Episode 169 Show Notes

Episode 169. This week, we are returning to our series on sake vessels, but this time looking at sake serviceware in particular. We’re focusing in on the Tokkuri, the workhorse carafe used for sake service across the world. Tokkuri carafes can be used to serve sake chilled, room temperature, and to warm it up as well. The materials used to make tokkuri run the gamut from metal to glass to wood, with the most popular being ceramic. However utilitarian, use of the tokkuri comes with some etiquette rules, too. Have you broken any of the Tokkuri rules? Listen in and let’s find out! #sakerevolution


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


Skip to: 03:30 Sake Vessels: Tokkuri

About Tokkuri
From the UrbanSake.com Sake Glossary: A Tokkuri is a carafe for serving and heating sake. Traditionally made from ceramic or earthenware. The neck of the carafe is narrow to help retain heat. This carafe is partially submerged into a hot water bath to warm the sake. A single serving sake tokkuri is has a size of one “go” or ichigo – 180ml/6oz.


Download our Sake Warming Cheat sheet:


Skip to: 18:22 Sake Tasting: Choryo Tokubetsu Junmai Omachi 2013

Choryo Tokubetsu Junmai Omachi 2013

Classification: Tokubetsu Junmai, Koshu
Acidity: 1.4
Brewery: Choryo
Alcohol: 15.0%
Prefecture: Nara
SMV: +2.5
Rice Type: Omachi
Seimaibuai: 68%
Brand: Choryo


Skip to: 27:43 Show Closing

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


Support us on Patreon

Now there is a new way to support Sake Revolution. Join us on Patreon! Patreon is an online platform that allows you to support your favorite creators by subscribing to a monthly membership. At Sake Revolution, we’re offering two tiers, each with its own perk. If you enjoy our sake podcast, if you are able, please consider supporting this labor of sake love! See below to learn about our Patreon support levels.

  • Sake Enthusiast

    Have you ever wanted to sip along with us as we taste our sakes on the podcast? Now you can! As a Sake Enthusiast patron, you’ll get the inside track and know in advance which sakes we’ll be featuring on the show. This allows you to get them on hand and sip along with us while you listen.

  • Sake Otaku

    As a Sake Otaku supporter of the pod, you’ll get access to all the Sake Enthusiast intel along with access to a monthly live zoom Sake Happy Hour taking place the first Weds of every month at 9pm ET (6pm PT). Visit with us live on zoom! Come with all your questions and suggestions and enjoy a relaxed and fun Happy Hour with with us as we all sip sake together!


Episode 169 Transcript

John Puma: 0:21
Hello, everybody. And welcome to sake podcast. I’m your host, John Puma from the Sake Notes. Also, I’m the administrator at the Internet Sake Discord, as well as Reddit’s r slash sake community.

Timothy Sullivan: 0:36
And I’m your host, Timothy Sullivan. I am a Sake Samurai. I’m a sake educator, 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.

John Puma: 0:53
All things sake. I love it. On this show, we’re going through our search for all things sake. We have a lot of series that we like to do. We go and we, we talk about different rices. We focus on different prefectures and we have a series where we talk about different sake serving vessels. You have tuned into one of those episodes where we’re going to talk about another sake serving vessel, Timothy. What do we have

Timothy Sullivan: 1:21
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting. our sake vessels series has been focused Up until now on drinking vessels, meaning the actual cups that we use, and we’ve had Sakazuki, we’ve had Ochoko, we’ve had Guinomi, and today we’re going to take a little bit of a different tack. We’re going to be looking at a service vessel. So this is a vessel for pouring sake, and this is something that Everybody has probably seen out in Japanese restaurants out and about town. We’re going to be talking today about the tokkuri.

John Puma: 1:55
mhm,

Timothy Sullivan: 1:56
Now, John, you know what a tokkuri is, don’t you?

John Puma: 1:59
I do. And, uh, I like that you said, like, it’s something that everybody’s probably seen in the Japanese restaurant before, because I definitely knew what a Tokkuri was a long time before I ever heard the word Tokkuri.

Timothy Sullivan: 2:10
Yes.

John Puma: 2:12
And I think that’s probably the case for a lot of people who, uh, who are getting interested in sake and have seen these before, uh, uh, many, many times, I’m sure, uh, in various restaurants. how would you describe, what, what, what’s, what is the textbook definition of the Tokkuri?

Timothy Sullivan: 2:30
Right. Well, the tokkuri I often describe it as a carafe for pouring sake

John Puma: 2:37
Mmhmm.

Timothy Sullivan: 2:37
and it, it is almost a symbol of the sake industry. A lot of people who have sake businesses use a tokkuri in their logo. And if you’d like to see a photo of a classic tokkuri, visit our show notes at sakerevolution. com right now. And you can see some photos of what tokkuris look like, but I’ll do my best to describe it. They are. Tall and slender. And one of the characteristics of Tokkuri are the narrow neck. So there’s a narrow neck and then they kind of flare out a little bit. the classic Tokkuri is made from a white porcelain or a white ceramic and they’re tall and slender carafts with a narrow neck. I think that’s the best and easiest way to describe what Tokkuri are.

John Puma: 3:24
Yes, and based on that, I think there are probably at least 50 to 100 people listening right now who are going, oh, it’s the, yeah, that, okay. Yeah, people have definitely seen these.

Timothy Sullivan: 3:39
If you walk into your average sushi restaurant anywhere in the country, you’ll see these white ceramic carafes sitting on the counter, people pouring hot sake from them, and they’re so classic

John Puma: 3:55
Yeah.

Timothy Sullivan: 3:56
and so, you know, integral to the sake experience. You can buy them for as little as three dollars or they go up to very, very expensive ones. And it is, it is a carafe. It’s for pouring sake, but not just that. It’s also quite often used for heating sake. So this is something that you would fill, fill sake in the carafe, the tokkuri, and you’d set it in a water bath. And it’s a vessel for warming sake as well as pouring sake, right?

John Puma: 4:28
That’s exactly right. In fact, I think the first time I ever warmed my own sake, I used that exact method. because it is, of course, ceramic. Ceramic is very resilient to heat. And it also contains the heat really well. It insulates fairly well. And so you can, you know, it’ll keep that sake warm, uh, inside for a little bit.

Timothy Sullivan: 4:50
Yeah, so when you put a porcelain or ceramic tokkuri into hot water, the water actually warms the carafe first, warms the tokkuri first, and then it warms the sake inside. So when you pull it out of the water, you dab it off. There’s a lot of residual heat actually hanging out in the vessel itself, and that keeps it warm at the table. So that’s one of the advantages of these, tokkuris. Uh, let’s talk about some of the materials that they use. We talked about ceramic already, like the classic white ceramic, but you can find tokkuri in different materials as well. have you seen any other types, John?

John Puma: 5:28
I actually own one that’s made of glass. yeah. and I love it. It’s one of my favorite, um, intermediary pouring vessels.

Timothy Sullivan: 5:39
Yeah.

John Puma: 5:40
When I’m not, when I’m not pouring sake directly from the bottle into the glass, I’ll use that. Primarily in my home, it gets used when guests are over.

Timothy Sullivan: 5:49
Oh,

John Puma: 5:50
Right, so when you want to pour a couple of different sakes, you pour them into the tokkuri and put those on the table. also if you have perhaps magnums around the house, which is rare, but not unheard of. Uh, it’s an easy way to, to keep that sake, keep that sake bottle in the fridge. And not on the table drawing warming up and you can just pour out a relatively small amount into the tokkuri and bring that to the table and then you can refill it when you Need to and it keeps the bottle fresh in the fridge

Timothy Sullivan: 6:18
Yeah, and it’s a lot easier to pour from a tokkuri into a small sake cup versus from a giant 1. 8 liter bottle.

John Puma: 6:26
Well, you know you get a little workout with the 1. 8 liter bottle, but yes, I think that’s Definitely a good idea, especially as the night wears on you Don’t want anybody slipping and then the sake is all over the place and

Timothy Sullivan: 6:36
yeah, for sure. So we’ve got the classic ceramic, we have glass. Uh, there’s also sometimes they make them in metal tin very often, hammered tin. And you also see them, I’ve seen them in wood as well. Now wood wouldn’t be used for warming sake, but it is a form factor that I’ve seen before with the classic tall skinny tokkuri with the narrow neck and then the flared mouth. I think that the shape is so iconic that people have made it in all different materials.

John Puma: 7:10
I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in wood before. That’s interesting.

Timothy Sullivan: 7:14
Yeah. I’ve seen like a wood tokkuri and Ochoko set kind of carved out of bamboo or something like that. So it’s not, it’s not common, but they make them in all different materials. So it’s something to look out for. Now, the next thing to talk about when it comes to tokkuri is what are the sizes?

John Puma: 7:29
Hmm. That is a good question. I’ve never even, I’ve never thought of the size of the tokkuri as far as what kind of, are we talking like, there’s like physically how big is, or, or what kind of volume does it hold?

Timothy Sullivan: 7:41
Yeah, what kind of volume does it

John Puma: 7:42
Okay. And, and is there a standard? Mm hmm.

Timothy Sullivan: 7:45
There is a

John Puma: 7:46
A ha! I knew it! And is this standard, uh, is this standard perhaps calculated in Go? Ah! So, Tim, for our, um, listeners at home who might not have listened to Go. Every episode in the Vessel series, which we, we did talk about Go, I believe in one of them.

Timothy Sullivan: 8:12
we did when we talked about the Masu, the M A S U, Masu. So the Masu is the, the square wooden box. And that has a base measurement of 180 milliliters. Which is considered one go or one standard serving of sake. And Tokkuri also come in different go measurements. So very often there’s a one go or two go, and it’s either 180 ml or 360 ml. And when you’re in a restaurant, it is very common in Japan to say, Oh, I want this sake, give me a to go serving. And that’ll come in a larger tokkuri with 360 ml. And then you use that to pour everybody at the table.

John Puma: 8:59
Uh oh.

Timothy Sullivan: 9:00
So, You very often see them in either the 180 ml or the 360 ml. Those are the two most common sizes that you see.

John Puma: 9:09
So 180 matches up with, a one cup is exactly 180 milliliters. Um, so that, that’s excellent to know. And then imagine just two of those. So

Timothy Sullivan: 9:23
It’s also very often one cup. It’s uh, the smaller Tokkuri size is often 180 ml. And you can also imagine it as one quarter of a standard sake bottle size.

John Puma: 9:36
if you have four of those, you have done a whole bottle of sake.

Timothy Sullivan: 9:40
You have done a whole

John Puma: 9:41
Yeah.

Timothy Sullivan: 9:41
sake.

John Puma: 9:44
And they said I wasn’t good at math. I don’t know. Excellent. Excellent.

Timothy Sullivan: 9:51
Yeah, so those are the sizes you can look for, but I think there are a lot of Tokkuri Like made in China and made elsewhere, and they might not stick strictly to those measurements. So you can get novelty sizes in all different sizes as well. So I don’t want anyone to think it’s just limited to those. But if you buy a Japanese tokkuri, very often they’re sold in, in those two sizes. They’re very common. So if you see a smaller one, chances are it holds 180 ml.

John Puma: 10:22
we mentioned, you know, how tokkuri get used, in restaurants, mostly, uh, restaurants here, domestically restaurants in Japan. I talked about how I use them in house. do you ever have a chance to use tokkuri home? Mm

Timothy Sullivan: 10:37
enjoy using tokkuri. I have a couple very fine Arita porcelain ones, some ceramic ones. And I use them both for hot and cold sake. They’re more associated with hot sake because as we mentioned, you can take these ceramic tokkuri and put them right in a hot water bath and warm them up. But you can also put them in the fridge and kind of chill them a little bit and then use them to serve cold sake as well. So I, I enjoy it. And honestly, I use it often at home as a form of portion control, where, you know, you want to, you know, You wanna, oh, you laugh.

John Puma: 11:18
Oh, no, I’m laughing. Cause you’re right.

Timothy Sullivan: 11:22
You know, we’ve talked so often about that super yummy sake that you just keep one more splash, one more splash, one more splash, and then you turn around and the bottle’s gone. Whereas if you pour tokkuri at a time, you can measure and, I think it slows your roll a little bit and helps you enjoy sake. And I agree with you, I tend to bring the tokkuri out more often when I have guests over and I’m sharing sake with someone. And it’s a little more elegant to pour from a beautiful carafe than it is from, the rough and tumble bottle itself. So.

John Puma: 11:55
The rough and tumble bottle. I’m still laughing about the portion control. That’s just, that is, that is such a phenomenally, uh, like on the nose. Great use for it. Oh, that’s

Timothy Sullivan: 12:09
Yeah, so if, if any of our listeners are curious about using a tokkuri for warming sake, please visit our show notes again at sakerevolution. com. And we’re going to have a downloadable PDF there that shows you step by step how you can warm sake at home using a water bath and a tokkuri.

John Puma: 12:27
Excellent. I love it.

Timothy Sullivan: 12:29
Also wanted to mention one final thing before we move on to our tasting today, and that’s a few words about etiquette and polite service.

John Puma: 12:39
Ooh, okay.

Timothy Sullivan: 12:40
Yeah. do you know the rules of handling your tokkuri?

John Puma: 12:45
so I’m gonna, crib some things I learned from a previous episode on sake etiquette that we’ve done, and I’m going to say that I should not be pouring my own.

Timothy Sullivan: 12:56
That’s

John Puma: 12:57
that, is that something you want to tell me? Uh, is that, is that not, is that not where you’re going?

Timothy Sullivan: 13:02
that wasn’t where I was going

John Puma: 13:04
All right. But, but true, but not, but not where we’re going. Okay. Tim, where were we going?

Timothy Sullivan: 13:10
Well, when you have a tokkuri, this tall slender carafe with the narrow neck. In Japan, again, this is for Japanese etiquette. You don’t have to do this in the US. Every time, but I find when it comes to etiquette, Japanese etiquette related to sake, it’s better to know the proper way and deviate when you feel comfortable. Uh, but I’m not saying everyone has to pour sake this way, but in Japan with a tokkuri in more formal settings,

John Puma: 13:40
a lot of, uh,

Timothy Sullivan: 13:41
lead up,

John Puma: 13:42
yes, it’s like really qualifying this one a lot.

Timothy Sullivan: 13:49
in Japan, if you want to be, The most polite you can be when pouring sake, it’s considered polite to hold the tokkuri with two hands when you pour.

John Puma: 13:58
Ooh,

Timothy Sullivan: 14:00
Yes. Yes. One handed tokkuri pouring is considered more casual, a little bit more friendly, a little bit more, you know, uh, familiar. So if you want to show respect to the person you’re pouring to, in Japanese culture, the expectation is you would Hold the tokkuri with one hand and balance with the other hand and your both hands are touching the tokkuri when you pour. So that’s the most formal and most polite way.

John Puma: 14:28
Hmm. You know, when you say it like that, I’m like, of course, you know, it makes sense after you, after you hear it. Um, but I would not have, uh, I would not have come up with that. Cause I don’t think we actually went over that on our etiquette episode. So I’m learning something new today.

Timothy Sullivan: 14:43
Yeah, and I have another piece of etiquette specifically for tokkuri and one, one challenge with tokkuri is that when you’ve been pouring from them, you don’t always know What’s left inside because they’re,

John Puma: 14:58
You’re absolutely right.

Timothy Sullivan: 14:59
So there’s two things you should not do in polite company. The,

John Puma: 15:05
Okay.

Timothy Sullivan: 15:06
the, if

John Puma: 15:06
right, Tim. Thing number one, what do I not do at the light company with my

Timothy Sullivan: 15:11
so you don’t want to peer into the tokkuri like you’re looking through a kaleidoscope,

John Puma: 15:19
Okay. So, so don’t, don’t hold it up and kind of, okay,

Timothy Sullivan: 15:23
don’t hold the opening up to your eye and try to see how much liquid is left in there. That’s considered bad manners.

John Puma: 15:29
okay. That makes sense. I can see that.

Timothy Sullivan: 15:32
yeah, And the other thing that’s kind of bad form is when you pick up the tokkuri and you hold it next to your ear and you ring it back and forth like a bell. To hear any sloshing.

John Puma: 15:48
it also makes sense. I guess I don’t think it ever occurred to me to try that. Um, there are situations though, and I do wonder how much is left in there because as we pointed out earlier, these are generally speaking, porcelain. They are opaque. They have weight to them by nature of being porcelain. How do you know how much is left in there?

Timothy Sullivan: 16:12
I have an answer to this question.

John Puma: 16:14
I thought you might.

Timothy Sullivan: 16:15
I actually asked a brewer once. I’m like, okay, I know I’m not supposed to peer inside with my eye. I’m not supposed to shake it. How do I know how much is left in? And the answer is a little unsatisfactory, but you’re supposed to know by the weight. When you pick it up, you should know the weight of your tokkuri empty roughly. And then you, when it’s getting near empty. You should know based on the weight. That was the

John Puma: 16:45
you need to study your tokkuri before party.

Timothy Sullivan: 16:51
Puma, I have one more. One more no no when it comes to tokkuri.

John Puma: 16:56
One more no no I’m ready for. What do I not do with my

Timothy Sullivan: 16:59
So if you’re having a party with many people and you have multiple tokkuris out on the table, if you have a little sake left in this one, a little sake left in this one, one thing you should never do is pour one into the other and kind of pour

John Puma: 17:14
Hmm. Consolidate.

Timothy Sullivan: 17:16
Yes. Again, among friends, no one’s going to care, but if you’re in a more formal situation or maybe a business dinner, that would be viewed as bad form as well.

John Puma: 17:27
If I am out to dinner with a Japanese brewer, I should definitely not do that. heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh Noted.

Timothy Sullivan: 17:36
Yes.

John Puma: 17:37
Uh, well, alright, now this was actually a lot of fun. I was like, there’s a lot of stuff about tokkuri that I didn’t know going into this episode. Clearly.

Timothy Sullivan: 17:46
Yes. And of course, never drink from your tokkuri. also

John Puma: 17:50
goes without saying, because so, so the one thing that I was like, so typically when we do this series, what we do is we, we take the sake we’re going to be having that week and we pour it into the vessel of the week. And then we also pour it into the wine glass and try to see kind of where those bring us in this case, since this is an intermediary device. What are we doing?

Timothy Sullivan: 18:14
Yeah. I think we should just put our sake into our tokkuri and enjoy it out of our wine as we usually do.

John Puma: 18:22
Excellent. That sounds great. And what is that sake? You might be asking yourself? Well, we’ve got the answer for you right here. Uh, this week out of our Tokkuri, we wanted to pick something that we felt would go pretty well cold, but also pretty well warmed in order to kind of keep in with the theme of the Tokkuri, which can facilitate both options. So we’ve got the, Choryo, Tokubetsu Junmai Omachi. This is from Nara Prefecture and the wrinkle in this one, the interesting thing about this one is that it’s a 10 year cold aged sake. So it’s, it was actually, brewed back in 2013 and the label on, I’m sorry, the label on the bottle that says 2013, it was only bottled. In 2023,

Timothy Sullivan: 19:10
hmm.

John Puma: 19:11
which is very interesting. It was battled back in June. again, this is a Omanchi. now the, another interesting thing about it actually is the Omanchi is from Takashima in Okayama Prefecture, so the, The home of omachi, breweries often like to, to, to mention when their, when their omachi has come from Okayama because that’s the, the, the, the home. Um, this has been milled down to 68%, which is, Very specific. Uh, the sake meter value is, plus 2. 5 and the acidity is 1. 4. Now with a 10 year cold aged Omachi, Tim, what do you think we’re going to experience here?

Timothy Sullivan: 19:54
I don’t really know. I’m so excited to try this. I have not had this sake before, but we have had Choryo brand on the show before, and they’re really, really well known for their taru sake or their cedar barrel aged sake. So I think we featured their cedar taru before.

John Puma: 20:15
in our Taru episode.

Timothy Sullivan: 20:17
And I know, John, you’re a big fan of omachi.

John Puma: 20:20
I am.

Timothy Sullivan: 20:22
uh, so. I’m excited to try this. I’ve never had this sake before. And I also want to mention that for a 10 year cold aged sake, the price for this was pretty reasonable and affordable, wasn’t it?

John Puma: 20:37
Yeah, it was actually, almost alarmingly inexpensive. I’m going to

Timothy Sullivan: 20:43
Could we give, could we give a range for our listeners? I’m sure they’ll be curious.

John Puma: 20:47
this, sake was under 30 in New York, Manhattan.

Timothy Sullivan: 20:52
Usually aging a sake by the brewery tends to add to the cost. So we’ll have to see. I’m going to expect a little bit of rice forward flavors, probably. And some, maybe some caramelized notes from the aging, even though it’s cold storage, there might be some caramelization of the sugars over those 10 years. I have mine prepared chilled. So I’m going to try it chilled today. Uh, but I’m so excited to get this into the tokkuri.

John Puma: 21:21
Excellent. Um, by the way, I am right with you. I think that we’re going to be getting a little bit of that caramelization. Not as much, nothing, nothing like you would expect for a 10 year old sake. and, it’s going to be, there’s going to be a richness and depth to it. That, that’s kind of what I’m thinking. I know I’m really taking really taking a big

Timothy Sullivan: 21:40
So John, should we get this into our tokkuris?

John Puma: 21:43
Let’s do it.

Timothy Sullivan: 21:44
Okay.

John Puma: 21:45
This is gonna be tricky. I’ve never poured into a Tokkuri on the show before.

Timothy Sullivan: 21:51
All right. Well, I’m ready to,

John Puma: 21:55
All right, here we go. now I’m going to make the second journey from the Tokkuri

Timothy Sullivan: 22:02
turi into the glass. Here we go.

John Puma: 22:08
Uh, so one thing I’ve learned about this is that Tokkuri is pretty quiet. Pouring into the Tokkuri was very quiet. Pouring out of the Tokkuri was pretty quiet. It’s a stealthy vessel that we have here.

Timothy Sullivan: 22:23
Alright, let’s give this a smell. Mmm. Okay. It smells really ricey.

John Puma: 22:29
It really, really does. Um, but before we talk about. That smell. I do want to point out that this does not look like a koshu.

Timothy Sullivan: 22:39
No, it’s got some, a hint of yellow to

John Puma: 22:42
Right. If you, if you told me this was just like Moroka, I’d be like, okay. Yeah. Um, but it, it doesn’t look aged, but that’s that cold storage.

Timothy Sullivan: 22:54
Mmm.

John Puma: 22:56
You’re right about that aroma, though. It is so, um,

Timothy Sullivan: 23:01
Yeah. it almost smells, instead of rice, it almost smells like barley. You know, it smells like very grain forward.

John Puma: 23:08
Yeah, and oh, like, like toasted.

Timothy Sullivan: 23:11
Mmm.

John Puma: 23:11
yeah.

Timothy Sullivan: 23:12
Okay. Let’s give it a taste. Well, I know, John, you and I have improved a lot since 2013, so I hope this sake has improved a lot as well.

John Puma: 23:22
okay. So my very bold prediction of depth has, has maybe. come through. It’s a very, it’s a lot going on here. But it still has a lot of that, and maybe it’s a power of suggestion Tim. But that that toasty barley kind of thing is present on the on the tongue.

Timothy Sullivan: 23:44
Yeah.

John Puma: 23:45
some of that.

Timothy Sullivan: 23:46
For me, I have a lot of, I mean, you and I have had this debate. Is it caramel? Is it caramel? But caramel slash caramel.

John Puma: 23:56
Yes. I’m saying this sake is both.

Timothy Sullivan: 24:00
Yes. So there, there’s definitely a little bit of sweetness there, but it’s like a caramel sweetness and. For me, the aroma was a little more pronounced with that barley toasted rice aroma. On the palate, it’s a little more reserved and there’s a, there’s a trace of sweetness there, but it feels toasted and caramelized. Yeah. Very interesting sake. Hmm.

John Puma: 24:30
you told me that this was perhaps a three year regular age sake, that would totally track. So 10 year cold age, I think you’re meeting at certain point, right? But it definitely, tastes aged. It definitely tastes like koshu But I cannot help but wonder, what does this taste like warmed up? Because that might be a place where this can shine. I think that room temperature and warm is where, uh, is where your, your older, your, your age sake sometimes, you know, gets, gets a little burst of life. I think it’s outside of the scope of what we’re doing today on the show, but I’m very curious about what that might look like and might have to do some personal experiments in the future.

Timothy Sullivan: 25:18
Yeah. I think without a doubt, this sake would fare very well for warming up and the tokkuri is the perfect vessel for doing that. So, I think that warm would bring out more of a, my prediction would be a little bit of a spicy note. Like, um, when the caramel flavors get a little bit warmed up, sometimes you can get a hint of like, almost like baking spices and things like that in, in koshu sake. And I think that we would get some of that here for sure.

John Puma: 25:54
That sounds like a pretty, uh, a decent prediction. I think that that I can see that happening.

Timothy Sullivan: 26:02
Yeah. And this style of sake generally like aged, cold aged for 10 years. And this is a Tokubetsu Junmai Omachi again, to remind our listeners, this type of sake, this profile is generally really good for warming. So you can really look for, uh, an expansion of those ricey flavors. And I think the Omachi profile would come forward even more when you give it a gentle warming.

John Puma: 26:32
Yeah. I think that the, and that koshu, the caramel is kind of, in my mind, it’s, it’s getting in the way of that omachi note that I, that I love so much. It’s hard to detect in the sake because it’s, there’s so much more going on and maybe it’s just hiding and needs a little, a little warmth to bring it out.

Timothy Sullivan: 26:51
Yeah. Yeah. You know, warming in general, tends to bring the alcohol notes forward and the warming sensation in general. And I think in this case, it’s going to bring the rice a little bit forward as well.

John Puma: 27:08
Yeah.

Timothy Sullivan: 27:08
Well, John, did you learn something about tokkuri in this episode?

John Puma: 27:14
Tim, I learned a lot about Tokkuri in episode, mostly about etiquette in Tokkuri. But you know, what are you going to do? Uh, it was, uh, this was fun. Uh, the Vessel series is always, uh, is always a good time for me. I always have fun with these.

Timothy Sullivan: 27:27
Yeah. Well, you can’t go wrong with a little etiquette.

John Puma: 27:30
Never, a little etiquette goes a long way.

Timothy Sullivan: 27:33
I should have said that. A little etiquette goes a long way.

John Puma: 27:36
People remember when you don’t do the etiquette, right, they forget when you do it, right.

Timothy Sullivan: 27:43
I think it’s, it’s worthwhile to have a few tokkuri in your house, again, for portion control and for serving your guests. And for warming sake, it’s like, it’s a Swiss army knife of, of sake vessels. I think it does so much. All right. Well, John, it was so nice to taste with you. This sake was so interesting that we enjoyed today. it’s approaching omachi from a different point of view, but I really enjoyed tasting it. And, uh, it was really, really interesting to have that from our Tokkuris. I want to thank our listeners for tuning in. Thank you so much for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here. And a special hello and thank you to our patrons as well. Sake Revolution is a listener supported show. And if you would like to learn more about joining our community at Patreon and supporting the show, please visit Patreon.com/SakeRevolution to learn more.

John Puma: 28:38
and there’s another really great way to support the show. You can go out there and review us on Apple podcasts or any other podcast platform that you might interact with, uh, gets the word out about the show helps, uh, the algorithm find us so that when people are looking for shows about sake, we become a little bit easier for them to get ahold of. So on that note, Timothy. Thank you very much for coming by today. Um, don’t forget to raise your tokkuri two hands, two hands, Tim, two hands. Remember to keep drinking sake and kanpai!