Back in the swing of things

It has been awhile since we really brewed. I've had some sake going for a little bit, but the last time we brewed beer was in March. Now that we're home for the weekends for awhile, we've finally picked it back up.

As of this afternoon, we have fermenting:

Strawberry sake
Peach sake
Blackberry sake
Hard apple cider
Pale ale
Wheat ale
Blueberry soda
Wheat beer on wine yeast
Blueberry wheat beer on wine yeast

Not bad, eh?

sparkling

Today we kegged the very experimental sparkling raspberry sake.  

This is traditionally made sake supplemented with three pounds of local raspberries.  The fruit was frozen from last summer, pasteurized to remove bad things, and added with 16 ounces of its own juice into a fully fermented and clarified sake.

The result is a deep red, slightly tart beverage with a very raspberry nose.  The light, floral character of sake is still present, although very muted.  In its uncarbonated state, the raspberry flavor is almost too much, but I think this will lighten up when it is bubbly.

The ABV is questionable, but is probably going to end up being around 12-15%.  This is a little higher than I'd like, but will still make for a nice, refreshing, sipping beverage for hot summer evenings.

so, how about that sake?

It seems that I gave up on posting about the sake, but do not fear!  The sake has been doing its thing, and we actually have results.

Batch 1 is finished, pasteurized, and bottled.  It turned out almost as colorless as water, and very, very clear.  It tastes wonderful too.  I've already shared some with the homebrewers and one certified judge, and everyone thinks it's quite delicious.  I must admit that I thought it would be too dry, but at room temperature it has a delicate floral aroma and the dryness is barely noticeable.  I would claim success!

Batch 2 is about three weeks from being bottled.  It is noticeably yellower (a side-effect of lower quality rice and a higher fermentation temperature), but it smells good and seemed to ferment out without a problem.  I'll give it a sample the next time I rack it.

sake update

A little over a week ago, I finally transferred my sake from its first set of clarifying jugs to a second set.  For various reasons that mostly include being too busy and then too tired and lazy, this step happened almost a week later than it should have.  I don't think it will have any adverse affects, but Sam is skeptical.

DAY 51
Rerack to two 1-gallon jugs
Add 32 oz R-O water (16oz each)

The reracking allowed me to get the more clarified liquid off of the less that had settled out, and allowed me to adjust the alcohol content a bit by adding water.  Assuming I did most everything correct, my sake without water addition would be about 20% ABV.  I would like to drop that down to about 16%, so adding water is necessary.

The second batch is fermenting happily, and I got it in just in time.  With all the warm weather we're having, it is going to be difficult to keep the fermenting vessel cool enough, even in my basement closet.

the second time

As if 2.5 gallons of sake wasn't enough, I've recently started a second batch.

This second batch will be the same as the first except for two things.

1) I used some of my koji for an amazake experiment a few weeks ago, so my batch will be a little smaller.

2) I'm going to use rice that is not officially sake rice.

The rice I used last time had to be special ordered from Oregon, and although the rice itself was not that expensive, the shipping was.  So I contacted the supplier of the bulk sushi rice for the co-op, Lundberg Family Farms, and asked them about their rice.  It turns out that their rice is Akitakomachi, a very good variety for sake brewing, and it is milled down 36%, which is at the high end of where you want your sake rice to be, but should still produce decent sake.

The first batch of sake is still in secondary bottles, and the sediment is slowly settling.  Should be ready to drink in another month or so.

hand-pressed

The excitement of brewing sake has sort of been overshadowed with work and the new dog, but luckily it didn't need a lot of help to ferment for the past couple of weeks.  I basically let it sit in my closet where it bubbled away happily until Tuesday.

Tuesday was Valentine's Day, but Sam and I spent all evening moving beers to secondary containers and pressing sake.  My directions say to use a wine press, but all of my friends' presses are large and cumbersome to transport.  So I did it the old-fashioned way - with my hands.  And let me tell you, my hands were tired by the end.

However, I did manage to successfully gain 2.25 gallons of approximately 20% ABV unfiltered sake.  It is not finished, however, as it looks like milk and will take several more weeks to fully clarify.  While it may appear unappetizing, it smells wonderful.

DAYS 18-28
Ferment in 50 deg closet

DAY 29
Press with fine-mesh nylon bag
Yield: 2.25 gallons
Secondary in one-gallon jugs with airlocks

DAY 30
Bubbles overflowed airlocks
Put blow-off tube on one jug

DAY 32
Removed blow-off
All looks well

overflow

I feel like I'm playing musical chairs for the past few days with my sake.  Ideally, my sake will ferment at 45 degrees in a dark place.  Do you have a 45-degree closet in your house?  I don't.

But I do have a 52-degree closet.  And as of Monday, I have a 52-degree closet with a sticky floor.  The sake ferments quite rapidly in the first week after the last addition, and the high temperature made it even more vigorous, to the point of overflowing the bucket.  I stirred on Monday morning, and when I went back on Monday night, there was a mess of sticky bubbles on the floor.

Since then, I have been moving the bucket around my house in accordance with the weather.  On cloudy days it lives on the back porch, on sunny days when the back porch heats up too much it lives on the front porch, and at night it either goes back in the closet or stays on the back porch, depending if the weather is getting much below freezing.  Luckily, it takes really cold weather for four gallons of liquid to freeze, and it's been downright balmy here lately.

DAYS 14 - 17
Stir twice a day DAYS 14-15
Overflow on DAY 14 (52 deg)
Attempt to keep 45 deg

brew days

But of course, just because I've been occupied with sake for awhile doesn't mean I've forgotten beer.  Two weeks ago we brewed a Pale Ale and a Brown Porter.  Today we brewed a Red Rye and an Oatmeal Stout.  Within two months, we'll again have well-stocked beer shelves.

DAY 13
Stir twice, 12 hrs apart
Bubbly, foamy, and sweet smelling (48 deg)

and then we rest

The college Ultimate season is upon us, and practices for the UW-L Women's Ultimate team start this week.  This means that Sam and I have practices and workouts to plan and attend.  It also means that, once again, we will be busy for almost every night of the week.


It's really a good thing that the time-consuming parts of sake brewing have now come to an end.  From here until the primary fermentation is complete (3 weeks-ish), I do nothing but stir a few times and make sure nothing funky is happening.  The most difficult part will be trying to keep the sake at a temperature as close to 45 deg as possible.  I think I will be moving the fermenting bucket back and forth from my three-season porch during the day to the basement closet at night.  Here's hoping I don't trip carrying 4 gallons of liquid up and down the basement stairs.


DAY 12 (Tomezoe - final addition)
Drain soaked rice from DAY 11 for 1 hr
Steam rice for 1hr
Fluff and cool rice for 20 min
Mix rice and 6 cups cold water from DAY 11
Add cooled rice to mash (55 deg)
Stir and place in cold, dark place
Stir again 12 hrs later

beer vs sake

Last night I went to a release party for Bell's Hopslam, an incredibly delicious beer that we wait for every year. A group of homebrewers all sat together, and naturally, talk turned to what everyone was brewing at the moment.  Of course, I said I was brewing sake.

The thing with homebrewers is that many of them are engineers (at least in La Crosse), and many of them like to know all of the intricate things about brewing anything.  So when I have to talk to a homebrewing engineer about brewing sake,  I should know what I'm talking about.  I am not that detail-oriented, however, and I still have a very rudimentary knowledge of how the processes work for brewing sake.  So this is what I say.

"Basically, when you brew beer, you throw together the wort, yeast, and water all together.  The yeast works aerobically for a day or so building itself up, and then switches to anaerobic action for the rest of the ferment to produce alcohol.  When you brew sake, you buildup the yeast (aerobic), use koji to pop open the rice and make the starches and enzymes available, and the yeast then uses the starches and enzymes to make alcohol (anaerobic).  This is done is a cycle: yeast buildup, koji addition, rice addition, and repeat three times."

This never satisfies them, but I hope to be able to speak a little more in-depth about it by the time I bring my sake to a meeting.  I have two months to figure it out...

DAY 11 (Nakazoe - middle addition)
Wash 6 cups of rice in tap water for 15 min
Soak rice for 1 hr
Drain rice for 1 hr
Steam rice for 1hr
Fluff and cool rice for 15 min
Mix rice and 4.25 cups cold water from DAY 10
Add cooled rice to mash (55 deg)
Stir and place in cold, dark place

Prep for Tomezoe
Add 3.5 cups koji to mash
Add 10 cups R-O water to mash
Put 6 cups R-O water in fridge
Rinse 10 cups rice in tap water for 30 min
Soak rice overnight

Mash smells like bananas and is very bubbly.

bard-a-thon

La Crosse is once again home to Bard-a-thon - seven days of around-the-clock Shakespeare readings at the Muse Theater.  Last night I attended the reading of Othello and was given the part of Montano, a governor who tries to keep the peace and then gets stabbed.  The great thing about Shakespeare tragedies is that pretty much everyone ends up dying in the end.  Othello is 2.5 hours of chatting, which leads to 5 minutes of killing everyone off.

My favorite aspect of Bard-a-thon is the joy of finding old references to phrases still used today.  A few of last night's examples include: the beast with two backs, crocodile tears, and green-eyed monster.  A new term I learned is "pottle" or "pottle-deep."  A pottle is a two-quart drinking vessel; so when you're pottle-deep, you're quite drunk!

DAY 10 (Odori - dancing ferment)
Stir in the morning
Bubbly and active at 57 deg
Add 2.25 cups koji to mash
Add 4.5 cups R-O water to mash
Put 4.25 cups R-O water in refrigerator

meditation on rice

There is something incredibly calming about washing rice.

DAY 9 (Hatsuzoe - first addition)
Bring mash temp down to 55 deg
Wash 2.5 cups rice for 15 min
Soak rice for 1 hr in cold tap water
Drain rice for 1 hr
Steam rice for 1 hr
Fluff rice and leave to dry for 10 min
Cool rice to 60 deg with 1.25 cups water from DAY 8
Add rice to mash and stir for 5 min
Place fermenting vessel in dark, 55 deg closet

grechaninov

Just in case you're planning a trip to La Crosse, my choir is performing Grechaninov's "Passion Week" at St. Mary of the Angels Chapel on February 11th and 12th.  It is an intense piece of Russian church music with incredible bass lines and surprising chord progressions that will sound amazing in the acoustics at the chapel.  In addition, I'm in the small group performing one of the movements!

DAY 8
Bring temp of mash down to 55 deg
Add 7.30 oz koji to mash
Add 1.5 cups R-O water to mash
Set aside 1.25 cups R-O water in refrigerator

snow biking

Winter this year has been very odd.  I was riding my summer bike all the way through until the beginning of January because we had warm temperatures and zero snow.  Then we were blasted with below zero temperatures, and now we're consistently snowy with some sunny days to turn the snow on the streets and sidewalks into mush.

At the first snowfall, I put my summer bike away, and only rode my winter bike when the roads were really clear.  Today, however, I biked to the YMCA when the streets were still very much snowy.  And you know what?  It was so much fun!  I slid around a bit, but I never felt like I was going to fall over.  In fact, I started purposely going through larger snow piles to see how I'd do, and it was easy.  Forget the bus; I'll be biking all winter!

DAYS 6-7
Stir and check temperature twice a day.
Temp stable around 70 deg.

the pure stuff

According to the old German purity laws for beer (Reinheitsgebot), beer must be made with only water, barley, and hops.  While these old laws have long since been repealed, they established the basic recipe for what we consider to be beer.

Japan has similar laws for determining what can be classified as what type of sake.  What I am making is junmai (pure) sake which includes only water, rice, yeast, and koji.  Other types include those with liquor added back in, fruit sake, and sparkling sake.

DAY 4

Stir twice, 10 hrs apart

Check temperature: 71 deg

"Smells like bread," says Sam.

Less solid, more liquid.

temperature flux

Sake is traditionally made in the winter.  This is because it requires low temperatures (45 deg) for fermentation, and refrigeration was non-existent until relatively recently.  It was always easier to heat up a room in the winter than cool it in the summer.

I used this logic for brewing my sake as well.  My house is warm, my basement is a bit colder, and outside is very cold.  I thought that I could move my fermentation vessel around based on the required temperatures.  I did not figure in the fact that my house is 63 deg, the first week of fermentation should be 75 deg, and the the temperature on my back porch is 2 deg.

This presents some challenges.  To heat up the mash, I have put the vessel directly in front of a heating vent.  I can get the temperature up to 71 deg this way, which will have to do.  Next week I'll have to cool it down, and I'm hoping that the coldest closet in my basement works for this, or I'll have to figure out a way to insulate the vessel and put it on my below-freezing back porch.

DAY 3
Stir twice, 12 hours apart
Check temperature: 71 deg
Smells like yeast and a tiny bit of alcohol

the saga of the rice steamer

I have an electric rice cooker, and I love it.  I can put my rice and water in the pot, set the timer, and it will be done when I need it.  This is not, however, a rice steamer.  In a rice steamer, the water and rice are separated by a perforated layer so that the rice is never boiled, only steamed.  Good luck finding one.

A large rice steamer is necessary for making sake because steaming rice cooks the rice without making it so gooey and sticky.  The individually separated grains of rice have more surface area to interact with the  koji and yeast, and are therefore more productive.

However, getting a rice steamer proved to be a bit of a hassle.  I borrowed a rice steamer that was too small, I attempted to rig up a steamer using the things I owned around the house, and finally, I scrambled to the local Asian grocery to buy an overpriced authentic rice steamer while my rice was draining at home.

DAY 2: Shubo (yeast mash)
- Smack yeast pack
- Wash and rinse rice (12 oz) several times with cold tap water to remove starches (15 min)
- Cover rice with 2 in of cold water and steep for 55 min
- While rice is steeping, add yeast to the 2 cups of prepared water from DAY 1 (61 deg, 1 hr)

- Run to bus stop, miss the bus, go back home
- Drain rice for 1.25 hrs
- Run to bus stop, make bus (yay!), buy rice steamer, take bus home

- Clean rice steamer, start water boiling
- Lay down cheesecloth and layer rice evenly in steamer, steam for 1 hr
- Add koji (4 oz) to yeast/water mix (62 deg, 1hr)
- Check water level 30 min into steam

- Remove rice from steamer and "fluff" to separate and cool grains
- Add rice and chilled 1/2 cup water from DAY 1 into fermentation vessel (5 gal bucket)
- Stir and make sure temperature is below 75 deg (69)
- Add yeast/koji/water mix and stir slowly for several min (67 deg)
- Place in warm dark place and try to get temp to 72 deg
- My house is 63 deg, so 80 deg water bath in laundry tub to raise temp (2x)

- Move to lighter but warmer spot in front of heat vent
- Stir before bed (70 deg)

and we begin...

...to make sake!

I've been wanting to brew seishu, or refined Japanese sake, for quite some time.  It seemed like a natural progression for me after dabbling in wine and winning a medal for beer.  Of course, the fact that I enjoy sake doesn't hurt, either.  Here we go!

DAY 1: Prepare for shubo (yeast mash)
- Remove yeast from refrigerator 24 hours in advance of mash-in.
- Move koji (inoculated rice) to refrigerator from freezer.
- Prepare water by combining:

2.5 cups reverse osmosis water
1 teaspoon 88% lactic acid
3/4 teaspoon yeast nutrient
1 1/4 teaspoon Morton's Salt Substitute
Pinch (less than 1/8 teaspoon) Epsom salts

- Cover and chill 1/2 cup of prepared water in refrigerator overnight.
- Cover remaining 2 cups of water and leave at room temperature.