Rice and Sake

Two Grades of Rice MillingHimonoya brewery, Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Pref. Japan.
Let's have a look at the other main ingredient of sake making, the rice. Different types of rices are used for sake, we'll not look into the details here. You can read what John Gautner's says on sake-world about the rice varieties used for sake brewing, a very interesting page.
The Himonoya brewery performs itself all the tasks needed to produce sake, including the preparation, or milling, of the rice. In a separate building on the other side of the street in Nihonmatsu, a middle-aged man handles this delicate stage. To be able to ferment properly, the rice must be stripped from its outer shell, and this is done by a mill. In the past is was done manually by stepping on the rice and the kernel were often cracked and damaged, with negative results for the fermentation and the sake. Relatively-modern technology helped here, and the milling machines can mill softly large volumes of rice with the right percentage of outer shell removed.

Rice-Milling Man Anzai Ushikatsu Unlike grapes which already have water in them as well as other elements that will naturally produce a fermentation, rice is mostly dry and water has to be invited, sort of, into the kernel. For that, the rice must be stripped from a part of its shell so that the latter washing and soaking stages can really make it wet and pave the way for the sake fermentation. The more the rice is milled, the better the sake will be, as I understand it. For the top sake type, like Ginjo sake, at least 40% of its outer shelled is milled away, and for Daiginjo, it must be 50% or more. Plain Rice on left. 90%, 58%, 50% and 38% Milling (click to enlarge)Daishichi brewery, Nihonmatsu.
As you can see on these samples we saw in the Daishichi brewery (next story), the more the rice is milled the rounder it looks.The thing is, this is at the center that the starch is concentrated, and it is the best element for sake making. That's why certain Japanese-grown rice varieties are preferable instead of table rice : this is because these are high-starch rice-varieties. The outer shell of the rice is full of fats and proteins which are not desirable for a good sake, thus it is milled away.As you know, in the winemaking process, one has to get rid of the must after pressing, and it is usually dumped in a field. Here, as you can see on this picture, the paste resulting from the pressing of the rice (called amazake) is packed in bags (the same bags which were used to bring the rice to the mill) and go for a new life. The Japanese have several recipes that make a good use of this paste in the kitchen. Mrs Kamata, who helped us arrange these visits, took a sample of amazake and prepared for us a hot drink with sugar. This was particularly delicious, especially with the cold weather that day.