Has anyone made sake before?

MrTRiotMrTRiot Northern Ontario Icrontian

I've been in the process of making my own booze for a few years now. I've done everything from imperial stouts to crab apple wines yet I'm getting stuck on making sake/rice wine

My first attempt turned into rice wine vinegar and my second attempt turned out pretty rancid. Not sure if it's because I messed up the koji or something else.

My third attempt I gave up on making my own koji and am using stuff imported from Japan (no english instructions). Im not sure if it's going to turn out at this point and its got me pretty frustrated.

Has anyone made sake/rice wine before and could help a fellow Icrontian out? It would be greatly appreciated

Linc

Comments

  • AnnesAnnes Tripped Up by Libidos and Hubris Alexandria, VA Icrontian

    How did it turn out?

    And tell me more about this banana wine!

    mertesnMrTRiot
  • MrTRiotMrTRiot Northern Ontario Icrontian
    edited June 2020

    @Annes said:
    How did it turn out?

    And tell me more about this banana wine!

    The sake is still aging but I just checked on it and it had pretty good density separation. Technically it's a Nigori sake due to the fine rice particles in it. When it got racked to its bottle (all that work for ~300ml) it had a sweet milky taste with a hint of rice. The best way to describe it would be if Kahlua and rice pudding had a baby. Good chance I'll crack it open this weekend and snap some pics

    ...The banana wine has been bulk aging since December 22nd, 2019. As it's now June I think it's finally ready to be bottled. Originally it tasted like over ripe bananas but that changed to boozy banana bread when it went into secondary. It went from an starting gravity (SG) of 1.096 all the way down to a final fermenting gravity of 1.002. It was stabilized with KSorb and then back sweetened with 1.5 cups of sugar and 0.5 cups of honey bringing up the gravity to 1.029 which would make it a fairly decent desert wine

    GHoosdumHumerusMeg
  • MrTRiotMrTRiot Northern Ontario Icrontian

    I cracked open the sake. Its strong and has a bit of fusels on the uptake but that quickly goes away and it leads into a smooth, creamy, sweet taste.

    Here's a pic of it in the glass

    primesuspectLinc
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian

    Holy crap. Sake can taste actually taste like the love child of rice pudding and Kahlua? I want to try that! Most of the sake I've been given in the past just tastes like diesel fuel that someone pissed in.

    CBStraight_ManMrTRiot
  • HumerusMegHumerusMeg Something, something medical professional, Fitness bitch, Sexy chef Austin Icrontian

    This is so neat, the only liquor I've ever been successful at has been when @MAGIC and I made kaluha once, boy was it boozy. This is some awesome stuff @MrTRiot

    MrTRiot
  • LincLinc Owner Detroit Icrontian

    @GHoosdum said:
    Holy crap. Sake can taste actually taste like the love child of rice pudding and Kahlua? I want to try that! Most of the sake I've been given in the past just tastes like diesel fuel that someone pissed in.

    /me looks forlornly at the bottle of unpasteurized sake he bought from the best US sake maker in Colorado and at the cancelled LAN dates and sighs so, so deeply.

    GHoosdumHumerusMegMrTRiot
  • MrTRiotMrTRiot Northern Ontario Icrontian

    @GHoosdum you can make booze taste like anything you want given the right yeast and ingredients. Sake/rice wine mixes that formula up as you're adding aspergillus oryzae to break down starch into simple sugars that the yeast can use

    @HumerusMeg thanks! I appreciate that. It was basically the final frontier with booze making (excluding distilling) that I haven't tried to some degree. I grabbed some nice sushi rice and all the stuff to incoculate the spores I tried using originally so maybe that'll be the next adventure

    @Linc is that for sharing?!

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