Your Pie, My Mouth: Ichishima Sake Brewery, Niigata, Japan

Yes, Brewery.

The process to make Sake is more similar to making beer than making wine. Grains mixed with yeast and allowed to ferment. Wine is fermented fruit. Sake production differs from beer making in that there are two fermentations that take place in the same tank.

I also want to point out that this is my 100th post!!! Yeah, I agree, boring. OK, let's move on.

I am headed to one of the oldest Sake Breweries in Japan. It's located in the area famous for the best rice in Japan, the Niigata Prefecture.

Headed to one of the oldest breweries it seems kind of fitting to be riding in a train that looks like it was time-warped out of the past. I am not in Tokyo anymore or sure.

It's winter.

The surrounding mountains to the east are blanketed in white. It's cold, beautiful, but cold.

After traveling about an hour north of Niigata city, we have arrived.

This inauspicious building is the Ichishima Sake Brewery. In operation right here since 1790.

The current CEO/President/Owner is Mr. Kenji Ichishima.

Mr. Kenji is the 7th generation to run this brewery. I'm already blown away.

And just to calibrate you a bit more on how cool this guy is, I just rolled into his offices, no reservation, no appointment, no idea where I am going, and he drops everything and personally gives me an amazing behind the scene tour of the WHOLE PLACE! Everything. Just he and I cruising around chatting about sake making. Amazing. Let's go!

This photo is 100 years old. It shows the original sake vessels, cedar barrels.

This one is about 75 years old. Shows the crew of the day. Pretty tough group.

Original vat to soak the rice.

Fermentation tank.

After fermentation the rice was put in cloth bags and weighted down, pressing out the liquid.

Stacked and pressed.

It was then filtered, or not, and barreled, and bam!

I said to Mr. Kenji, that's really great, but how is it made now?

Let's see.....

Rice is conveyor'd to the top floor where it is run through an injection steamer, soaking the rice through.

The soaked rice then drops on a lower conveyor that both drains excess moisture and allows it to cool.

An auger pulls it out of the machine and plops it into a bucket.

Swollen kernels....

Sounds like the Civil War :-O

The rice is then place in a very humid room and sprinkled with yeast spores, the Koji (cultured grain) has been born.

This different rack is used depending on the style of sake they are making.

The rice is then transferred to large metal tanks, mixed with water and allowed to ferment.

We are on the second floor and these tank are sitting on the ground, just to give you a size perspective. There are a dozen or so tanks.

Bubbling away.

Mr. Kenji went and got a light to dangle in the tank so I could see better. Amazing.

Obviously the smell of sake is everywhere. A light sweet scent in the air.

Here are the tanks from ground level.

After a 30-45 day fermentation the process is complete. The rice is then pressed and the sake is born!

Yes, we tasted it. It had a much bigger flavor that I've ever experienced with Sake. Mainly because this was unpasteurized. All sake is pasteurized prior to bottling. This is the nectar straight from the nipple of god.

Wait, what?

This is what is left from the pressing. I tasted it and it had the flavor of sake caramel. Deeply sweet, almost burnt but not, soft texture, very interesting.