Season 1, Episode 16. Pasteurization is well known and it used for a lot of sakes. this kills off any bacteria or yeast and makes sake stable outside of refrigeration. In the world of sake there are a number of variations on pasteurization, known as “hi-ire” in Japanese or “into the fire”. We’ve got our Full Nama (also known as Nama Nama), Once pasteurized nama chozo, Once pasteurized Nama zume, and twice pasteurized regular sake. As if that wasn’t enough, there are also at least three ways to do pasteurization for sake… before you know it, we will get to 10,000 thousand ways. John and Tim both opt for highly fragrant and flavorful sakes this week. Give a listen to see what they’ve came up with.

Skip to: 00:19 Hosts Welcome and Introduction
Welcome to the show from John and Timothy

Skip to: 03:52 Sake Education Corner: Pasteurization

Learn more about Pasteurization Here:

UrbanSake.com Glossary:
Hi-ire or Pasteurization

Skip to: 19:05 Sake Tasting Introductions

Skip to: 21:37 Sake Tasting: Fukucho Biho Junmai Ginjo Nama Genshu

Fukucho Biho Junmai Ginjo Nama Genshu

Classification: Genshu, Junmai Ginjo, Nama
Acidity: 1.5
Brewery: Imada Shuzohonten
Alcohol: 16.5%
Prefecture: Hiroshima
SMV: +3.0
Rice Type: Yamadanishiki
Seimaibuai: 50%
Brand: Fukucho (富久長)

View On UrbanSake.com

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Skip to: 26:16 Sake Tasting: Brooklyn Kura Catskills Junmai Daiginjo

Brooklyn Kura Catskills Junmai Daiginjo

Brewery: Brooklyn Kura
Alcohol: 16.0%
Classification: Junmai Daiginjo
Prefecture: US – New York
Rice: U.S. Yamadanishiki
Brand: Brooklyn Kura
Seimaibuai: 50%
SMV: -1.0

Where to buy?
https://www.brooklynkura.com/collections/frontpage/products/catskills-junmai-dai-ginjo

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Skip to: 35:33 Show Closing

This is it! Join us next time for another episode of Sake Revolution!

John Puma 0:22
Hello and welcome to Sake Revolution America’s first sake podcast. I am your host John Puma from the SakeNotes.com. I’m also the administrator of the internet Sake Discord and all around sake nerd… just like you.

Timothy Sullivan 0:35
And I’m your host Timothy Sullivan. I’m a Sake Samurai, sake educator, as well as the founder of the Urban Sake website. And together John and I will be tasting and chatting about all things Sake and doing our very best to make it fun and easy to understand. So John, you know, every week when we start you mentioned that you’re the administrator of the internet Sake Discord. Now I know a little bit about computers. But honestly before you actually told me, I had no idea what a Discord was. So maybe for our listeners who are in the same boat, could you describe a little bit about what this Discord thing is?

John Puma 1:15
Sure, so Discord is it’s basically just a chatroom. It’s a service that was made originally for video gaming, for people playing games to get together and chat about stuff in text and voice and video and, and then and then play their games together. However, it’s also become much more commonly used for just any kind of topic, not just video game stuff. Now, I am also the administrator of the sake subreddit on Reddit. And I thought at one point that it would make a lot of sense for us to have a discord chat to go with it. So the people that were posting there can go and get together and make a little community and chit-chat about sake. And that’s exactly what happened.

Timothy Sullivan 2:03
All right, so discord is kind of like an alternative to zoom, right? It’s like a place where you can see each other and chat and talk to each other?

John Puma 2:12
Sort of, it’s a little bit more text focused, it’s a little bit more about typing to each other, but then there’s audio rooms that you can go into and speak. For the most part. It’s for us all we do is mostly just chatting about sake, sending pictures back and forth things we’re drinking. It’s honestly a lot like a throwback to the old days of like Internet Relay Chat, IRC and like, actually, maybe like AOL chat rooms, in a way

Timothy Sullivan 2:40
A message board kind of thing?

John Puma 2:42
Sort of, yeah,

Timothy Sullivan 2:43
well, if someone’s interested in getting onto the sake discord, what what’s the best way to get there?

John Puma 2:48
Well, we are going to have an invite link in our show notes. And there’s also a permanent link as always up at the sake subreddit. So that’s reddit.com/sake. and just look for that internet sake discord post at the top.

Timothy Sullivan 3:07
And it’s also an app right? So it’s something you have to download to your phone or your computer.

John Puma 3:13
Yes, it’s an app that you can access on any computer or mobile device.

Timothy Sullivan 3:18
Cool. Well, I hope some people check it out. I had fun chatting on the sake discord and and I think it’s something really cool that maybe a lot of people don’t know about so check it out.

John Puma 3:30
Great. This is my moment of self promotion.

Timothy Sullivan 3:35
We all get one, don’t we?

John Puma 3:37
This is nice. Yeah, yeah. So this week, Tim?

Timothy Sullivan 3:42
Yes.

John Puma 3:43
We got to promote what you’re up to. We are going to be going back into the sake education corner.

Timothy Sullivan 3:51
Yes.

John Puma 3:52
And the sake education corner will continue to bring us on our journey through the making of sake

Timothy Sullivan 4:00
Yes, so many steps, so many steps, but

John Puma 4:05
so many steps

Timothy Sullivan 4:06
we can see the finish line in the distance. So we’re going to be talking about the next step in sake production and maybe I could give a quick recap to what we’ve talked about so far.

John Puma 4:18
Please do, Please do…

Timothy Sullivan 4:18
So, we started with the rice milling, then raw materials processing, which is the rice washing, steaming and soaking. Then we move on to Koji production that’s making that molded rice that breaks down starch into sugar. Then from there, we move on to the shubo or the sake mother, that’s the fermentation starter. And then we move on to moromi, which is the main mash fermentation. That’s that 30 day fermentation where we convert all the starches into sugar, and then sugar into alcohol. And then we do pressing, and that’s when we separate the unfermented rice from the finished alcohol and you think we’re Done.

John Puma 5:01
Well, I thought we were done when you told me that we could drink that.

Timothy Sullivan 5:07
In some case…

John Puma 5:08
you said no, John, there’s more steps after this. We can’t just drink the pressed sake

Timothy Sullivan 5:13
yes. If you’re in a hurry, you can drink out at the press. But for most of us, there’s a few more steps involved. And today, we’re going to talk about the next step right after pressing, which is pasteurization.

John Puma 5:26
Yes, now, pasteurization I think this is going to be an interesting topic because I think it’s the only one apart from maybe shubo which we learned in that episode, that is somewhat optional.

Timothy Sullivan 5:41
Yes, it is. It’s totally optional. you do not have to pasteurize.

John Puma 5:45
It’s common but it’s sometimes it is optional.

Timothy Sullivan 5:48
Yeah. When you finish with pressing a lot of the things you do are, you know, you can do them many different ways to create different kinds of sake and pasteurization falls right into that category. In Japanese it’s called “Hi-ire”, h-i-i-r-e, “Hi-ire”, which means put into the fire put into the heat or put into the fire.

John Puma 6:19
Okay, yeah that this uh, this actually will help me understand some things that I’ve Google translated in the past.

Timothy Sullivan 6:30
Yeah, so as most people I’m sure know, pasteurization is heat treating of something to make it shelf stable outside of refrigeration. So in the case of sake, we heat the liquid to a point where the enzymes get deactivated and the bacteria and any yeast that’s still active all dies, and it makes it stable and, you know, keeps it from spoiling outside of refrigeration. So we basically kill off any living thing that’s still in there.

John Puma 7:06
Great. And now, if I’m not mistaken, we’ve got a couple of ways that we can do this.

Timothy Sullivan 7:11
Yes, there’s four variations when it comes to pasteurization. I don’t know if you remember a few episodes ago, I talked about Ban Ryu, the 10,000 ways of doing things.

John Puma 7:22
Yes,

Timothy Sullivan 7:22
Well, we got four more right here.

John Puma 7:24
When we started talking about ban ryu and the 10,000 ways I thought that the sake creation series was gonna be a lot longer than I originally anticipated. We are Episode 10,000.

Timothy Sullivan 7:39
We’re going to be in the nursing home when we get to that final…

John Puma 7:42
exactly

Timothy Sullivan 7:43
10,000 and 1st way to make sake,

John Puma 7:45
But luckily here we’ll have four.

Timothy Sullivan 7:46
Yes today, we only have to deal with four. And one of them we’ve already talked about. So it’s really only three new things we have to talk about. The first one is skipping pasteurisation all together and you know what that is called, right?

John Puma 8:00
That’s nama. That’s the raw stuff.

Timothy Sullivan 8:02
That’s right. So if you skip pasteurization, that’s called nama. nama means literally means raw. And it’s just fully unpasteurized. Okay. And then there’s another option. And to understand the next three options, it’s worthwhile to understand the process from this point. So after pressing, we take the sake that’s been pressed. And that goes into, in most cases goes into storage phase for six months. That’s called chozo. So chozo is the word for storage. So most sake is pressed, stored, and then bottled. Okay, so think of those three stops along the way. So you have the pressing, then you generally put it in a tank and you store it for six months, and then it goes to bottling. Okay, so the normal progression is press, you pasteurize once Then you stored for six months, you pasteurize again, and then you bottle. So there’s a pasteurization on either side of that middle storage step, a six month lagering step. So that’s the second way you can do things. And that’s the most common out of any of these is to pasteurized twice, once at the time of storage and once at the time of bottling. So that keeps the sake very, very secure and prevents any possibility of spoilage because you’re you’re hitting it twice with the pasteurization step.

John Puma 9:34
So two fires.

Timothy Sullivan 9:36
That’s right. Yep. And so the first option was skipping both of those pasteurization and the second one we talked about was doing both of those pasteurization. Can you guess what the other two options are?

John Puma 9:49
Tim, I’m going to assume that they are going to be introducing the pasteurization on one end, or on the other end

Timothy Sullivan 9:58
Bingo.

John Puma 10:00
Yeah, that was hard.

Timothy Sullivan 10:02
So there’s there’s pasteurization, where we skip the first pasteurization before storage and we only pasteurize at the time of bottling and then the other option is pasteurized before storage. But that second pasteurization before bottling we skip that one. So these are considered like half nama they’re only pasteurized once. So it’s like nama light.

John Puma 10:24
nama light….

Timothy Sullivan 10:25
Yes.

John Puma 10:26
Alright, Okay.

Timothy Sullivan 10:27
So let me tell you what both of those are called. So remember, I said that that storage step that’s called chozo, right? Yeah. So if you skip the first pasteurization, and you store you go into that chozo our storage step as nama. That step is called nama chozo. So nama choza was once pasteurized but only after storage so that literally means stored as a nama -nama chozo. And then the other option is nama zume a, that’s pasteurized once before storage stored as a pasteurized product and then not pasteurized a second time when you go into the bottling step.

John Puma 11:07
Interesting. So, our of curiosity then with nama zume if you’re pasteurizing at that beginning step and killing off all the extraneous living yeast, bacteria – anything else is in there and then letting it mature and then you’re bottling it. If everything’s already been slain, what are what are we doing? What are we? What is the purpose of? I guess the, the broader question I have is what’s the purpose of the second pasteurization?

Timothy Sullivan 11:40
Yeah, well, you know, when the sake is sitting around for six long months, and it’s going through new tubes and on its way through the bottling equipment, there is a chance for some micro organism to get introduced itself. small chance but depending on how the sake is stored during those six months, if it’s stored at room temperature if it’s stored in a refrigerated environment, there’s all these different factors. So when you have sake sitting around for six months, there is a chance for microbes to be introduced in some way. And out of an abundance of caution, the industry practice is to pasteurize – hit it one more time right when it goes into the bottle and that will doublely ensure that the sake is completely free of any active enzymes or any living organisms.

John Puma 12:38
All right, okay. That’s interesting. And obviously I think the the nama chozo kind of speaks for itself and what makes it interesting because you’re having the the live stuff hanging around for that maturation stage. And then you’re you’re then you’re you’re stopping the growth at that point. So you have that that whole stage where things are changing, things are moving Potentially yeah that’s interesting

Timothy Sullivan 13:02
yeah and that’s that’s actually nama. we sometimes call it nama-nama. The the pure nama because there’s actually those two pasteurizations. So nama nama or whole nama is the most dangerous because your sake is not protected in any way from the micro organism you have to control that with temperature has to be refrigerated all the time. Nama chozo where you store it as a nama and then pasteurize it only once as it goes into the bottle. That’s the second most dangerous option. Because you have those six months, it’s sitting out as an unpasteurized product. And you have to be very, very cautious and careful, keeping that temperature controlled, so that bacteria or any micro organisms can develop. So that’s the second most risky one. The third most risky one is the nama zume, where you’re pasteurizing it right out of the press. But you don’t hit it again before bottling and then the double pasteurization is the industry standard and that’s the most common by far – is the double pasteurization.

John Puma 14:09
Right I would say that if you don’t see the word nama anywhere on your sake, chances are it’s been double pasteurized.

Timothy Sullivan 14:15
Exactly. And if you do see nama on the label or the bottle, it can be any one of those three we talked about. It can be nama-nama, it can be nama chozo or it can be nama zuma. And sometimes they call out if it’s nama chozo or nama zuma you’ve seen that right on some labels.

John Puma 14:32
Yes, yes. It’s sometimes in Japanese sometimes in English sometimes both Yeah.

Timothy Sullivan 14:37
But if you see nama on the label, you’re — the best way as a consumer to handle it is to assume it’s a nama-nama and keep it refrigerated just out of an abundance of caution. So anything nama adjacent, I keep it refrigerated forsure.

John Puma 14:54
I think that’s, I think that’s a safe bet.

Timothy Sullivan 14:58
Okay, so let’s talk about The three ways that you actually can do this pasteurization step. The first one is exposing sake in the bottle, so hot water. And you can do this by putting the bottle into a hot water bath, or actually running the bottle along a conveyor belt and it gets a shower of hot water. You want to bring the internal temperature of the sake up to about 150 degrees Fahrenheit and again, that’s going to deactivate the enzymes and kill any micro organisms. So exposing the sake to hot water while it’s in the bottle is one way to do it. A second way to pasteurize sakei is to run the sake through a pipe that is submerged in hot water and that will raise the temperature of the sake will go around and around under the hot water through the hot water and then that will achieve the same end bringing the sake temperature You’re up to about 150 degrees Fahrenheit. And the third method for pasteurising sake is called heat exchanger

John Puma 16:10
heat exchanger?

Timothy Sullivan 16:12
And the heat exchanger is basically metal plates that have grooves in them and sake is run through one side of the plate and hot water run through the other side of the plate and the metal plate the liquids never touch, but the metal plate transfers the heat from the hot liquid to the sake. If you ever put a spoon into a cup of tea and let it sit there and you touch the spoon to take it out, and this spoons really really hot from the hot water. That’s the same principle where the metal plate is going to transfer the heat from the hot water to the sake. So that’s a heat exchanger method So those are the three ways the three production methods that we use for actually heating the sake to pasteurize it.

John Puma 17:08
Thanks for the explanation. I now know where the heat exchanger is. So Tim, though I we understand, like when you have nama and we’ve talked about this in previous episodes, I was dedicated to nama. What that means as far as what that’s going to bring out of your sake from a flavor standpoint, and we know what pasteurization is going to do, but what is nama zume going to do? What kind of impact is that going to have on flavor profile? And then the same question for nama chozo?

Timothy Sullivan 17:40
Yeah, I think nama chozo and nama zume have one foot in both camps. And I think that anybody who says they can taste the difference between a nama zume and nama chozo

John Puma 17:55
you don’t know if they’re being honest?

Timothy Sullivan 17:56
I’ve never met a sake expert who can say they can taste the difference by blind tasting the sake. So I don’t think there’s a huge, really perceptible difference between nama chozo and nama zume, between fully unpasteurized and fully pasteurized, yes, you can taste the difference.

John Puma 18:17
Oh, yeah.

Timothy Sullivan 18:18
But nama zume and nama chozo kind of give you the best of both worlds. And they have one foot in each camp. So one way to look at it, it’s a compromise and you’re not going to get that full vibrant nama juicy flavor, but you don’t get the more staid, quiet, more restrained version of the fully pasteurized. So it’s a way to have a little one foot in both camps, you know what I mean? So you get a little bit of each style, and it’s a nice compromise way of looking at things and it’s just a fun way to get a bit of zippiness without going full unpasteurized, you get a little bit of protection. But, you know, you also have a little bit of that That Zippy juicy nama flavor.

John Puma 19:02
Interesting All right.

Timothy Sullivan 19:05
All right so John, I think it’s time we move on to some tasting that’s why we’re here right?

John Puma 19:11
I thought you’d never ask

all right so let’s as we always do let’s both introduce our sakes Why don’t you go first and tell us what you’ve brought to taste today

so I brought a nama… a “nama-nama”

Timothy Sullivan 19:27
namanama

John Puma 19:27
Nama-nama… This is Fukucho Biho Junmai Ginjo nama and this is from Hiroshima and it is a genshu actually although it is the alcohol by volume is only about 15 and a half percent. Interestingly though, this is a mature a lot longer than most sake this is actually matured for 18 months.

Timothy Sullivan 19:55
Wow, yeah, for a fully unpasteurized sake. That’s kind of rare.

John Puma 19:59
Yeah. It’s a little it’s probably gonna be a little bit of a taste adventure. I think it’s probably gonna be interesting. Very, very exciting to see what what happens with that. Yeah, and the interesting thing about this sake is apart from the fact that you have a brewery in Hiroshima that is making Junmai Ginjo. And they are, they’re known for having very, very soft water it’s going to be hard to work with and hard to make delicate flavors out of, but luckily, one of the only female brewery heads Miho Imada runs that place and is able to do really interesting stuff with sake- And that’s what I have. Tim, what did you bring?

Timothy Sullivan 20:43
Well, I brought an American sake. I got my hands on a new release from Brooklyn Kura, which is our local Brooklyn sake brewery. This is their Catskills Junmai Daiginjo. This is sold as a nama chozo and now we all know what that means. nama chozo means stored as a nama. So that means this was pasteurized once and that would be at the time of bottling, not with any storage previous to bottling. So I’m really excited to taste this. It’s a Junmai Daiginjo, 50% rice milling. It uses domestic Yamada, Nishiki, sake rice, 16%, alcohol, and an SMV and -1. All right. So, that’s what I’ve got. I’m excited to explore both of these sakes. But since you have the nama and that’s more perishable, why don’t you go first?

John Puma 21:40
I don’t think a few minutes is gonna make a big difference, Tim.

Timothy Sullivan 21:43
But you can never be too careful.

John Puma 21:45
Yeah, having said that, when somebody asked me to have a drink, I’m not going to decline. Okay, so Wow this sake has an aroma like it is

Timothy Sullivan 22:08
Capital “A”

John Puma 22:13
oh wow it is so so aromatic there’s so much fruit and green grapes, it’s it is moscat – those green grapes is all over just like just just bursting out like this. This smells juicy in that way that we talked about nama before nama as being very juicy. Just having a big flavor. I actually cannot wait to stop talking and start sipping. So I’m gonna do that. Yep. Yeah, this lives up to the nose completely. It is 100% in balance. So what you smell causes you’re expected to taste a certain way and it does that it exactly. It is 100% the second that you expect it to be based on what you based on its aroma like this is wonderful and it is big juicy fruity – a ginjo lover’s Ginjo and maybe a nama lover’s nama? I don’t know… maybe its’ a little tame for that though. It’s not as wild as some namas I’ve had.

Timothy Sullivan 23:23
But it’s important to mention that sometimes you smell a sake and what you get on the taste is very different like you’re like is this the same sake?

John Puma 23:32
I think we’ve had situations on this very show where we’ve felt that the sake was somewhat out of balance because the aroma that was making a promise that the sip couldn’t live up to, and here it’s they are making good on it. This is wonderful, wonderful sake and for something that’s been stored for 18 months, unpasteurized and then bottled unpasteurized then shipped across the world. I am impressed at how focused of purpose this sake seems to be. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

Timothy Sullivan 24:09
I can only imagine what it tastes like right out of the press. It must be insane!

John Puma 24:15
I mean, it’s gotta be I mean, I imagined that 18 months is gonna mellow it a little bit, right?

Timothy Sullivan 24:19
Yeah. Yeah, that’s what you would expect, right?

John Puma 24:21
So yeah, I can’t imagine having this at the press must be just bonkers. This must be really exciting sake to have that way.

Timothy Sullivan 24:30
What’s the finish? Like? Does it linger a long time? Or is it is it kind of short? Can you taste it after you finish sipping does it does it stay with you for a long time?

John Puma 24:40
it a little bit. It doesn’t overstay its welcome. But it’s so good that you kind of want it to continue. So you have another? Yeah. Yeah, it is one of those sakes. And it is, yeah, it doesn’t. It doesn’t like it doesn’t overstay its welcome. It doesn’t drop off either. It’s Just kind of fades away

Timothy Sullivan 25:01
mm hmm that’s good that sounds really well integrated like all the different

John Puma 25:05
it is. This is a wonderfully balanced sake like it is. I just feel like every every stage of it feels very purposeful and very, very in control even though it is on paper, it seems like something that would be wildly out of control.

Timothy Sullivan 25:22
Well, that’s that’s the sign of a true Master Brewer you know, maintaining that integrity and that integration on something that’s a nama like unpasteurized which is one of the hardest things to control. That really speaks to Mihosan’s ability as a master Brewer is fantastic

John Puma 25:42
Yeah, I did not mention this earlier but the rice type on this one is a Yamada nishiki and it is polished down to 50%. But even though it is Polish 50% I can definitely tell why they why they chose to call this a ginjo. It is so very junmai ginjo All right, I’ve gonna stop exuding my positivity on this and give you a chance to talk for a bit.

Timothy Sullivan 26:16
All right, well, let me let me get my sake out here. I have the again the Brooklyn Kura Junmai Daiginjo Catskills. I’m going to give this a pour

John Puma 26:30
All right.

Timothy Sullivan 26:32
Let’s see. Hmm. So one way I I judge how aromatic a sake is, is when do you smell it? You smell it when the glass is, you know, eight inches away from your nose, but your your nose right up to it or do you actually have to stick your nose into the glass to smell it? And I smelled this The moment I poured it. It had exuberant aroma. Hmm, oh my gosh.

Yeah?

It is lovely. very fruity. But complex. It smells like a nama. I think if I were to, again, this is a nama chozo. So they did pasteurize this as it went into the bottle, right. And normally that again that quiets the sake down a little bit. But this has still has a lot of exuberance. And you know, honestly, one of the differences might be that this came from Brooklyn about five miles away from where I’m sitting, versus another nama chozo. All the way from Japan might be a little bit more quiet given the transportation time, but I got this super, super fresh. That’s one of the advantages of having a sake brewery in your town. So John, we’re super lucky.

John Puma 27:49
Yes, up until now, it’s been a while we need to move to Japan if I want to have this experience.

Timothy Sullivan 27:56
So there’s some wonderful melon… honeydew just these wonderful melon aromas and tropical fruits too papaya, a little bit of mango, but there’s a rich edge to it a juicy edge to it. Very, very wonderful aroma. I’m going to give it a taste. So it has some fruitiness on the palate as well but there’s a bright acidity there. And acidity is not something we talk about that much because most sake has a really subdued acidity. But this sake has has a brightness to balance the sweeter components that come through with those tropical flavors. And it has a really nice, just a little touch of acidity to balance that out and give you a brightness at the finish. So this one doesn’t linger as long on the palate, as You might get with a comparable wine flavor you know wine might linger a little bit more. This one has a little bit more of a shorter finish and I agree with what you said earlier John that it leaves you wanting for the next sip. And that’s something that I I commonly find in sake that the finishes or perhaps a touch more restraint and it leaves you ready for the next bite of food or the next sip of sake…

John Puma 29:26
Yeah, and I just want to sip more of this. Yeah,

Timothy Sullivan 29:28
…so speaking of food, let’s talk about some pairing ideas for our sake

oof – you go first.

with namas it’s hard

John Puma 29:37
it is because. if because it’s a nom I want to say bigger flavors. But it’s still a jumai ginjo. It’s like you know it is a it’s a junmai ginjo lover’s Ginjo and is so fruity and I’m feel like I’d be a little worried about introducing stronger fishes to it. So I might stick with you know, with the lighter things stick with the white fish. You know that sort of thing to start with now maybe some white fish sounds really good with this actually and maybe some shrimp shrimp would be good.

Timothy Sullivan 30:17
Oh yeah, I had to. I tend to do this a lot when we talk about this but I refer to a very specific dish that I just had

John Puma 30:25
and Okay,

Timothy Sullivan 30:26
I recently had we made cod which is a very classic white fish.

John Puma 30:31
Absolutely.

Timothy Sullivan 30:32
But we had we had it topped with an herb panko crust with lemon zest,

John Puma 30:38
Oooh, that sounds really good.

Timothy Sullivan 30:39
So it was herbs and lemon zest. And then it was a roasted white fish Cod. And that had that wonderful, mellow – a bit of umami flavor of white fish very mild. A nice texture from the from the punko and then it had that hit of lemon zest and that that little touch of acidity reminds me of this sake and I think that would be a knockout combination just killer. I’ll get you the recipe

Could you please?

I’ll put it on the internet Discord.

John Puma 31:11
Oh thank you – the SAKE Discord.

Timothy Sullivan 31:14
the sake discord.

Anyone who wants the cod panko recipe just visit the sake discord and we’ll put it up there. No, no, we’re gonna visit this. We’re gonna visit the

John Puma 31:29
Tim I think you want this to go in the show notes.

Timothy Sullivan 31:34
So we’re gonna put this in the shownotes I’ll get that recipe for cod with panko and lemon zest. So good. So now we’re hungry. Yep. And we’re thirsty. Mmmmmm,

John Puma 31:48
I just ate before we started recording and I want to eat all over again.

Timothy Sullivan 31:54
Well, I waited because I knew I was gonna get hungry. We always talk about these fantastic food and sake combos. But this sake is absolutely fantastic. And it has really great balance. And, you know, if you had told me 10 years ago that I’d be enjoying domestically made sake so much, I just wouldn’t have believed you. It’s really it’s a whole – It’s a brave new world John

John Puma 32:15
It is. It is. I was. I’m consistently impressed about what we’re able to do these days here in America with sake. It’s shocking to me. I think that I think that also when we were – and you have much more of a head start than I do – , but when we were first getting into sake, it was a fantasy almost.

Timothy Sullivan 32:38
I have more of a head start. Is that is that your polite way of saying I’m I’m a little bit more mature than you are?

John Puma 32:44
All I was saying you’ve been drinking sake longer than I have, sir.

Timothy Sullivan 32:48
Since my elementary school days.

John Puma 32:52
I’m just saying you’ve been drinking sake longer I have I started in 2006 as we’ve as we’ve detailed on this very show and I believe you started in like 2000…

Timothy Sullivan 33:03
2005.

John Puma 33:04
no

Unknown Speaker 33:04
2005

Timothy Sullivan 33:06
Really? It was March 2005 was my first premium sake.

John Puma 33:09
Huh. Why do you think you’ve been drinking it longer? Probably because you started the Urban sake site a lot ealier than I did anything. Ah, it’s all coming together.

Timothy Sullivan 33:20
Well, no, I am older. I am older than you are and that’s proof positive that I don’t know what an internet sake discord is. So that’s proof that you’re you’re younger and hipper. I totally admit to that for sure.

John Puma 33:34
Younger I will give you hipper… we’re splitting hairs here.

Timothy Sullivan 33:40
We’ve both told too many dad jokes on this podcast for either one of us too hip, right?

John Puma 33:50
Oh, boy.

Timothy Sullivan 33:55
All right. Well, this was a lot of fun. You know, you know One thing that I am a little bit sad about is that because we’re not together in the same room, we’re doing all these by zoom now, because of social distancing, I can’t taste the sake that you have, and vice versa. So that’s a little bit of a downer, but I can’t wait to get my hands on that sake you were tasting today.

John Puma 34:20
It is phenomenal. Now I am I’m at a somewhat of an advantage because I did taste this Okay, that you had today, just a few weeks ago and I have not stopped raving about it. So I’m glad you got to experience it, too. It’s really something special. They’re doing some good stuff over there.

Timothy Sullivan 34:41
So since you’ve tasted it as well, would you agree with my tasting note my comments?

John Puma 34:45
Yeah, I thought that the The, the, when you first started when you first mentioned that you when you were able to get the aroma from a large distance because it was so powerful. I was like yes, that’s exactly Yeah, I remember when I first opened it up, I poured it into a wineglass and I was just like, Whoa, like I’m like, Am I a super sniffer today or what? And realize No, it is just very, very aromatic.

Timothy Sullivan 35:13
I think you’re a super sniffer everyday. I believe in you.

This is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.

Well, we both got awesome sakes. I think we both won today.

John Puma 35:26
We did.

Timothy Sullivan 35:27
There’s no losers in sake revolution today.

John Puma 35:29
None. There never are. never are.

Timothy Sullivan 35:33
Well, thank you all so much for tuning in. We had a lot of fun today. If you can, please take a moment and rate our show on Apple podcasts

John Puma 35:41
…and to make sure you don’t miss any episodes because you know, we’re all very busy. We want you to subscribe. This way every week, our podcast will magically show up on your device of choice.

Timothy Sullivan 35:52
And as always, to learn more about any of the topics or sake, or recipes we talked about in today’s show please be sure to visit our show notes. They are at SakeRevolution.com.

John Puma 36:06
And as always, if you have a sake question that you need answered, we want to hear from you. Reach out to us at [email protected] So until next time, please remember to keep drinking sake and Kanpai!