Season 1, Episode 15. It’s been said that the process of making sake can be done in 10,000 different ways. Talk about versatility! As our series on Sake Production methods continues, we’re going to learn about three, no… wait, make that four more of those 10,000 ways. This time we’re looking at Pressing. When the mash is fermented, we need to separate the newly created sake from all the unfermented rice solids. this is achieved by pressing the mash. There are a number of ways to achieve this some automated, some totally analog and some super high tech. But, the big news is that at the pressing stage you can finally drink your sake! Now, many sakes go on to further processing, but if you’re in a hurry you can stop sake production with this step and pour yourself a glass. Speaking of pouring John and Tim each bring a sake to the table. John tries the high end Hanagaki Usu-Nigori Junmai Daiginjo, while Tim goes for a futsushu named – what a coincidence – “Ban Ryu” which translates to 10,000 Ways! Well, now…only 9,996 more ways to go.

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

Skip to: 00:50 Sake News: Mie Prefecture

Skip to: 02:58 Sake Education Corner: Pressing
Our Discussion on the Three, um, I mean Four ways of pressing sake: Yabuta (a.k.a. assaku-ki), Fune, Drip Method, Centrifuge.

Skip to: 20:12 Sake Tasting Introductions

Skip to: 21:18 Sake Tasting: Ban Ryu “10,000 Ways” Futsushu

Ban Ryu “10,000 Ways” Futsushu

Brewery: Fuji Shuzo (Yamagata)
Alcohol: 15.3%
Classification: Futsushu
Prefecture: Yamagata
Acidity: 1.0
Brand: Ban Ryu
Importer: Joto Sake
Sake Name English: 10,000 Ways
Seimaibuai: 65%
SMV: +1.0
Yeast: Kyokai 10

View On UrbanSake.com

---

Skip to: 25:25 Sake Tasting: Hanagaki Usu-Nigori Junmai Daiginjo

Hanagaki Usu-Nigori Junmai Daiginjo

BBrewery: Nambu (Nanbu) Shuzojo
Alcohol: 16.0%
Classification: Usu-Nigori, Junmai Daiginjo
Prefecture: Fukui
Acidity: 1.7
Brand: Hanagaki
Importer: Joto Sake
Seimaibuai: 40%
SMV: +4.0
Yeast: Kyokai 9

View On UrbanSake.com

---

Skip to: 31:01 Show Closing

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

John Puma 0:23
Hello and welcome to Sake Revolution. This is America’s first sake podcast and I’m your host John Puma, founder of the SakeNotes.com, sake nerd at large and the administrator of the internet’s original sake Discord.

Timothy Sullivan 0:38
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.

John Puma 0:50
That’s right, Tim, we are still in lockdown. Yes, the whole world is still on lockdown. But if you heard any news, any sake news?

Timothy Sullivan 0:59
we know There’s a lot of bad news, sad news, downer news going on in the news. But I did hear one interesting fun thing from the world of sake.

John Puma 1:12
Interesting fun things? Yeah, Tim, I could really go for some interesting fun news so hit me.

Timothy Sullivan 1:19
We could all use an interesting fun thing. I read online that Mie prefecture. Mie is one of the 47 prefectures in Japan. They launched their own “GI” certification, and GI stands for geographical indication. And that is something that only a few prefectures have.

John Puma 1:39
Right and I happen to know that my, my favorite Yamagata is a big proponent of that they have their own geographical indicator. We see that a lot of their labels . Are Mie’s rules going to be similar or what’s the story with this?

Timothy Sullivan 1:57
Well, I didn’t look too deep. into the exact rules but I skimmed it and they said that the ingredients certain ingredients from Mie were required. And also certain production methodology from Mie was required as well.

John Puma 2:12
Interesting. Yeah, I think I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure this means regarding a to do a little prefecture spotlight on Mie in the near future.

Timothy Sullivan 2:22
Yes, I don’t think we get a ton of sake from Mie in the States, but we’re gonna make it happen.

John Puma 2:28
Oh, yeah, definitely. It’s gonna be interesting to explore, their sake production.

Timothy Sullivan 2:36
You know, when we do do that Mia episode, I’m going to look into it a little more deeply and see what exactly the requirements are for the production process.

John Puma 2:45
Nice. And if I’m not mistaken, we’re going to be touching a little bit on the production process again today in our sake education corner slash sake production series.

Timothy Sullivan 2:58
Yes, we are still working on our sake production series, but we’re getting towards the end. We just have a few more steps to go.

John Puma 3:06
And what’s today?

Timothy Sullivan 3:08
Today we have pressing matters to attend to today.

John Puma 3:13
That pun…

Timothy Sullivan 3:14
womp womp.

John Puma 3:17
Was that more of a pun or a dad joke? Or is it the same thing?

Timothy Sullivan 3:23
I don’t care. I’m just happy. No shame. I have no shame. So our pressing matters are talking about sake pressing. This is when you actually get the alcohol. At the end of all those steps you finally get something to drink. That’s why I love pressing so much.

John Puma 3:46
All right, I’m ready. So Tim, why don’t you take us take us from the top here. I know we started with rice. Many many moons ago.

Timothy Sullivan 3:57
Yes. For those of you who are just tuning in and Haven’t been listening to the rest of the series a really quick recap about what the steps are. So we start with the rice milling, then the raw materials preparation that means rice washing, soaking and steaming. Then we move on to Koji making that’s making that molded rice, which is one of the ingredients and sake. Then we do a fermentation starter to build up the yeast. And we have moromi, which was our topic last time, and Moromi is the main mash the main fermentation mash that goes for about 30 days. And then we are ready to move on to pressing.

John Puma 4:34
pressing matters now, does this pressing have a dancing step? like the moromi did?

Timothy Sullivan 4:42
No, there’s no dancing,

John Puma 4:43
no dancing, okay.

Timothy Sullivan 4:45
But we do have three different ways of pressing sake

John Puma 4:51
Three,

Timothy Sullivan 4:52
three.

John Puma 4:53
All right. I’m ready. What’s number one? What’s the most common? I’ll start there?

Timothy Sullivan 4:57
Yeah, the most common is called the Yabuta. So the yabuta is machine pressing. And if you’ve ever visited a sake brewery, it looks like a giant accordion. Yes, the size of a bus, small bus. And it’s got it looks like a giant squeeze box or accordion right and the sake gets pumped into these frames. And then every frame has a little balloon bladder next to it and then they pumped in air and the bladders expand and squeeze the sake mash and each frame and the liquid is forced out a little slit in the bottom and all the unfermented rice solids are held back and then you can open up the frames split them apart and peel out the leftover sake “kasu” which is the leftover lees or the the unfermented rice leftovers. That’s the most common method is the what we call the yabuta.

John Puma 5:51
cleaning out that yabuta sounds like it would be a lot of work.

Timothy Sullivan 5:57
You know, can I tell you something When I worked at the brewery they had me do every job in the brewery and cleaning out the kasu – scraping out the yabuta that was actually my favorite job.

John Puma 6:10
Your favorite job? My favorite job. All right, I need to know I need to know why this was your favorite job.

Timothy Sullivan 6:15
Well, it smells like Sake. the smell was amazing. It was so good..

John Puma 6:25
nice.

Timothy Sullivan 6:26
…and, you know if you have a certain type of personality, when you’re scraping the kasu out, for those of you who haven’t seen that before, how can we describe kasu? It’s kind of like a cake. Yeah, very thin cake of fermented rice. And it’s a little wet, a little mushy, but mostly solid. And when you scrape it out, you have to get like every piece of it out. So if you’re very meticulous type of person, when you’re scraping it out very fastidious. It It’s fun. I almost made a game out of it trying to get the pieces of kasu out all in one, one movement. And honestly, I really enjoyed that the most and it was very satisfying. You were moving constantly so there was no boredom. And yeah, I just really liked it. So that’s yabuta. and one note. The term “Yabuta” is actually a brand name for this machine.

John Puma 7:25
Really?

Timothy Sullivan 7:25
there are other companies that make the same machine. It’s actually called Assaku-ki. Assaku is the the Japanese word for this automatic pressing machine. But everybody calls it a yabuta. Just like you call it a Q tip or a Kleenex, you know, it’s like it’s a brand name that means that thing.

John Puma 7:42
Okay, so kinda like xeroxing then, too.

Timothy Sullivan 7:44
Exactly.

John Puma 7:45
All right now, do you? Are you always this meticulous a cleaner or there’s something that develops as a result of being at the brewery.

Timothy Sullivan 7:56
I have not been that meticulous a cleaner but again, I kind I made a game out of it. And that was like, you know, every every panel that they slip in front of you, you’ve got to scrape it all off and you have a certain time limit too.

John Puma 8:09
oooh.

Timothy Sullivan 8:09
Yeah. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. And it was something, it’s something I could do like, you don’t need a ton of skill. Like when you’re making Koji I was I wasn’t experienced enough to be like the master of the Koji room, but not by a longshot. I was scraping the kasu was something I could do and picked up really quick. And it made me feel like I was really contributing so that that’s another reason I really liked it.

John Puma 8:35
Nice! So does that mean that there’s no robots that are stealing our kasu scraping jobs?

Timothy Sullivan 8:39
That’s right. There’s no kasu scraping robots that I know of. Ah, so that job is safe for now with the humans.

John Puma 8:49
Okay, all right. So after this pressing is done and the sake is coming out the bottom, I assume it’s going to go into a tank of some sort. And now thats the sake? That’s it? We’re done. Well, not done, but we can drink this.

Timothy Sullivan 9:04
We can drink this!

John Puma 9:06
Yeah, fantastic.

Timothy Sullivan 9:09
what comes out of the press, if you put that in a bottle, you can sell that, you know you can. It is, you know undiluted with water unpasteurized ori still in there, it’s like it is sake but you can legally sell it very, very often they’re going to further process this. But everything at this from this point on is post fermentation. So all those steps that they do, I call them sake styles, whether you’re going to make it cloudy or clear whether you’re going to add water or not whether you’re going to pasteurize it or not how many times you’re going to pasteurize it, are you gonna rack it or not? all those different steps. These are all post fermentation things. So this is like a dividing line between post fermentation and pre fermentation.

John Puma 9:56
Right I believe in a previous episode we talked about how, during a recent visit to Japan, I got to taste sake directly out of the press for the first time, and that was a really interesting experience. It was very big and wild because it isn’t processed at all, it’s just – there it is. It is literally the freshest sake you can possibly have.

Timothy Sullivan 10:18
Yeah, there’s nothing like it. It’s amazing.

John Puma 10:22
So that’s option number one for pressing.

Timothy Sullivan 10:26
Yes, that’s right.

John Puma 10:27
What else do we have?

The second most commonly used pressing method is called “Fune”

Fune?

Fune. Do you know what the word fune means in Japanese?

Is it a brand name?

Timothy Sullivan 10:40
No.

John Puma 10:42
No I do not.

Timothy Sullivan 10:43
Fune means boat.

John Puma 10:46
A boat?

Timothy Sullivan 10:46
A boat. Yes. Like, “Come sail away….”

John Puma 10:50
Yeah. I know. I know. what a boat is, I just expected it to come up in this episode.

Timothy Sullivan 10:55
So this word fune means boat and it is one have what they call one of the pressing methods. And I need you to picture a long rectangular box with an open top. Okay,

John Puma 11:11
got it.

Timothy Sullivan 11:12
And what they do is they fill their moromi mash into these long skinny bags that are probably like three feet long, one foot wide. They put moromi mash in there, they fold over the top and they lay them down inside this box one next to the other, and then one on top of the other and they stack these bags like bricks inside this rectangular box. And the rectangular box has a hole in the front at the bottom. And so the weight of all the bags is pressing down and some sake is going to trickle out just by the weight of gravity of all these bags stacked on top of each other. And then when that stops, they have a board that they put on the top of the box and they start pushing down. Usually a hydraulic arm is going to push this board down and it squeezes the bags that are stacked inside this rectangular box. And the reason they call it a boat is because it kind of looks like a boat.

John Puma 12:09
Okay, I don’t it doesn’t mean I don’t see the boat. But maybe though I saw was very small.

Timothy Sullivan 12:20
I mean, if you plugged up the hole and kind of set it in the water, it might float. I don’t know, probably not.

John Puma 12:26
I don’t think we’re gonna find anybody who’s willing to let us try that.

Timothy Sullivan 12:31
When you visit older sake breweries, they have fune that are made of wood, and they’re very,

John Puma 12:35
Really, that’s interesting.

Timothy Sullivan 12:37
That was the original. modern ones are usually made of metal or lined with stainless steel so that the they’re completely neutral.

John Puma 12:46
I think the only ones I’ve seen were made out of metal, actually, here in Brooklyn, Kato sake works uses a fune.

Timothy Sullivan 12:52
Oh, that’s great. So that’s the second method that breweries use and some breweries use the yabuta for their more generic everyday sake, and then they’ll use the fune for more refined sake more expensive stuff.

John Puma 13:08
So is there is there an advantage to utilizing the fune?

Timothy Sullivan 13:14
Well, when you talk about sake pressing, there is a desirable section of the pressing that is the considered the best quality. And it’s not the first stuff to come out and it’s not the very end, it’s the middle, the middle of the pressing cycle is considered the highest quality,

the middlecut, I believe I’ve heard this phrasing in, in whiskey production as well.

Yeah, it’s the same same in sake the first stuff coming out is considered kind of brash, and the final stuff can be a little bit you know, harsh as well. So they like the middle section as the highest quality and you get more control of that with the fune method.

John Puma 13:59
All right, and And I guess that leaves us with one last method.

Timothy Sullivan 14:03
Yes.

John Puma 14:04
What is it?

Timothy Sullivan 14:05
Well, don’t be a drip. It is the Drip Method.

John Puma 14:10
They’re really piling up today. All right,

Timothy Sullivan 14:15
it’s the drip method but also called trickle sake,

John Puma 14:18
trickle…

Timothy Sullivan 14:19
Yeah, trickle sake. And you basically take those same bags that we were putting in the fune. Those long bags, you put the moromi mash in, and you tie it at one end and you hang it over an empty clean tank, and you just let the sake drip out by gravity alone.

John Puma 14:39
Huh.

Timothy Sullivan 14:39
no pressure, no touching just whatever comes out just by dripping by gravity.

John Puma 14:44
That sounds like… sounds very time consuming. And it also sounds like you may not get the same yields as the other methods because you’re not squeezing. You’re just kind of letting it happen.

Timothy Sullivan 14:56
That’s right.

John Puma 14:56
Very all natural.

Timothy Sullivan 14:57
Yeah. It’s the most expensive method because you’re leaving a lot on the table. You know, you’re not squeezing every last drop of sake out of your mash. So you have a lot left over. And there’s there’s one word I want to teach you that not many sake lovers know about and it’s something when I learned about it, I thought it was super fascinating. You, you know what “semaibuai” means right?

John Puma 15:23
I do.

Timothy Sullivan 15:24
Semaibuia? That is the rice milling ratio or rice milling percentage, right?

John Puma 15:30
That’s right.

Timothy Sullivan 15:31
There’s another word “Kasu-buai”

John Puma 15:36
oooh. Ok.

Timothy Sullivan 15:37
Kasubuai. So kasu is the leftover pressings and buai is the ratio or the percentage. So it’s the amount of kasu that you have left after pressing. If you have a lot of kasu leftover, you didn’t squeeze very much. If you have a small amount of kasu leftover, you squeezed every last drop out of there. So this ratio of how much kasu you have leftover during this pressing step, that is an indication of… it’s a quality indication. And I’ve heard some brewers say, Oh, we have a kasubuai I have 45% that means you know, they’re they have a lot of kasu leftover they didn’t squeeze very hard. So the sake they got out was very high quality.

John Puma 16:19
And I imagine that shizuku has the most Kasubuai?

Timothy Sullivan 16:25
bingo! yes shizuku this drip sake has the highest kasubuai so it has the, the most of leftover kasu meaning you didn’t squeeze very hard at all. And that translates to a cleaner. more smooth, elegant sake.

John Puma 16:42
Yeah, I’ve had some – very few – but I’ve had some shizuku before and it’s – phew – it is elegant. It is very nice. Very delicate. Yeah.

Timothy Sullivan 16:55
I don’t think we can leave the the topic of drip sake or shizuku sake without mentioning how expensive it is yet.

John Puma 17:05
Oh yeah, that’s another thing. I’ve tasted it. I’ve never bought a bottle before. It’s always been prohibitively expensive.

Timothy Sullivan 17:12
It’s really expensive and it’s just because of, you know what goes on with the pressing is a very luxurious treatment. And too much pressing can create some rough edges in the sake. And when you don’t press it all, you just get this super silky smooth.

John Puma 17:32
Now, I’ve heard of another style of pressing. And I need to check with you to see how to see if there’s anything to this: centrifuge.

Oh, that’s right. yep, that is technically another style of pressing very good. Yeah, I kind of left that off the list. It kind of slipped my mind because very, very few brewerys use that.

Yeah, it sounds very unusual and yet honestly a little expensive.

Timothy Sullivan 18:07
Yeah, the machinery to do the centrifuge is very expensive. And if you don’t know what it is just think of like a salad spinner, you know,

a salad spinner to press your sake – that’s basically what it is.

John Puma 18:20
I’ve always thought of it more than a more like a front loading dryer. Where it’s just just spinning it around and and the kasu is up against the walls of, of this of this centrifuge, and the sake seeps through the sides and drips out. Yeah, flies out, I guess. Yeah.

So you’re absolutely right. There’s there’s four methods of pressing. You got me. That’s a good one. Yeah. And that is a very specialized type of pressing and again, just like shizuku any sake made with a centrifuge is going to be very pricey, very expensive, and the breweries that do have one usually make a premium super premium sake with two different pricing methods. They’ll make some of the batch using the centrifuge. And will they’ll press some of it using the fune, or the shizuku method.

I’d be interesting taste experiment. Yeah,

Timothy Sullivan 19:16
absolutely. Well, we’ll have to track some centrifuge sake down…

John Puma 19:20
There’s not that much of it.

Timothy Sullivan 19:21
That’s another episode we can have

John Puma 19:23
or maybe some fune and shizuku or something like that. Yeah. centrifuge taste comparison. Now that’s gonna be a fun episode.

Timothy Sullivan 19:32
Yeah, we’ll have to do our research on that one. Yeah. I don’t know how many breweries in Japan have a centrifuge. I don’t think it’s very many.

John Puma 19:40
No, I know. I currently know of two. All right, I haven’t asked around, though.

Timothy Sullivan 19:47
All right. Well, there you have it. Those are our three I mean, four pressing methods, three and a half. Or if you’re centrifuge actually right centrifuge should have its spot. Its moment in the sun. So I’m going to say four pressing methods. Very good.

John Puma 20:02
There we are everybody here four pressing methods. But now is the time on Sake Revolution where we drink the sake.

Timothy Sullivan 20:12
Yes, I’ve been waiting.

John Puma 20:14
You have you have what do you what did you bring for us today Tim?

Timothy Sullivan 20:17
Well, let me introduce you to Ban Ryu

John Puma 20:21
Ban Ryu

Timothy Sullivan 20:22
it means 10,000 ways in English. And this is from the Eiko Fuji brewery. I think we had an Eiko Fuji sake before on the show.

John Puma 20:31
Yes, I believe I tasted their Hon-kara – their Honjozo Karakuchi. That very, very dry. Very, very, very, very dry and a little bit fruity if I recall correctly,

Timothy Sullivan 20:43
and this one is actually a Futsushu or an everyday table sake.

John Puma 20:47
All right.

Timothy Sullivan 20:48
And what do you have John?

John Puma 20:50
I have Hanagaki Usu-Nigori

Timothy Sullivan 20:55
Ooh, another Nigori

John Puma 20:56
Yes, and this is a Junmai Daiginjo so I went in the exact Opposite direction. You know, this is Junmai Daiginjo. This is very elegant. Okay. And with the use of Nigori, it’s gonna introduce a little bit of a little weirdness to it, I think.

Timothy Sullivan 21:12
Yeah, I think Junmai Daiginjo Nigori. These are pretty rare. There’s not a lot of them out there.

John Puma 21:18
Very, very rare, I think. All right, so why don’t you get started when you open that up? And let’s see what we have.

Timothy Sullivan 21:25
Yeah. So, “Ban RYU”…. 10,000 ways? Do you know what that’s referring to?

John Puma 21:32
I do not.

Timothy Sullivan 21:34
Let me get this in my glass. Okay, well, they say that sake brewing, the art of sake brewing is really the art of 10,000 ways. So you can, there’s 10,000 ways to make sake. That’s what that refers to. And as we’ve been if we add up all the different methods we’ve been talking about, I’m sure we would get to 10,000. Very fast

John Puma 21:59
We’d get there eventually.

Timothy Sullivan 22:01
All right. Okay, I’m gonna give this a smell. Hmmmm. It smells bold and definitely ricey there’s a graininess about it but not at all unpleasant really, really nice. Like a very gentle, aromatic of like, toasted grain of some kind.

John Puma 22:33
That’s interesting.

Timothy Sullivan 22:33
Yeah. Really, really nice. Okay, let me give it a taste Mmmm Wow, that’s really good. So this has a rice milling rate of 65%. So that is normally this would be a honjozo

John Puma 23:02
yeah.

But they’re selling it as their futsushu

That’s interesting. I wonder why that is? Yeah.

Timothy Sullivan 23:11
And the the Hon-kara that we tasted earlier in the previous episode from the same brewery, their honjozo is milled to 60%.

John Puma 23:21
Yeah, yeah.

Timothy Sullivan 23:22
So this is just a little bit more robust than that. But it’s also the alcohol added style and 65% rice milling, but it has a very gentle edge to it. Some, almost just like a wisp of caramely kind of aspect to it. ricey a little bit caramely and very, overall kind of gentle, and it has a dry finish for sure.

John Puma 23:57
That’s interesting

Timothy Sullivan 23:58
and it lingers a little bit. So It’s not like a crisp finish that kind of disappears very quickly. There’s a little bit of a lingering aspect to it. And that is really really lovely. Yeah that’s really nice sake.

John Puma 24:12
nice. And what do you think about food for that?

Timothy Sullivan 24:17
Hmmm, Yeah yeah I think this would go really well with a barbecue actually. Um the finish is relatively dry as I said, but it’s not weak it’s not lighter. It’s you know has the body I think to stand up to something like barbecue. I had. I had pulled chicken sliders the other day really really delicious.

John Puma 24:43
Pulled chicken sliders – ooh, that sounds good.

Timothy Sullivan 24:44
Yeah, that’s one chicken. And the way that the place near me does the pole chicken is like they give you the sauce on the side. So you can control how saucy you make the barbecue. And I love that because then I can you know yeah. It came also with pickled onions as well. You know, those they’re like kind of pink in color and they pickle. They do a quick pickle with the onions and they put those on top. Oh, it’s so good. I think that would be great with this. That’s very, very specific.

John Puma 25:15
Yes. Hey, nothing wrong with that. I think people can extrapolate based on what we but you said there Yes.

Timothy Sullivan 25:21
I think we have barbecue all over this great country, don’t we?

John Puma 25:24
Oh, yes, definitely.

Timothy Sullivan 25:25
Absolutely. So John, how about you? What do you have?

John Puma 25:29
Well, the Hanagaki Usu-Nigori Junmai Daiginjo. It’s obviously you can’t see from here. Those are sitting at home, but it’s very, very light. There’s not a lot of sediment in this at all it is. You know, it is Usu-Nigori It is very much Usu-Nigori is just giving it a little bit of color. Makes it a little bit like pearlescent

Hmm, it’s a this is really nice. The aroma is, I mean you can you know how you can sometimes smell an Nigori. Nigori is have a certain aroma to them a little bit. It’s faintly there like it’s not. It doesn’t smell like most Nigori is but that but you definitely want to know that is Nigori and then there’s little bit of a sweetness on the nose too.

There’s a little bit of sweetness on the taste as well but nothing overwhelming. I know that a lot of Nigori can be can be very sweet. This is definitely not in that category. It’s very light, very elegant.

Timothy Sullivan 27:04
So we’re on zoom so I can see it but for our listeners, how would you describe the kind of the thickness of the Nigori? Like is it see through or is it a little bit thicker? Is it opaque?

John Puma 27:16
It’s semi transparent. Yeah, no it is. It is definitely not. It’s not chunky. It’s not thick. It’s just enough to give it some color. And it probably influences the texture very slightly. This is still pretty light on the mouthfeel. I mean, it’s a little bit thicker than your average Junmai Daiginjo, but it is not anywhere near as thick as your average. Nigori.

Timothy Sullivan 27:51
Do you have the stats for your sake?

John Puma 27:53
I do. It is polished down to 40%

Timothy Sullivan 27:59
Oh,wow.

John Puma 28:00
…and it’s using gohyakumangoku

Timothy Sullivan 28:04
all right

John Puma 28:04
and the brewery is Nanbu Shuzo, and they are in Fukui. I don’t think we get that much from Fukui over here do we

Timothy Sullivan 28:16
there’s there’s a few really well known breweries from Fukui but I think for sake production, it’s a pretty small group of breweries.

John Puma 28:26
Yeah. All right.

This is it’s really nice. Again, it’s just it’s a it’s a difficult sake to describe because it’s two different styles are not clashing but kind of cooperating. A little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a silky texture, very refreshing aroma a little bit dry, a little bit crisp, a tad bit fruity. But, nothing not not like your tropical fruits. Maybe you’re more along the lines of like a green grave set muscat grapes. It’s really nice, but this is very delicate again and for food pairings. I’m not going to put this near anything more exciting than sushi. I think that this will play nice with your it’ll play nice with omakase, I think very nicely, but I wouldn’t want to mess with it too much. I think that it would I think that would be I think that strong food flavors really interfere with what you’re getting out of this sake. For the record, I do not know how this was pressed, which, which basically means that we know it’s not shizuku or a centrifuge because I’m pretty sure they would have it right on the bottle. And make sure that you know why this sake cost so much money.

Timothy Sullivan 29:46
Well, the importers website for Ban Ryu tells me that the pressing method for the sake I’m enjoying is yabuta. Oh yeah, so I know this was pressed by yabuta.

John Puma 30:00
I took a look at the importers website and did not see that sort of detail. So I went to the Japanese version of the breweries website, and still did not find that sort of detail.

Timothy Sullivan 30:14
You know, the brewery is not required to share their pressing methods, some some people do it for sake of completeness. Mine just happens to have the pressing method listed. If the sake is sold as a shizuku, that tells you automatically, you know, it’s the drip or the trickle method. And some sake also have “”fune” in the name “fune-shibori” is fune pressing. So there’s different sometimes they give you a clue. But the majority of sake in Japan are pressed using that yabuta – that automatic press.

John Puma 30:50
So it’s usually safe to assume that unless you’re told otherwise.

Timothy Sullivan 30:54
That’s right. I’d say that’s true.

John Puma 30:56
Yeah. Very interesting. Nice.

Timothy Sullivan 31:01
All right. Well, everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. If you can, please take a moment to rate our show on Apple podcasts. It’ll really help us out a lot and we appreciate it.

John Puma 31:13
And we want to make sure that if you’re listening to our show you don’t miss an episode. So make sure you subscribe wherever you download your podcasts. And these episodes will just pop onto your mobile device whenever you like. It’s getting very nice –

Timothy Sullivan 31:26
Like Magic

John Puma 31:27
like magic, they’re just gonna pop onto your device.

Timothy Sullivan 31:31
And as always, to learn more about any of the topics or any of the sake we talked about in today’s episode, be sure to visit our website SakeRevolution.com for the detailed show notes.

John Puma 31:44
And if you have any questions- burning sake questions- that you need answered, please reach out to us at [email protected]. And we will answer your questions on the show. So, until next time, please remember to keep drinking sake and Kanpai!