Episode 175 Show Notes
Episode 175. Join us this week for another wide-ranging sake interview. We are welcoming Lucas Smolic, the founder of the Sake Brewers Guild, to the podcast. Lucas started in engineering but found his way to sake which evolved into a deep passion for sake brewing. This inspired the development of the Sake Brewers Guild with its mission to make learning the skills of sake brewing accessible to all. Among other things, we discovered that the Guild is supporting and connecting sake brewers on ALL SEVEN continents (yes, including Antarctica!). As we chat, we taste a savory Tokubetsu Honjozo from Takeda Shuzo – a brewery in Niigata, Japan that welcomed Lucas for an internship. If you’ve ever considered giving sake brewing a go yourself, this episode is not to be missed! #SakeRevolution
Skip to: 00:19 Show Opening
Welcome to the show from John and Timothy
Skip to: 01:55 Interview: Lucas Smolic
Profile – Lucas Smolic
Lucas is the Founder of the Sake Brewers Guild (BrewSake.org), an online portal that fosters a global community of craft sake producers and assists with technical resources and training as well as providing Sake brewing seminars, materials for learning and sake brewing recipes. Lucas has experience brewing and several Sake Breweries including Origami, Farthest Star, Islander, Wetland Sake, and Takeda Shuzo in Niigata Japan.
He has created this community for commercial brewers and home brewers to discuss their challenges and achievements in a supportive setting with others who can relate. Join up at: https://www.brewsake.org/join-the-guild
Lucas’ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/junmai_gaijinjo/
Lucas also runs a seminar series on youtube which is invaluable to anyone looking to learn more about the technical side of sake brewing! Watch a sample video here:
About The Sake Brewers Guild
The Sake Brewers Guild is a global community of craft sake producers who provide the technical resources and training required to carry on this 2000-year-old tradition while fostering a vibrant and inclusive discussion. Their vision is that learning to make high-quality sake should be open and accessible to everyone and they are on a mission to Create an inclusive organization focused on advancing sake brewing best practices by teaching and supporting technical excellence, facilitating an open exchange of knowledge amongst participants at all levels, and removing barriers to learning including language, processes, and access to raw materials.
Website: https://www.brewsake.org/
Join the Guild: https://www.brewsake.org/join-the-guild/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sakebrewersguild
Youtube Seminar Series: https://www.youtube.com/@brewsake/streams
Skip to: 20:03 Sake Tasting: Takeda “Black Skull” Tokubetsu Honjozo Muroka Nama Genshu
Takeda “Black Skull” Tokubetsu Honjozo Muroka Nama Genshu
Brewery: Takeda Shuzo
Brand: Takeda
Prefecture: Niigata
Classification: Tokubetsu Honjozo Muroka Nama Genshu
SMV -4
Rice: Koshikagura, Koshiibuki
Yeast: S-3
Alc: 18%
Rice Milling: 60% remaining
Acidity: 1.5
Skip to: 35:24 Show Closing
This is it! Join us next time for another episode of Sake Revolution!
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Episode 175 Transcript
John Puma: 0:21
Hello everybody and welcome to Sake Revolution. This is America’s First Sake podcast. I am your host, John Puma. I’m from the Sake Notes. I’m also the administrator over at the internet sake Discord, as well as Reddit’s r slash sake c.
Timothy Sullivan: 0:37
And I’m your host, Timothy Sullivan. I’m a Sake Samurai. I’m the Director of Education at the Sake Studies Center, as well as the founder of the Urban Sake website. And every week, John and I will be here tasting and chatting about all things sake and doing our best to make it fun and easy to understand. Hello, John. How you doing?
John Puma: 0:55
hey, Tim, what do you hear?
Timothy Sullivan: 0:58
Well, I hear we have another guest in the studio. No.
John Puma: 1:02
Yes, yes, we do for our ongoing series about people who have worked at sake breweries. We, we have not come up with a clever name for this yet. If you have one, maybe reach out to us at [email protected] and we, you know, submit your name and maybe we’ll use it if we think it’s very good, or maybe we’ll come up with one during this very episode. So, uh, so Tim, yeah. Who is our guest today?
Timothy Sullivan: 1:26
I am so excited to welcome our guests today. We have Lucas Smolic. He is a sake brewer and the founder of the sake Brewer’s Guild which you can find at BrewSake.Org, and he is an all around Super deep well of knowledge about sake brewing, and I can’t wait to find out more about the Sake Brewer’s Guild I think we have a few home brewers that are listening to our podcast.
John Puma: 1:54
One or two.
Timothy Sullivan: 1:55
All right, Lucas, welcome to the show.
John Puma: 1:58
Welcome, Lucas.
Lucas Smolic: 1:59
Thanks for having me.
Timothy Sullivan: 2:00
Lucas, I have to ask you first, for those of you, John and I know you personally and, uh, are happy to call you a friend, but for our listeners who don’t know you yet, can you tell us about your background and how you got involved with sake as a career?
Lucas Smolic: 2:15
Yeah, sure. Um, how far do you wanna go back? We do the, uh, grew up in Boston thing. Um. First experience with sake, because of that, was kind of what a lot of people had, the little tokkuri of hot sake that many people can relate to. I’m a software engineer by trade, so spent 20 years in the game dev industry advertising film, yada yada Outside of work, I got into cooking as a hobby, and that led me into wine tastings and whiskey bars and all that stuff, and you know, generally watching my life go downhill. No, I’m kidding. but, uh, But I developed this interest in the nuance of flavors, right, textures, aromas, and things like that. And I honestly have to say, when it comes to sake, my interactions with Japan were purely random. I was working on a stressful account, and a friend of mine was like, you know, you need some R& R. And I asked him, you know, where should I go? And he just said, I don’t know. Why don’t you go to Japan? That place seems pretty Zen. And, uh, and honestly, that was it, you know, and I’ll skip the whole details of, of taking Japanese lessons and all that, but, basically went to Japan. Rented a car, drove all over the place, little towns, you know, meeting people. This was that time when Airbnbs would actually meet you, like the host would meet you at like the train station, like walk you to your place, and um, and I just got in the habit of saying to people, you know, hey, I don’t know anything about this place, I don’t speak Japanese that well, you know, can I take you out to dinner or like whatever else? And I ended up meeting a whole bunch of locals that way, and one of the things that I found that as I was going around My first journey was everywhere I went, especially with the age group that I was hanging out with, sake was ever present. It was like a constant cultural staple of every meal, every hangout. One story that kind of, that stands out in my mind, which is, my friend Makiko, uh, in Hiroshima, she took me to a neighborhood association event, which most people would think, okay, here’s what we all say. What’s so great about that? It wasn’t that the, the event was any particular, like the, the, the sake wasn’t particular to me. I don’t even think it stood out. What stood out was the, the experience around it. It was how like everyone’s sitting down and having this really comfortable, uh, experience with each other and I would, I just became sort of like another person in the room. Their, you know, uncle, her uncle’s pouring me sake at one point. Her nephew’s Pour me sake. Everyone’s just smiling and laughing. Very little language exchange. Lots of emotion, lots of back and forth, you know, um, visual kind of communication, and something about that got me kind of hooked on it, and so I would say, when I got back to L. A., uh, where I was living at the time, I became that guy that just like going around with all my friends saying, you know, oh, hey, hey, we gotta try sake, we gotta, we gotta get sake, And I wouldn’t even say that’s actually what, was the final moment that triggered I’m in love. Uh, it was more, this was just a fascination of mine. I didn’t even get into brewing until about four or five years ago.
John Puma: 5:10
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Wow. So, I love the idea that you just like went for it in, uh, in Japan. I don’t, I don’t think I have that kind of, that kind of, fuck it, let’s go, in me. but But clearly you do, and kudos to you for it, sir. now when it comes to tasting sake, uh, outside of your, your warm, Tokkuri experiences, what was your, like, Oh, this is, this is Do you have, like, that aha moment, that this is the stuff moment?
Lucas Smolic: 5:37
I do. Yeah, there was, there’s one that always stands out because I remember, uh, someone asked me this a few years ago and I, for the longest time, I was like, ooh, what was it? What was it? And then it suddenly hit me. I was like, oh, of course you know what this was. my friend Shio took me to the Meishu Center, or one of the Meishu Centers in Tokyo, and it was a bunch of tastings, you got to, you know, pull off the rack, and, you know, that whole experience. so I had one that was really, you know, melon, one that was sort of, uh, maybe, maybe more just pure ginjo style, where it’s, it’s kind of rough, and I liked that. And Okonomatsu, 30 year aged, It literally said 1988 on the bottle, it had one of those pop tops where you could reseal it, you know, it was nice. So this was in 2018, so that was actually 30 years old when I saw it, and the caramel, the chocolate, the smooth texture, lingering aroma that made me think I was gonna like eat creme brulee. Absolutely amazing. And I would describe it as, like, my Matrix 1999 moment, although instead of, like, waking up and realizing the world is this, like, barren wasteland, instead I woke up and realized that the real world is actually, like, this wonderland. And I was like, oh, this is amazing. so I just started seeking everything out that I could, like, that vibe. And I was that guy going, like, excuse me, do you have a sake menu? And in America, being extremely underwhelmed by, like, what I would receive as a sake, I’d be like, Oh, none of this tastes good. Cool. Um, but that’s, I would say that’s what really sent me down the obsession with sake.
John Puma: 7:10
Wow.
Timothy Sullivan: 7:11
that is awesome. So wafting, wafting creme brulee, John, we have to add that to our, we have to add that to our tasting notes.
John Puma: 7:19
I want a sake that makes me think of creme brulee
Lucas Smolic: 7:21
If you get that sake, I’m taking the train down to have it with you.
John Puma: 7:24
Haha. Hahaha.
Timothy Sullivan: 7:29
well, when we introduced you, we mentioned that one of your titles is sake brewer. And we know that you’ve worked at sake breweries and made sake in Japan. And we’d love to hear a little bit about those experiences. Can you tell us what breweries you’ve worked in and what that was like for people who kind of dream about that? Like you’re living the dream. So what, what was that like for you?
Lucas Smolic: 7:52
Well, you know, I would distance myself a little bit from the, from anyone thinking that it’s, you know, that I’ve done tons and tons. the honest only brewery that I, I really would say I was on staff on was Takeda Shuzo, who puts out a, a, a very common sake. um, brand up in Niigata called Katafune. And, uh, you know, they, they were started in 1866, so they’re, they’re fairly old, Shiaki, who technically brews in Hawaii, but if you count breweries that prefer to speak Japanese all day long, I would throw that one into the ring. Because, um, the vibe there is super Hawaiian paradise, but when you’re like doing the work in a day to day basis, you do not speak, or if you cannot hear and understand Japanese, you are, you’re not doing the right task. So, You know, that’s that. I did have a chance to, make some koji at Lagoon Brewery in Niigata. That was fun. but I would say, the majority of my time as a brewer was spent at Wetlands Sake, first as one of their, that was in Louisiana, as one of their, brewers to start. Um, I was there really just to learn how to work pumps and stuff like that on a commercial scale, and was kind of quickly promoted. To head brewer. I thought it was, whoa, in shock. but to go back to the, the experience in Japan, I do think that there’s some, some stuff that’s worthwhile. I was glad that I’d had the experience brewing for about two, three years prior to going there, because by the time I got there, I had about a hundred, Commercial fermentations under my belt, ranging all the way up to 3, 000 liters. In fact, a lot of them were 3, 000 liters. and I’d already had the challenge of managing a staff, doing overnights, and that kind of prepared me for the, like, the sadistic way that production, carries itself out. and so that, that was what made, and this is where I’m going to, like, I think a lot of people are like, wait, what? I’m gonna blow your mind with Takeda, because the thing with Takeda Shuzo that blew my mind was We had nap time two times a day and lunch was an hour. Well, to be fair, lunch was the only sleep time unless it was a really heavy day in which case would also sleep around like 2 30. But my point is, every day they had a consistent schedule. So, it went like this, you arrive at like 7 30 or 8, And then it’s kirikaeshi, steam, shubo, cool, cool rice, shikomi, break, so like, you know, coffee, essentially, we’d clean up, more shubo stuff, lunch, for like an hour, which we’d go hang out with everyone in the house and like eat with all their kids and stuff like that, super fun, rice prep, you know. Wash rice, coffee time, prep for tomorrow, daikoji, go home. That was every single day. Like, clockwork.
John Puma: 10:37
Hmm. That is consistent.
Lucas Smolic: 10:38
and I actually think that having seen that now, I was comparing it back to my time, and I was like, wow. So you can do two hours of breaks in a given day? And a given eight hour day, our production day was eight hours, so two of those spent eating or sleeping, and then the rest of it was just crunch, crunch, crunch, go, go, go. but the things that were more, that I wanted to take away from those experiences were, were the nuance. Because again, I was coming in understanding sake brewing, but there was I had just spent three months brewing with Chiaki before I, I actually went from Hawaii to Takeda and back to Hawaii, and she had, she had opened my mind up to all kinds of stuff, and I, um, I almost want to say I would give her the most credit of anyone I’ve spoken with or met. Even my time brewing in Japan, she really showed me what to be focusing on and what I should not be focused on, what I not worry about, but the time in Japan you got to see the old school stuff and that was really cool to kind of go back in time using like kotatsu’s to like, they call them Colloquially they call them hitas, that they put underneath your shubo tank to warm it up. but they also had like a wall of all the instruments that like they never use, it’s just for tours, you know, like the awakeshi bow, which is like the, the stick, looks like a bunch of reeds tied together they use to kind of like take down the foam. And then they now use awakeshi ki, which is basically just like an egg beater strapped to a rope hanging above a, a shubo tank and you’re just whipping that foam. There’s like, they had a rice washer there that I’ve literally only seen in books, like, like mimeograph copies of books from the 1950s. And I was like, and they’re all saying like, this might be the only one of these that exists. Like still,
Timothy Sullivan: 12:23
So, the sake process that you worked with at Takeda Shuzo in Niigata sounds like it’s very regimented and scheduled and all those steps you mentioned, those were all different for our listeners who may not be familiar with those terms. Those are all different production steps like a rice washing. different koji steps, making the koji rice, making the fermentation starter, etc. And, uh, would you say that it was fairly disciplined? I mean, that was kind of my experience in a Japanese sake brewery was that it was regimented and disciplined and highly scheduled. Can
Lucas Smolic: 13:03
kind of like their, their sense of what they had to do. Right, there was no, there was no question about it, because it is a thing you get into a cycle of, right? Also, the brewers I was working with were farmers, right? So they make the rice. All the rice for this brewery comes from these farmers. There was two or three of them that had their own fields, and a couple of them worked together, another one’s separate. But, it is interesting the, the difference maybe in mentality around how they work, they just think, they take it very seriously, there’s no screwing around, there’s a lot of joking though, I mean that’s, I don’t know, I don’t know if your brewery had the same thing, but for us it was like, constant jokes, the whole time was fun, so much fun to work with these people, but, you know, like when it came down to stuff that got serious, everyone’s, Like, whole tone, like the face, everything dropped and it became, you know, okay, let’s get this done. but, some things, some things you don’t, you don’t realize when you’re using older equipment, like, say, the, the sort of, like, wooden buckets that they use, like the hangiri they use to move rice from the steamer, over, like they have this steamer that’s brand new and it’s gorgeous and huge, can do like, you know, 3, 000 kilograms of rice at a time, but they’re still using these like old, hangiri to move rice over to these, they call them tsu, they’re like the mats they lay on the ground, and you put that thing down too hard, like if you drop it to the ground like too much speed, even though you’re supposed to work as quickly as possible, if you put it down too much speed, it, you know, if you ever touch it, oh man, the eyes in the room will suddenly shift to you. I did this. It’s like a, oh, you have committed a mortal sin, like, you let the thing touch, even if it’s sanitary, it’s like, that thing could break apart at any moment, never let it touch the ground, you know what I mean?
Timothy Sullivan: 14:45
you explain what a hangiri is? Can you paint a picture for our listeners what
Lucas Smolic: 14:49
Yeah, it’s, it’s, well, it’s literally like a half barrel or half bucket. It’s like a wooden, wooden bucket, you know, think like apple orchard, right? And, The open top, so there’s nothing enclosing it. They use these for everything. There are some smaller, um, and I bet it has a different name, if I’m being honest. Hangiri is typically a very shallow tub. This is shallow, but it’s maybe about a foot by a foot. they just put rice in it for the most part. I don’t think there’s anything else I’ve seen them use it for. Their shovel to scoop rice out of the koshiki and into this thing was also one of these. It was like a, like a half of one of those with like these rickety wires tied around it. It, it was a, it was a fascinating experience.
John Puma: 15:29
really quickly though, you mentioned that before you went to Japan, the first time you did some studying. Uh, and then you also mentioned that when you were working with Chiyaki over at, Islander, they were conducting most of their day-to-Day work completely in Japanese. How much Japanese did you, uh, did you pick up when you like, were getting ready and how much did you commit, like before you started working in a situation where you had to know it every day?
Lucas Smolic: 15:50
You know, it’s, it’s funny. The brewsake. org work, all this like, research on, on Japanese fermentation and all that, sake fermentation, most of my Japanese is fermentation words. I actually truly believe this. I can’t order sushi to save my life, but if we’re talking about, uh, acid carboxypeptidase, I can talk about that all day. And I’ve realized this, that if I, if someone asked me, like, can you speak Japanese, and I’ll, you know, like, let me hear some. I’m like, I don’t know what to tell you right now. I get, I get hung up. But if someone were to say, you know, can you describe what’s in that, you know, that cooler right now? I’m like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s go into this. Talk about the fermentation happening right now, the yeast I put in, or how I steam the rice. Um, but I would say, because I’m familiar with the terms and the words of fermentation, that did make that experience a lot easier. But, a lot of times it would come down to, like, if we really weren’t understanding each other, I would go ahead and actually draw it out. And as soon as we hit, like, what is an enzyme, or as soon as we understood the, so, like, koso, I learned a lot of these words, like, koso is, is enzyme, while we were there, because as you’re trying to describe, like, why do you do this, and they’re trying to describe it, and they say a word like koso, and you’re like, I don’t know what that word is, and you, it’s really critical to the understanding of what you’re trying to understand. You’ll do everything in your power to learn that word, and I guarantee you’ll never forget it again, because the next day You’re going to come back and want to say, you know, how did such and such work, and you’re going to want to be able to say, ah, you know, um, the koso, the kosa, and, sometimes, you know, I’m sure you’ve both had this experience, you, you figure it out, a little bit of English, a little bit of Japanese, you get there, right?
John Puma: 17:34
So you mentioned the brewsake. org there, which is, lot of what you’re working on these days, and also the Sake Brewers Guild. So what’s that all about?
Lucas Smolic: 17:42
you know, I think, I think the, the ultimate, goal here after coming out of a few years of Brewing myself and wanting to learn more was, I always wanted to, I, from the, from the first time I think I ever read a book on sake brewing, Japanese sake brewing, um, I was always reading something and then they would say, you know, put this much rice in or use this much water. And in, you know, computer science, you always have to know why you do something. You never just do it. Someone’s always going to ask you that question. Why did you do that? Why would you do that? and so I wanted to connect those dots. I wanted to say, like, This is what, this is what the problem is, or this is what we’re trying to achieve. Why do we do these things to achieve it? Why did they write it that way? so to connect a few dots, I had taken John Gauntners, certification course. I had read a few books in English, or all the books in English that we could on sake brewing. I joined every relevant, uh, org that had to do with sake brewing, if that allow us. There’s a lot of Japanese orgs that you, they just won’t let you join. basically I was trying to apply that engineer’s mind of, you know, take your experiential, but apply control points. Like, I did this, but what should it have been? My baume is this. What should my baume be if I want to hit this target?
John Puma: 18:57
And, and hold on, gotta keep in mind that a lot of our people at home do not know what a
Lucas Smolic: 19:00
Baume is Oh, that’s a good point. No, no, I like, this is a good point because, because that’s what I’ve been doing the last few years, right, is like trying to get, trying to get all this in,
John Puma: 19:09
You’re on the other side now, Lucas.
Lucas Smolic: 19:12
on multiple levels. I’m on, I’m on the Sake Revolution podcast. I feel like I’m I’m literally on the other side. Yeah, so, so, things, learning like what baume is, even just that, right? You,
John Puma: 19:24
What is bame?
Lucas Smolic: 19:26
uh, it’s a French word that, that describes the density of, of something in, uh, of a liquid, right? Um, it’s, It’s the same as specific gravity, there’s other words, that are similar to these, they all have different measures, like play doh and things like that, and we use all these words in brewing. typically, I say typically, uh, it’s a measure of how much sugar is, is still in, but really it’s like all the dissolved particles and things like that, because the more stuff you put in that, Solubilize in a liquid it gives it it gives it things buoyancy right so so anyway Bāme
John Puma: 20:03
Yeah. All right. Perfect. As we’re rolling along, I believe we Point in the show where we are going to Taste and talk about a specific sake now Tim. What do we have today? Namasake
Timothy Sullivan: 20:22
recommendation for a sake to all taste together, we’re going to be tasting, Takeda Tokubetsu Honjozo, which is a Muroka Nama Genshu, and Lucas, if you’ll indulge me, I’m just gonna list off some of the stats for this sake and then we can get it in the glass and start tasting. So again, this is a Tokubetsu Honjozo, unpasteurized. It’s from Takeda Shuzo out of Niigata. The rice milling on this is 60 percent and we’re using Koshi Kagura and Koshi Ibuki, two different rice varieties. SMV minus four. John, our alcohol is up around 18%. That’s the genshu, the not diluted with water. Uh, very medium acidity, 1. 5 acidity. And the yeast I’ve never heard of. It’s listed here as S3. Don’t know anything about that, but, uh, those are the stats for this sake. And there’s a very distinct label. Uh, Lucas, do you know anything about this label here?
Lucas Smolic: 21:28
Yeah, I know. It’s not the same label as it is in Japan. I tell you that um This This is this is a great label so nama sake Paul as he’s knowledge From a lot of us who are who are ordering sake from him from a long time He started importing this and made a custom label for it, and I think, honestly, it’s a great label for a number of reasons, but it’s this, this is the black skull bottle, which always confused me in a little ways, because it’s a white skull on black, but we’ll just, we’re going to skip over that. It’s called the black skull. Um, but, so yeah, we’re going to get a laugh about that later.
John Puma: 22:05
Mm
Lucas Smolic: 22:07
because it’s one of those, in advertising we call it like the, I think it was the, the 6 6 3 or 1 rule or something like that. It was the, what you see when you’re walking by on a shelf and that gets you to come closer and then as you get closer, what draws your eye to want to pick it up. And then that final, like, what, what makes you want to actually, like, commit to buying this thing? And I gotta be honest, I think this is a fantastic thing that makes someone immediately say, Ooh, what is that? You know, they don’t even know what it is. They’re just like, I want to drink whatever’s in that bottle. Um, and it also has this adorable polar bear on it, so
Timothy Sullivan: 22:41
Yeah, well, let me, let me briefly describe the label for our listeners. It’s a black background. It says Takeda Tokubetsu Honjozo Nama Genshu. And then, as you said, there’s this, uh, very graphic white outline of a skull. And I just want everyone to envision like a pirate’s flag skull, right?
Lucas Smolic: 22:59
Jolly roger.
John Puma: 23:02
Yeah, Yeah, it’s a Jolly Roger.
Timothy Sullivan: 23:04
And it is very eye catching and I’ve never tasted this sake before, Lucas. So I’m very excited.
John Puma: 23:10
wow. You’re in for a treat.
Timothy Sullivan: 23:11
Lucas, is it true that this is one of the sakes you helped to brew when you were at Takeda? Is that
Lucas Smolic: 23:18
It’s difficult to know if this specific one is the bottle you’re drinking, but that’s only because there’s an aging process involved in it. I don’t know if the ones we got here would have been those, but it is possible. It is totally possible. But yes, I did get a chance to, help brew this.
Timothy Sullivan: 23:34
awesome. So, John, what do you say? Should we get this in the glass? Let’s
John Puma: 23:37
I think it’s time.
Timothy Sullivan: 23:39
All right.
John Puma: 23:54
Tim, that pour was so beautiful. I didn’t even bother.
Timothy Sullivan: 23:58
All right. So, uh, we’ve all got it in the glass now. This is the Takeda Tokubetsu Honjozo, uh, little bit of color, little bit of a golden color there. Right? All right.
John Puma: 24:09
Yeah. I assume that’s that
Timothy Sullivan: 24:12
That’s the Muroka bit. Yeah. Not charcoal filtered. Yeah. All right. Let’s give it a smell. Mmm. It smells very Nama, very unpasteurized.
John Puma: 24:26
Yeah. It definitely has that Nama note to it. it’s also like, it kind of betrays. That’s got some strength behind it. You can kind of almost smell that 18%. Mm
Timothy Sullivan: 24:38
Lucas, any, any notes on the aroma from you?
Lucas Smolic: 24:41
You know, I was trying to think off the top of my head, what? What would I describe this as? I think I would describe what I’m getting from this as like amino acid for it, like I like the It’s not quite to a soy sauce, but if you age this, I think it would go that direction, uh, in a very positive way. I like those type of sake, so I like when things have a kind of, it’s not acid forward, I think, to be clear on that. It’s not bitter, it’s not biting, it’s not, um, it’s not even astringent, it’s very smooth, but it’s not, but it has this quality to it that I, usually would associate with amino acids from all the different varieties I’ve tried of sake where it’s a little bit of acidity on your tongue and it kind of gives that notes of not umami but it’s close, close in that direction.
Timothy Sullivan: 25:36
Yeah, well, I totally get what you’re saying. We’re looking at the aroma and I think that there is a savory note there. There’s a little ricey note there, but what John said as well, I pick up on a little bit of warmth from the higher alcohol percentage when you’re just smelling it. And, uh, it leads me to think that this will have some richness to it, but there’s only one way to find out, right JP?
John Puma: 25:59
Absolutely.
Timothy Sullivan: 26:00
All right, let’s give it a taste.
John Puma: 26:01
It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.
Timothy Sullivan: 26:04
mmm, okay. On the palate, This has,
John Puma: 26:08
big.
Timothy Sullivan: 26:09
it’s big, it’s rich. it has almost a nutty, nuttiness to it, but not oxidized. Like it’s not a nuttiness from, you oxidation, or sitting around for three years. There’s an, uh, you’re absolutely right, Lucas, there’s amino acids and umami on the palate. It gives it this nutty, um, borderline soy sauce flavor. Really good.
John Puma: 26:36
lot of umami. In a very good way.
Timothy Sullivan: 26:39
I had, I went to a restaurant recently and they made a soft serve ice cream from sesame seeds and it was a sesame seed soft serve and it was like, so peanut buttery. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is like, Unbelievably how the sesame seeds brought through that nutty characteristic and it reminds me very much of that experience drinking this. It has almost a nutty characteristic, but it is still rich like a nama.
Lucas Smolic: 27:11
think that nutty flavor that you described, I really agree with that. That, um, I think I’m going to take back something I said earlier. I think, I think the umami That’s how I would describe it. It’s like, amino acid is where, you know, I mostly taste it um, what is it, glutamine? specifically like that umami sweetness coming from the amino acids, which typically amino acids present as bitter or something else, and so.
Timothy Sullivan: 27:38
Yeah, you know, while we’re sipping on this, I’d love to ask you, Lucas, something that I think we have a few homebrewers in our listenership, and I’d love to know if I was a homebrewer sitting at home and I’m just hearing about brewsake. org for the first time, what do you recommend for people who want to try their first batch homebrewing? Like, where do you get started? What do you do?
Lucas Smolic: 27:59
Boy, is that a great question. The number one thing, I think, to start before anyone even does the brewing is to Set themselves a course, like, to how to arrive where they want to go. If all they want to do is try brewing sake, then I would say, we have a recipe on the site, you can follow it. Uh, if you can’t find the ingredients, generally you can order things on Amazon, or even try rice that you have at home. you, believe it or not, you can order koji on Amazon. It, it’s not going to be the same as you can get you know, if you make your own, but what we keep trying to tell people is, you know, give yourself a direction. If you want to eventually get to the point where you’re home brewing or commercial brewing sake, um, start at the basics. Just, just let yourself put the ingredients into a thing. You don’t have to make the koji. You don’t have to make it super special. Just, Don’t, don’t even worry about getting sake yeast. Use wine yeast. Just do the process. Because that part, getting the process down, that’s the hard part. Once you get it in your head and you don’t even need to, like, you don’t even need to look at your sheets anymore, okay, then you can start going, okay, I want to focus on less acid or, you know, higher sugar or whatever it may be. But we see a lot of people come in and the first thing they say is, I’m making my own koji, I’m doing a kimoto or a bodai moto, and, you know, they It’s like calling a Babe Ruth on your first day of peewee baseball. It’s like, what are you doing? But you know, that’s fine. I love that energy though. Like that’s good. You’re going to need it. You’re going to need that energy the same way that Kimoto yeast need to be strong AF to last for like 60 days. So good. Congrats. Welcome to the party. Um, and yeah, come to brewsake. org. We do have a lot of information there and then you can always. Um, go to, we have a, a, well, the internet sake discord that, uh, John Puma, um, has been running for a long time. that’s where I found a whole bunch of people, and, and recently, um, when we started the guild, we created a kind of brewer’s Like a brewer’s kind of, area where commercial and homebrewers kind of get together and, talk about these kind of topics and help each other out. and a little bit, a lot more focused, we’ll say, with forums and things like that to keep us a lot more, uh, engaged.
John Puma: 30:13
Yeah, the rest of the Discord is a little bit chaotic, but the portion of the Discord that Lucas runs is very, you know, you guys have a mission. And so, I really love what you have done with that, you and the other guys that run that group. It’s fantastic and it’s a really, I’m so happy that it’s become such a great resource for people. you again for that.
Timothy Sullivan: 30:36
And one thing I want to highlight is that I’m not a brewer day to day, but when I poke my nose into the sake brewers discord, the thing that makes me so excited is that you have people from all over the world. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, this is not just
Lucas Smolic: 30:53
I know.
Timothy Sullivan: 30:54
48.
Lucas Smolic: 30:55
So much, of this in in the ecosystem is like America, America, America. In fact, even when people say America, they’re usually referring to the U. S. and, and that’s, that’s obviously challenging, right? I mean, half of the rice that Isbell Farms produces, uh, for sake brewing goes to Mexico. For nami, that’s incredible. That’s how much they’re consuming down there. And I haven’t had a chance to go visit there, but I want to. But let’s talk really quick. The people that we’ve reached, this last year over 5, 000 people came to our site, which for a niche thing like sake brewing is huge, considering two years ago or even a year ago those numbers were nothing like that. We have 55 countries that have come to our site and have participated in our calls and in our chats, and this is just kind of cool. At this moment we have sake brewers who are in our group on all seven continents. All seven. And that includes Antarctica for anyone that didn’t do the math on that. We got someone literally stationed at the South Pole right now. Uh, anyway.
John Puma: 32:04
amazing. That is absolutely
Lucas Smolic: 32:07
Sake Lab LA. Uh, two guys that I, I knew, uh, when I was living in LA. Uh, one of them is currently stationed for a year down in the South Pole. Hysterical.
John Puma: 32:17
That’s amazing.
Timothy Sullivan: 32:18
God.
John Puma: 32:19
Yeah. That was, that was a fun fact I did not expect to hear today and learn. so. Uh, we’re gonna get, we’re gonna wrap it up here. Lucas, thank you so much for coming by. now, a couple of questions for you, though, before we do. Where can people learn about you? or, brewsake. org. And don’t just say brewsake. org. That’s cheating.
Lucas Smolic: 32:41
See how easy it is? That’s why we chose that name. Um, yeah. Um, so, we do have a mailing list you can sign up on the site, so, you know, we will send out things when we’re doing it. There’s no, we don’t, you know, there’s no advertising or anything like that. This is just, trust me, it’s very dry. You’re not going to be in any risk of receiving, um, you know, advertising from us. we have, uh, monthly sake brewing seminars that are on YouTube, you can register for them on the site if you, that’ll help us keep you in touch. We would love you to join the guild if you want to be a brewer or if you are currently a brewer. Um, again, we literally have people in all over the world. The third largest participant in that, by the way, is Japan, strangely enough. Um, this is lots of people, I would say Just join and you’ll meet people from all over the world, commercial and home. and then, uh, we do have social channels in the works, but right now, uh, if you follow me, I will connect you and you can stay there and I’ll let you know when the other ones are coming up. That’s junmai underscore gaijinjo. So, not daiginjo, it’s junmai underscore gaijinjo. Um, good friend of mine, Kim. Come up with that. Um,
John Puma: 33:48
think it’s very clever.
Timothy Sullivan: 33:50
Very
Lucas Smolic: 33:50
that’s that’s that.,
John Puma: 33:51
that’s awesome. and by the way, look, I was going to say, like, when we met, it was, uh, during the pandemic, it was when we were kind of, everybody was doing online stuff and you were brewing sake in your kitchen, you were literally, uh, washing rice and I was like, oh, you’re cooking. You’re like, no, we’re making sake. I was like, okay. You know?
Lucas Smolic: 34:06
probably doing both
John Puma: 34:07
and it was. And it’s really great to see what you’ve done since then, because it’s been, it’s been, it’s relatively like a short period of time, and you’ve done so many things in that span. It’s been crazy.
Lucas Smolic: 34:21
What’s really crazy, John, is to think that I, I would say at this point, I would rate my experience. I’m at one percent of being what I would consider to be like a, you know, a expert sake brewer or even like a proficient sake brewer. So I think everyone that gets into this has that feeling of you’re nowhere near where you want to be.
John Puma: 34:39
is that all learning? don’t know.
Timothy Sullivan: 34:43
I agree with that.
John Puma: 34:44
Yeah.
Timothy Sullivan: 34:45
Lucas, so great to have you here. I want to mention for all our listeners that, uh, all the resources and, YouTube videos and everything that Lucas has mentioned, we’re going to embed those into our show notes. So if you want a shortcut to everything Sake Brewer’s Guild and BrewSake.Org, please visit the Sake Revolution website. Check out our show notes for this episode. And we will make sure to connect you with all the home brewing goodness that they have at brewsake. org for any of our aspiring sake brewers out there. Lucas, thank you so much for joining us. It was a pleasure to have you.
Lucas Smolic: 35:24
Thank you.
Timothy Sullivan: 35:24
So a special again to Lucas for joining us. I can’t wait to learn more at brewsake. org. And I know that. They have different ways to support them. So if you visit their website, you can learn all about their organization there. And I want to shout out a special thank you as well to our patrons who are the supporters of Sake Revolution. Without you guys, we would not have a show and we appreciate you all so, so much. If you would like to learn how to support Sake Revolution, visit Patreon.com/SakeRevolution to learn more.
John Puma: 35:58
Uh, and if you have questions, comments, show ideas, or if you would like to name this series that we’re currently doing, you can contact us over at [email protected]. get at us on Instagram, SakeRevolutionPod, we’re over on Facebook, people message us there sometimes too. yeah, we want to hear from you, we want to interact, we want to have some, some exchange of ideas. While you’re pondering that exchange of ideas, please raise a glass. Remember to keep drinking sake and kanpai.