Hatsuyuki is japanese for the first snow of the season. This eventually became the name for my first batch of sake, as traditionally sake is made in the winter. So of course I was making it in the summer in the desert. I had bought a book from amazon, read a couple brewing forums, and basically, everyone was, and still is, starting from a recipe published by Fred Eckhart, which was the first one in English. The thing is, sake is very much more about the timing and steps than the ingredients. I ended up on Bob Taylor’s How to Make Sake pages simply because his timetable explanation was the one that made the most sense to me . You can find it at Taylor-madeak.org I used his recipe at 1/5th the amounts, with a slight change.
Because sake yeast had to be special ordered and I had not actually done that, I ended up using champagne yeast. Tamaki Gold as the rice, and distilled water, made for a pretty tasty sake. I bottled and pasturized one bottle’s worth of nigorozaki, the cloudy prefiltered stage of sake, and then the rest was filtered with bentonite and made 2 bottles. I took it to Highland 2013, just to show Martin that his class inspired someone, and it was an unexpected hit with people I knew and didn’t know. Encouraged by them, I entered it into the brewing competition at Great Western War. Marks were favorable, to my surprise. Also surprising was that after the competition and the Taste of Caid, I returned to camp and shared some after heating it. Warm, it had a completely different, but still awesome, flavor!
t this point, there is about a half a bottle of filtered and perhaps an eighth of nigorozaki, and its getting to the end of its lifespan. Sake only keeps for 6 months to a year without preservatives before its simply past its prime which is why, after being adventurous with my second batch at half volume, we’re going back to 1/5 for the forseeable future so we don’t waste alcohol.
What do you think?