Dassai 23 makes the list due to its extraordinary popularity. The brewery only makes junmai daiginjo sake, and this is one of their premium products. The 23 is the percent of rice remaining after milling. And all that polishing is for a reason: Dassai 23 is super-light and smooth.
A wide range of fruity and floral notes jump out of the glass. Dassai 23 is meant to be served chilled. A wine glass is great for highlighting the beautiful aroma. A smaller cup will present this premium sake in a more subdued fashion. Yoi no Tsuki is a geeky daiginjo. The tiny Iwate brewery that makes it headed by a female brewer.
And she takes the unusual and awesome path of distilling her own jozo alcohol and brewing with mochi rice. Yoi no Tsuki is a pretty sake, but it has some interesting earthy elements too. The flavor is slightly dry and compact. Tasting notes include raspberry, melon, fresh and dried flowers, wet concrete, and sour rice.
This daiginjo is fantastic when served chilled. As always, a wine glass will showcase the aroma better, whereas a smaller, traditional cup will make for a sweeter, lighter tasting experience. Konteki Daiginjo is a Fushimi, Kyoto classic. This is a textbook Fushimi sake: fruity, floral, soft, and smooth. Konteki is fairly aromatic.
Tasting notes include mango, banana, apple, fresh flowers, and anise. Like most daiginjo sake, Tears of Dawn shows best with a mild chill. White wine glasses are great for making the most of the pretty bouquet. As mentioned, sushi and Konteki are a great match—especially nigiri.
Nigori, or cloudy sake, is probably the most popular subcategory of sake. Nigori can be any grade: junmai ginjo nigori, honjozo nigori , etc. They are always filtered, but later, rice is placed back into the sake. The more rice, the cloudier it will be. Daishichi is a legendary sake brand from Fukushima. They are considered the kings of kimoto sake. This laborious, old-school brewing technique is the only way they make sake. And the result are products with lively, sour, and complex profiles.
Yukishibori is unpasteurized namazake AND brewed with the kimoto method. This is a recipe for vibrancy. This is not a beginner nigori. Daisichi Yukishibori tastes best with a slight chill. Small cups like ochoko will tame some of its wild edges.
Wine glasses work great if you want to experience this sake head-on. This Okayama brewery makes a variety of alcoholic beverages, including the famous Doppo beer brand.
And that comes down to one thing: complexity. A lot of nigori are one-dimensional. Miyashita has that classic ricey-sweetness but is also lactic, floral, tropical, and sour.
Rihaku Dreamy Clouds is an usu-nigori , which is a lighter, less cloudy style. This is another serious sake masquerading as a nigori. Dreamy Clouds is firm, nutty, fruity, and elegant. It has a mellow aroma and a slightly dry taste. Tasting notes include green apple, melon, lemon zest, fresh flowers, cashew, steamed rice, and kabocha.
Definitely serve Rihaku chilled. It looks great in a traditional cup, but I prefer this usu-nigori in stemware. Gozenshu is a cool sake brand made by Tsuji Honten of Okayama. They make some really good sake, including a number of super old-school bodaimoto brews. This ancient style of mash starter has mostly died out. The ones that do exist tend to be wild and funky. Yet Gozenshu bodaimoto is somehow elegant and clean. This junmai usu-nigori is lively, powerful, slightly sweet, and sour.
It has a ton of fruity notes like underripe melon, green apple, pear, and lime zest. It also has aromas and flavors like fresh flowers, chalk candy, sushi rice, and mineral.
This section features sake with above-average intensity. It could be subdivided into two categories: unpasteurized namazake and funky natural sake.
This makes it less shelf-stable, but also much more vibrant. A lot of breweries release nama in the spring at the end of the brewing season. These seasonal sake are bold and acidic. Some breweries make these year-round. I include both types below. But it beats sake brewed with native fermentation , which is bulky and few people understand. Most sake are brewed with specific strains of sake yeast. Spontaneous fermentation with ambient yeast is rarely attempted because sake spoils too easily.
Every year I eagerly await the arrival of this spring nama. And so do many other sake enthusiasts and professionals.
Shichi Hon Yari Junmai Namazake is intense and wine-like. It has a modest aromatic intensity and a bold, acidic taste. Notes include green apple, watermelon, banana, honey, wet concrete, steamed rice, and dried shiitake. The finish is long and bitter. Narutotai is a year-round namazake that packs a punch.
Its metal packaging looks like a sake tank and if you drink too much you might feel like you fell in one. The reason for this is that this genshu sake comes in at Drunken Snapper is fragrant, fruity, fat, and floral. It is also dry and very fresh. Tasting notes include melon, lemon peel, fresh flowers, sour rice, and perfume. Narutotai is best served cold or chilled. If you find it too intense, a small ochoko is a cup that can take some of the edge off. Select personalised ads.
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In Japanese, the word for what we refer to as sake is nihonshu. Language lesson aside , we will be referring to this wonderful beverage as sake in this article to keep things as simple as possible. One of the best things about sake is that there are so many different types and variations — but this variety is also overwhelming to sake newbies! But if you want to start with the basics, here are some key concepts and terms that will help you wrap your head around this delicious drink.
One of the first steps in sake making is the polishing of the rice. To get some perspective on rice polishing, keep in mind that to get from brown rice to white rice, you need to polish rice to about 90 percent i. To produce good sake, you need to polish off much more than that!
So if you read that a sake has been polished to 60 percent, it means 40 percent of the original rice kernel has been polished away, leaving it just 60 percent of its original size. The more rice has been polished, the higher the classification level. Ultimately, you should trust your own palate and preferences. Junmai is brewed using only rice, water, yeast, and koji — there are no other additives, such as sugar or alcohol.
While junmai sounds like a good thing and it usually is! Additives such as distilled brewers alcohol are used by skilled brewers to change and enhance flavor profiles and aromas, and can make for some very smooth and easy-to-drink sake. Your understanding of polishing and junmai from above will help you see the differences between the various types of sake.
Along with a good cup, this information is all you need to enjoy some sake tasting at a specialty sake shop, bar, or izakaya. You can classify sake by several factors, including the type of rice used, where it was produced, the degree to which the rice has been polished, brewing processes, how it was filtered, and more.
Long story short, sake is made by brewing sake rice, water, and koji, which refers to the rice that has allowed mold to grow on its grains, explained Monica. The person who brews sake is called a Toji, and he or she can play around with the fermentation process to make a unique final product.
Traditionally, you'd drink sake out of either square, cedar boxes called masu, or small cups called ochoko that are made of porcelain, ceramic, or glass, says Dean. But you can drink sake however you like. Drinking it from a wine glass is also a good idea because it makes it easier to taste the quality and nuances of flavor and aroma, he adds. Historically, sake was served warm. But as technology has advanced over generations, the flavor profiles have changed, producing better sake that is often served chilled.
All sakes are brewed from rice, but the quality of any particular sake is dependent on how much the rice was milled down before being brewed. Removing these proteins and fats allows for a smoother flavor in the final sake," she adds.
Just like many wine regions called DOCs label wine according to a quality scale, there is also a system for rating the quality of sake.
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