brought back this practice, too.

Bottles of sake are pasteurized in hot water under a watchful eye at Hayakawa Shuzo in Mie Prefecture. As the temperature rises, so does the sake in the bottles. To cool them, a sprinkler sprays them with water, bringing down the temperature. Hayakawa Shuzo is known for its Tabika brand.

There are several different methods of pasteurization. One is to run sake through a pipe immersed in hot water. Another is to move the sake through a series of metal heating plates, bringing the brew up to 158°F (70°C) in a second or so. Another is to put bottled sake into a pasteurizing machine. The bottles move through on a conveyor belt, getting heated and then sprayed with water to bring down the temperature. This machine helps make sure all the bottles are evenly pasteurized, but it isn’t cheap, costing around $70,000.

A VISIT TO HAKUTSURU: JAPAN’S BIGGEST-SELLING SAKE BREWERY

“The temperature in here is the same as the average for November,” says Mitsuhiro Ban, toji for all three of Hakutsuru’s Nada breweries. I think it must be colder, though—I can see my breath. The third floor of the brewery is all shiny metal and grated walkways and looks like something out of a sci-fi film. Greenish tubes pipe in the koji and white tubes shoot steamed rice into the metal vats.

“Forty percent of all our sake is made in this brewery,” says Ban, who’s friendly and upbeat, speaking in the local dialect. The brewery has the rather ho-hum name of 3-go kojo (Number Three Brewery), but what goes on here is nothing short of remarkable. “The Number Three Brewery makes around 5 percent of all sake produced in Japan.” Fully 5 percent—right here. Over a hundred million gallons. That’s staggering. The brewery’s most famous sake is its Maru brand table sake. Moments earlier, we toured the floor above, where Yamagata-grown table rice polished to 78 percent is washed and soaked in big metal vats—3.5 tons of rice in one go—before being steamed on conveyor belts. Every day, this brewery steams 25 tons of rice.

The rap on mass-produced sake is that an operator sitting at a control panel simply presses a button and, bam, sake is made. In fact, there is a big panel with lighted buttons, but the operator —or rather, the brewer—walks over to the steamed rice, picks up a handful and rubs it on a wooden board to test the elasticity. “We might need to change the steaming time a little,” says Ban, stretching the rice in his hand. “Here, let me show you how the koji is made.”

I stick my face up against a small enclosed metal compartment with a glass top. Inside, a mechanical rotary flicks up koji spores that are sent down a tube into another tube carrying steamed rice, inoculating the grains in the process. The rice is transported to massive automatic, temperature-controlled koji machines with large combines that mix it as necessary. The koji is then moved and mixed with the steamed rice and the yeast starter in the third-floor tanks. And there is the hand of another brewer, who mixes each one with a long metal pole. This is mass-produced sake, but not devoid of the human touch. The process shows how a brewery can churn out huge quantities of sake.