The Deluxe Food Lover's Companion by Ron Herbst & Sharon Tyler Herbst

Author:Ron Herbst & Sharon Tyler Herbst [Herbst, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Barron's Educational Series
Published: 2015-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

sake [SAH-kay; SAH-kee] 1. Although often called Japanese rice wine, many don’t think of sake as wine because it’s not made from fruit. In fact, some people consider it a beer because it’s produced from grain. However, the United States Tax and Trade Bureau (previously the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) has settled any dispute by categorizing sake in Class 6—“wine from other agricultural products.” Sake is made up of rice, water, KOJI, yeast, and sometimes a small amount of distilled alcohol. It’s produced in several steps, during which time specially selected rice undergoes FERMENTATION, which converts the starch to sugar and then to ALCOHOL and carbon dioxide. After fermentation, the liquid is drawn off, filtered, heated, and transferred to casks for maturing. None of the carbon dioxide is retained so there’s no effervescence. The alcohol content of sake ranges from 15 to 19 percent, which is high for beer and low for most grain-based spirits, but in the range of some wines. Though there are myriad types of rice used for brewing sake, what differentiates the various types of sake is how much of each grain of rice is milled or polished away and whether or not distilled alcohol is added to the mix. Seimaibuai, or seimai buai, is the Japanese term for milling, describing how much of the rice grain is polished away or milled, which influences the sake’s flavor. Some sake labels list a percentage number, referring to how much of the rice grain is left. Generally, the lower the percentage, the more the rice has been polished away, and the more elegant, refined, and high-quality the sake. There are six main styles of sake: junmai has 70 percent remaining rice grain and no added distilled alcohol—the flavor is full, clean, and well-structured; honjozo has 70 percent residual rice grain and a small amount of added alcohol—it’s light and mildly fragrant; junmai ginjo has 60 percent remaining rice grain and no distilled alcohol—the flavor is light, fruity, and refined; ginjo has 60 percent residual rice grain plus added alcohol—the flavor is light, fruity, aromatic, and refined; junmai dai ginjo or junmai daiginjo has 50 percent of the rice hull and no distilled alcohol—the flavor is complex, yet light and fragrant; and dai ginjo or daiginjo has 50 percent of the rice hull plus alcohol—a fragrantly light flavor with good complexity. When the word junmai appears alone or in combination with other descriptors, it means the sake has not been supplemented with distilled alcohol. The addition of alcohol is neither good nor bad—it simply produces a slightly different sake, both in texture and in flavor. Because seishu is the legal name for sake, the word shu is officially added to sake terms, as in junami-shu or ginjo-shu. Futsuu-shu is sake that doesn’t fit into one of the six previously listed sake categories. Most sake is filtered and clear, but the word nigori denotes sake that is unfiltered and slightly cloudy. Amakuchi describes sake that has a sweet flavor whereas karakuchi refers to one that’s DRY.

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