Episode 56. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to do a short series on a sake production step called “Shubo” (酒母). Shu=Sake and Bo=Mother. So consider this step the mother of the sake, and it gets translated in many ways… seed mash, yeast starter, fermentation starter. However you slice it, the shubo step in sake production is where yeast get introduced and where fermentation begins. One of the keys to all shubo methods is lactic acid. It is required to kill off all of the bad bacteria and make the starter tank environment ideal for sake yeast. The secret to the sokujo method is that they put in ready-made lactic acid to jump start the process. All other shubo methods let lactic acid develop naturally over time. Be cause it is easier, cheaper and faster, 90% of all sake produced uses the Sokujo method. So, let’s dive in and learn more about all things Sokujo!

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

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Skip to: 01:47 Sake Education Corner: Sokujo Shubo

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Skip to: 17:32 Sake Introductions

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Skip to: 19:12 Kokuryu “Gohyakumangoku” Junmai Ginjo

Brewery: Kokuryu Brewery
Classification: Junmai Ginjo
Acidity: 1.4
Alcohol: 15.5%
Prefecture: Fukui
Seimaibuai: 55%
SMV: +3.0
Rice Type: Gohyakumangoku

View on UrbanSake.com

 

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Skip to: 22:07 Oze No Yukidoke Ohkarakuchi Junmai

Oze No Yukidoke Ohkarakuchi Junmai

Brewery: Ryujin Shuzo
Prefecture: Gunma
Classification: Junmai
Acidity: 1.8
Alcohol: 16.5%
SMV: +10.0
Rice Type: Gohyakumangoku, Yamadanishiki
Seimaibuai: 60%
Importer: NY Mutual Trading (NY)
Brand: Oze No Yukidoke (尾瀬の雪どけ)

View on UrbanSake.com

 

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Skip to: 30:20 Show Closing

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

John Puma: 0:22
Hello everybody. And welcome to Sake Revolution. This is America’s first sake podcast. I’m your host, John Puma from the Sake Notes. I’m also that guy over at the internet, Sake Discord, as well as the Reddit r/sake community. But for purposes of this show, I’m a local sake nerd.

Timothy Sullivan: 0:42
And I am your host, Timothy Sullivan. I’m a Sake Samurai a sake educator, and I’m also the founder of the Urban Sake website. And every week, John and I will be tasting and chatting about all things, sake and doing our very best to make it fun and easy to understand.

John Puma: 1:00
Outstanding Tim now, my understanding is that, we do a lot of series on this show.

Timothy Sullivan: 1:06
Yes.

John Puma: 1:07
and I think we’ve got a few running still, but I feel like we need to add another,

Timothy Sullivan: 1:12
It’s like lays potato chips. You can never have just one.

John Puma: 1:16
okay.

Timothy Sullivan: 1:16
We need another series.

John Puma: 1:18
exactly. It cannot have you cannot just one. Um, they still use that as a slogan.

Timothy Sullivan: 1:24
I don’t know.

John Puma: 1:25
know. I honestly have no idea. Uh, that’s not importantly, the Lay’s potato chips slogan is not the important thing today. The important thing is that we’re going to be starting a short series that we’re actually going to do sequentially most, mostly sequentially. Um, about shubo now, Tim, do you want to tell everybody at home what, what exactly is shubo?

Timothy Sullivan: 1:47
Well, there’s two words for what we call shubo You can call it Shubo or you can call it Moto. And both of these things mean the same thing. We talked about shubo and Moto early on in our podcast careers when we were doing a run through the sake production process. So, so shubo is one of the steps of the sake production process and the best way I’ve found to translate this is called the fermentation starter. So it’s the point in the production process where. All the ingredients come together in one tank for the first time and fermentation actually starts.

John Puma: 2:23
So, this is where the action begins.

Timothy Sullivan: 2:25
we’re the bubbling begins,

John Puma: 2:27
The begins. Yes. Yes. Yes. Great. Okay. So that’s a nice little overview on, on what shubo is. Uh, and then today’s episode, I believe we’re covering the most common type of shubo. Is that, is that right?

Timothy Sullivan: 2:42
Yeah. We’re going to look over four episodes. We’re going to take a look at the different styles of shubo of fermentation starter, and we’re going to start with the most modern, the most used and the most common method of getting sake up and running.

John Puma: 2:58
No. Right. And what did they call that, Tim?

Timothy Sullivan: 3:00
Well, they call that sokujo

John Puma: 3:04
Sokujo?

Timothy Sullivan: 3:05
Sokujo

John Puma: 3:07
Have a ring to it. I have to say.

Timothy Sullivan: 3:10
it’s the modern, fast and most common fermentations starter method.

John Puma: 3:17
we like fast and we like modern so I can see, I can see why a lot of breweries would, would adapt that

Timothy Sullivan: 3:23
Yeah. So. The word shubo is actually really interesting in and of itself. If we break it down and translate it, shu means sake

John Puma: 3:35
Right

Timothy Sullivan: 3:36
Bo is a way to say mother. So it is, it is the mother of sake shubo So that is a really interesting way. If you break down the way, the words are put together. The sake game mother, you can think of it as the seed mash the fermentation starter, the yeast starter. It’s got a lot of different names, but it’s really where the rubber hits the road for fermentation.

John Puma: 4:01
Great. So then sokujo, modern, everybody’s doing it these days.

Timothy Sullivan: 4:06
Yes, all the cool kids are doing it.

John Puma: 4:09
All the cool kids are doing it. What, what is, what does it entail? What is, um, Well, getting into the weeds a little bit. What is sokujo??

Timothy Sullivan: 4:17
Well, there’s one primary difference between sokujo and the three other fermentation starter methods we’re going to look at. And it all has to do with prepping the tank for the addition of yeast. So for sokujo what they do is they take commercially available lactic acid. And it’s in a liquid form and they dump that into the tank on the first day of starting the shubo and this lactic acid has a very specific purpose. The lactic acid kills any unwanted wild yeast, any unwanted bacteria. And it creates a little bit of a higher acid environment in the tank and sake yeast really thrives in that environment. So it kills off the unwanted things creates the ideal environment for sake yeast. And when you put the sake yeast in, it can just flourish uninhibited and grow really strong. So this addition of lactic acid manually you just dump it in. That’s the one thing that differentiates modern sokujo shubo from other fermentation starters.

John Puma: 5:26
well, so it’s like literally like setting the stage then for the, uh, for the rest of the production. That’s interesting.

Timothy Sullivan: 5:33
And just a quick preview. All the other methods involve lactic acid evolving naturally over time. But with sokujo, we take a shortcut. That’s why it’s called the modern quick method.

John Puma: 5:44
Hmm. I think the, the spoiler alert is that those other methods are, are quite old.

Timothy Sullivan: 5:50
Yeah. So shubo I want to tell you a really quick story about shubo. Well, because when I did my internship at the sake brewery in Niigata at Hakkaisan I spent one month of my time there working in the shubo room So this is the room where they do the yeast starter and there’s one person who’s the manager of the shubo room And he taught me. All the steps of making shubo And I got to do this several times and got some good experience on it. And I remember we were standing there stirring the shubo one day and I looked over to him and I said, you know, can you tell me, when does fermentation actually begin? Like we put the yeast in four hours ago, are these bubbles fermentation? Like, is it, is it happening now? And he looked at me and he said, that’s the mystery of shubo We never know when that moment of birth for sake is. And I was like, wow, that’s really cool. And kind of profound. It’s, it’s a natural process. We don’t have exacting control over it. We’re just shepherding the microbes to do a certain thing. And that lesson always stayed with me. We are not in the driver’s seat when it comes to fermentation, we can put the microbes in a certain condition, but we really rely on them to make the magic.

John Puma: 7:14
And we don’t know exactly the moment.

Timothy Sullivan: 7:17
No, you don’t know exactly which bubble on the surface is the first bubble of fermentation. You never know. I just thought that was so cool. It’s like really, really interesting and taught me that you have to go with the flow. And someone told me once fermentation is wrangling microbes, and that is really true.

John Puma: 7:39
Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. So that’s what we’re doing. There’s popping in some lactic acid commercially available.

Timothy Sullivan: 7:48
Yes. Years before I worked at a sake brewery, I learned from a textbook. They take lactic acid and they dumped it in. And I said, okay, I understand in theory, but I never really knew how it works. And when I worked at the sake brewery, they had a giant cardboard box with a spout on the front and they would bring a test tube over. And, you know, those giant, those giant containers of laundry detergent with a spout in the front and you like, yeah, it was just like that. And they would. Open up the spout, like a box wine and the liquid lactic acid would come out into the test tube and they would bring it over to the, to the shubo tank and they would dump it in and I’m like, Oh, okay. That’s what lactic acid looks like. It kind of looked like it kind of looked like glycerin. You know, it was like a viscous clear liquid kind of interesting.

John Puma: 8:37
say, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a lactic acid in the wild, in my day-to-day life, but I’ve never spent a year at a sake brewery. So I imagine it comes up more often there

Timothy Sullivan: 8:49
Yeah. So I’ve heard the, addition of lactic acid to shubo I’ve heard that also described as like an eraser going over the mash, where you’re erasing all the things you don’t want, all the microbes you don’t want get taken out and you get a clean slate ready for the sake yeast to go in. So that’s another way to look at it.

John Puma: 9:14
and there’s, there’s no danger of the lactic acid impacting the, the sake yeast in. Anyway,

Timothy Sullivan: 9:23
That’s a great question. I’ve learned that sake yeast thrives in a higher acid environment, so it, it primes the pump and lines up the tank specifically for the environment that sake yeast likes.

John Puma: 9:38
Excellent. So by its nature, as an acid, it’s automatically in a good place for those that’s interest. That is, that is actually a really, really interesting way to put that. Um, Oh gosh.

Timothy Sullivan: 9:51
So. Let me just paint you a little picture of the shubo room in a sake brewery.

John Puma: 9:57
Ooh. All right. Paint me a word picture, Tim. Okay.

Timothy Sullivan: 10:01
tanks are smaller tanks. They’re about waist high. If you were to stand next to them and they are the place where water, rice, koji rice, and yeast come together in a small batch format for the first time. And the interesting thing is that. Some people think that the purpose of shubo is to start making alcohol right away and, get the sake flowing. The purpose of shubo is actually to create a healthy, vibrant yeast colony. when the brewer orders yeast from the supplier, it arrives in a tiny little vial, and you need to grow that vial up to a vibrant colony that can populate a small tank. And then when we moved that tank onto the main fermentation mash, it’s strong, vibrant, healthy, ready to go and grow even more. So that’s why this shubo step is sometimes called the yeast starter as well, because it helps bloom the yeast colony grow the yeast colony, and they do something interesting during shubo as well. Over the two week period where they’re making the shubo they adjust the temperature daily up and down. So they bring the temperature up. And then they bring the temperature down and that shocks the yeasts and only the healthy, vibrant, strong yeasts are gonna survive these temperature shocks that they do up and down. So if you look at the temperature chart over the two weeks of it goes up and down and up and down, up and down. And this way of kind of. Manhandling. No, that’s not the right word. Uh,

John Puma: 11:49
Abuse

Timothy Sullivan: 11:52
We’re going to have people protesting outside of sake shops. Now

John Puma: 11:56
free the yeast.

Timothy Sullivan: 11:57
Free the yeast! This treatment of the yeast, varying the temperature really does ensure that the strong, vibrant yeast survive and reproduce. And when you’re ready to move the shubo onto the main fermentation tank, you’ve got this colony of healthy yeast, and that’s really the, the main focus, but they do that through temperature variation. It’s one of the keys for making a healthy shubo

JP-56-NR-1: 12:24
All

John Puma: 12:24
Right. I think I, I think I get why they would maybe, maybe be a little rude to yeast in order to accomplish that survival of the fittest, the best East makes It into the tank.

Timothy Sullivan: 12:34
It is quintessential survival of the fittest

John Puma: 12:37
Quite, quite literally. I remember the first time I went into the shubo room at a sake brewery, I did not realize that was the shubo room. And I was very perplexed because these tanks were impossibly small for making. Yeah. So I was like, there’s. Like, there’s something wrong. There’s no way they’re sake. And these tanks is this. They’d be making like 16 bottles a year. This doesn’t make any sense.

Timothy Sullivan: 13:02
John were you, were you like, I’ve heard of microbreweries, but this is ridiculous.

John Puma: 13:07
I was like, this is something I could do in my living room. This doesn’t seem right at all. Um, and then, then our guide explained to us that the guys, this was very early on in my sake. Career where I didn’t know these things just yet. And I knew something was wrong. I just didn’t know exactly what was wrong. And then it was explained to us, no, this is actually just the shubo room. And I was like, okay, that makes sense then. And then we went downstairs and that’s where the, the very, very, very large containers were and now, okay, this, this makes more sense. I understand.

Timothy Sullivan: 13:41
I’m not sure if there was active fermentation going on when you visited. But the shubo room where I worked was chilly, it was cold. It’s refrigerated actually.

John Puma: 13:53
Mm, it was chilly, but it wasn’t as, uh, it wasn’t, I don’t know if I would define it as being like really cold, but it was definitely a little bit, the whole brewery was a little bit chilly to

Timothy Sullivan: 14:02
Hm. Yeah. Yeah. Wasn’t Hannah. Kershner telling us about Hawaii and Hokkaido

John Puma: 14:08
Yes, Hokkaido,

Timothy Sullivan: 14:10
the temperature

John Puma: 14:11
it? was, uh, Hawaii was the, uh, was the thank you. I could do the words didn’t want to come out. The code to Hawaii was the Koji room and the shoe Bose was, uh, was Hokkaido pur.

Timothy Sullivan: 14:27
Cold.

John Puma: 14:28
I find it interesting that, that, that the Japanese decided to go with Hawaii as their like really warm place that they’ve got plenty of warm places in Japan.

Timothy Sullivan: 14:37
I know they could have called it Okinawa, but

John Puma: 14:39
Yeah, exactly. And kept it to like one side of the country. And the other side Hokkaido is in the North Okinawa in the South and they’ve got everything covered.

Timothy Sullivan: 14:47
Yeah. Well, let me give you one more little tidbit of information about sokujo, which is again our fast modern shubo method. Why don’t you take a guess, John? Of all the sake produced in Japan. What percentage uses the sokujo method?

John Puma: 15:07
I’m going to say something outlandish like 95.

Timothy Sullivan: 15:10
Oh, you. Oh my God. You’re so close. It’s 90%. It’s 90%.

John Puma: 15:16
You know, originally I was thinking 90 and I was like, you know what, no, I’m going to go, I’m going to go deep. I’m going to

Timothy Sullivan: 15:22
yes.

John Puma: 15:24
go for it. I’m going to go for it. But Hey, you know what? Within 5%

JP-56-NR-1: 15:27
I’ll

John Puma: 15:27
take it.

Timothy Sullivan: 15:27
Yeah. That was great. Guess. So 90% of breweries are using the sokujo method, the modern fast East starter. There’s a few advantages to doing sokujo one is that it’s faster. So you spend less time making your shubo And it’s cheaper because you you don’t have to pay people to monitor the shubo extra amounts of time. And honestly, it’s easier to do a requires less skill for sake brewers. Because it’s a little more easy to pull off than the other methods we’re going to talk about in the coming weeks.

John Puma: 16:06
Hmm. uh, is it also easier to get consistency because it is much more of a controlled situation. You’re literally taking something off the shelf and. Setting the stage using that at seems like a really good way to, to get the same result. Every time you’re making a new batch

Timothy Sullivan: 16:23
Yep, absolutely. With sokujo, you are, jump-starting the process and your putting lactic acid in manually, and you are setting the stage in a very specific way, and you take a lot of the questions out of the process. So that’s absolutely right. You can get a lot more consistency. The yeast goes in uninhibited. The exact yeast you selected and you’re off to the races. So it does take a lot of the questions and variables out of the equation.

John Puma: 16:52
All right, Tim and, as is customary on our show, uh, we’ve brought examples of the topic that we’re talking about today. So we looked long and hard and found one of the 90% of the sakes out there that uses the sokujo method. And I want to tell you, it was, it was a lot of work

Timothy Sullivan: 17:13
We searched high and low to find sakes that fit today’s theme of sokujo

John Puma: 17:20
We did

Timothy Sullivan: 17:21
and we, we came up ACEs.

John Puma: 17:25
There’s so much, so much sokujo out there.

Timothy Sullivan: 17:28
Let’s introduce our

John Puma: 17:29
Yeah, let’s interest our sake as you go first, sir.

Timothy Sullivan: 17:32
All right. I have a sake that I love. This is Kokuryu Junmai Ginjo it’s from Kokuryu Sake Brewery, and that’s located in Fukui Prefecture. This is a sake that is sold again as a Junmai Ginjo it has an acidity of 1.4, uh, 15% alcohol. The rice milling rate is 55% remaining. We have an SMV of plus three and this sake is a hundred percent gohyakumangoku sake rice.

John Puma: 18:07
Ah, the famous gohyakumangoku.

Timothy Sullivan: 18:11
Yes so John, that’s my sake the kokuryu, by the way, that is often translated as black dragon. And, uh, yes, it is a very good name. Uh, very well loved sake Can’t wait to get this open, but before we do that, John, why don’t you tell us about the sake that you brought for our sokujo episode?

John Puma: 18:33
I have the oze no yukidoke ohkarakuchi junmai ohkarakuchi It’s very, very respected karakuchi. Um,

Timothy Sullivan: 18:45
Honorific karakuchi

John Puma: 18:49
and Karakuchi um, as we’ve talked about on the show before, it means that it’s dry. It’s very dry. And, um, this is from Ryujin Shuzo in Gunma Prefecture, and, uh, we’ll get a little more into this, uh, as we, as we move on Tim, do you want to, do you want to get into the weeds and open up your kokuryu?

Timothy Sullivan: 19:12
Yes. me get this open, Okay. That’s pour this. Hmm. Okay. So now I’ve got this in my wine glass. We’re going to give this a smell. Mm. So this has a really nice restrained aroma, and I’ve known kokuryu or the black dragons sake to have a lot of depth of flavor, the aroma is still light balanced and really kind of enticing. So there’s just a hint of something fruity, but primarily it’s rice and a nice. Depth of, of aroma smells so good. Okay. Let me give it a taste. So this sake is very clean. Smooth, but it’s not quiet. It’s got a good weight on the palate. There’s a little bit of umami flavor on the finish. So yeah, it’s that depth of flavor that always gets me with this brand. It’s got this weight on the finish that anchors. The flavor and it is light and enticing upfront, just a hint of something fruity, primarily a very smooth rice flavor, and then a hint of umami at the end. Just so good. Something you can really sink your teeth into while still being elegant. That’s really what I love about this sake.

John Puma: 20:46
very nice. That sounds, that sounds great.

Timothy Sullivan: 20:49
It’s interesting. So again, our topic for today is sokujo which is the fast fermentation starter. And because they use that with this sake it. Can help keep flavors cleaner. So sokujo sakes, are compared to the other ferment starter methods. We’re going to in future talk about Kimoto Yamahai and Bodaimoto, but compared to those sokujo in general can lend a cleaner flavor.

John Puma: 21:26
Hmm, it sounds like you get a little bit more control over things.

Timothy Sullivan: 21:29
Yeah. You take out some of the unknowns

John Puma: 21:33
Right, right.

Timothy Sullivan: 21:34
you can, uh, get right on. To expressing what the yeast wants to do and the type of rice you’ve introduced there. So you can really have a little bit more overt control over the end product. And it’s really expresses itself so beautifully in the sake I’m I’m fanboying right now. Aren’t I,

John Puma: 21:57
There’s nothing wrong with that fan boy is, is, is completely fine. Uh, I’ve I’ve had my share of fanboy moments on the show. It’s completely fine. I think

Timothy Sullivan: 22:07
so, uh, I am. Loving this kokuryu from Fukui. It is highly recommended, beautiful depth of flavor. And I’m curious to see our reaction to the Ohkarakuchi from ozenoyukidoki.

John Puma: 22:25
yeah. Uh, so this is. I am a fan boy for this brewery. And this is one of those, uh, one of those breweries, not just the brand, but the brewery itself, that anything they make, I’m going to be very excited to taste it.

Timothy Sullivan: 22:46
That is the noisiest bottle opening we’ve had on the whole series.

John Puma: 22:50
This bag. Ryujin Shuzo, usually actually I want to say, always uses these, um, UV, resistant bags. that they put on all their sake, and they obviously, they help keep the sake, uh, from getting UV contamination, but they are also a little loud. So finally, i freed it from the bag. Now I can actually open it. Hmm. So the aroma is a little light. There’s not a lot going on, uh, nose wise with the sake. But that’s not altogether unusual with, with really dry sake. In my experience, you just, you get like a, uh, a suggestion of freshness, but you don’t really get like a huge, uh, you know, it’s not very perfumy or anything like that, you know, maybe a little bit of, um, like fresh cut grass. And some very, very, very faint fruit, but it’s barely there, but the flavor on the sake is a journey. It is an experience when you taste it, it is very dry. Um, I’ll go into the stats in just a moment. Cause I didn’t do that before I started slipping. I was way too excited. but upfront there is a, a brightness to this. Okay. It’s big. It’s got a nice, um, inviting amount of, uh, action in the front. It’s it’s it is not for the faint of heart. There’s a lot going on in this. Okay.

Timothy Sullivan: 24:36
Hmm. Well, the one question I have that it sells itself as an okarakuchi, or, almost super dry. How, how are you experiencing how dry or sweet it is?

John Puma: 24:48
the dryness is kicking in to finish and it is turbo. Like it is a very, very dry at the

Timothy Sullivan: 24:56
the aftertaste

John Puma: 24:57
Yeah, the aftertaste and the finisher are very, very dry. And that’s what makes, and this is something that we have we’ve talked about before is that he never go wrong with food with dry sake, like dry sake and, and a lot of his is going to get a lot more, um, a lot more leeway. I think with regard to pairing, you would probably do a lot more With a dry sake. But the weird thing about this is I did mention that the front was really kind of big and kind of bright the, the body, the mouthfeel. Is very, very light.

Timothy Sullivan: 25:35
Mm.

John Puma: 25:35
Um, and then the, and again, the, then the finishes very, very dry. And those stats that I neglected to mention earlier. so this is a Junmai, um, it’s using a yamada nishiki for the kojimai and Gohyakumangoku for the kakemai both of which are milled to 60%. The sake meter value is plus 10 is again, this is super, dry. Oh yeah. It is 1.8. So not a lot going on there. The alcohol percentage is 17, so it’s slightly high, but not, not tremendously. and it’s apparently also aged for a year, which I find interesting. The result is this very, very dry, but still kind of bright and exciting sake The texture is very smooth. Which not necessarily something you’re gonna expect from, from your, your 60% super dry junmai there’s a little hit of acidity in the. In the middle there, before the dryness really kicks in,

Timothy Sullivan: 26:44
the sake that you have, John, I’ve actually used that in some of my classes before teaching about it. And one of the reasons I liked the Oze No Yukidoke, karakuchi. Junmai. It’s a great example to show people what a dry finish is really all about. Like that dry finish is pretty substantial. And kind of one of the key components that makes that sake unique. Is that finish, wouldn’t you say?

John Puma: 27:10
it is. And for me, I have had sake that finishes drier than this and. When, oftentimes when I have those, I get too dry and you get this thing where your mouth, that your tongue is like, huh? At the end, it’s very unpleasant, uh, for me at least, but this one it’s, it is presenting so dry and it comes across, you know, it’s, it’s doing that exact thing that it wants to do on the finish, but it’s. It’s doing it in a really pleasant and enjoyable way. Like I, I think, I think this not only like celebrates how dry it is and it’s, I mean, obviously in the name, um, but it celebrates how dry it is and it’s it’s, it wears its on its sleeve and like you pointed out it’s almost like a case study in dry sake. It’s got a great finish.

Timothy Sullivan: 27:59
Yeah, but it doesn’t go overboard in it. It’s still well integrated and drinkable.

John Puma: 28:02
right. It’s um, it doesn’t feel out of place and it doesn’t feel like, like a stunt, like we’ve made something really dry. You should try it, you know, of nothing quite like that. I’ve seen like these like Japanese beer commercials that like celebrate how dry the beer is like with like actually like six exclamation points after the word

Timothy Sullivan: 28:19
Yeah.

John Puma: 28:22
Like, this is very dry, but it’s like, it’s so well balanced and dry.

Timothy Sullivan: 28:27
Yeah. And still premium. The, Ryujin Shuzo is also a very small brewery. There’s a handful of brewers making sake there.

John Puma: 28:38
Uh, and they’re consistently fantastic.

Timothy Sullivan: 28:41
Yeah. It’s a true microbrewery.

John Puma: 28:45
And they used to make beer too.

Timothy Sullivan: 28:47
they used

John Puma: 28:48
top of that.

Timothy Sullivan: 28:50
I think the beer workers were separate from the front. Yeah. So it was a separate team. Yeah. But for making their award-winning sake who really super well-trained staff and just fantastic stuff. I don’t know how many brewery workers Kokuryu has over in Fukui, but they make some good stuff too.

John Puma: 29:13
All right, Tim. Um, thank you for taking us on this journey through the very first of our shubo episodes and our focus on yeast starter.

Timothy Sullivan: 29:25
Yes. This was a slow journey into the world of the fast yeast starter method known as sokujo.

John Puma: 29:32
Right. And I, and I love how we done one episode of this, and we’ve already covered 90% of sakes out there.

Timothy Sullivan: 29:39
if all the series could go like this

John Puma: 29:41
We have 10% left.

Timothy Sullivan: 29:43
10%. So the upcoming yeast starter methods that we have to cover our Kimoto Yamahai. And Bodaimoto. So we’ve got three more to go and we’ll dive deep into each of those fermentation starter methods coming up in our series, all about shubo, looking forward to

John Puma: 30:08
Yeah, I don’t, I I’m, I’m really kind of curious about the bodaimoto um, myself, I don’t, I don’t know a whole lot about it. Uh, hopefully, hopefully you do. Or, or maybe we need to, to, to bring in some assistance on that one. I don’t know.

Timothy Sullivan: 30:20
Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. That is the most rare of all of them. So we’ll, we’ll be looking at that in a few weeks. All right. Well, thanks, John. That was really fun. And I also want to thank all of our listeners for tuning in and listening to our show. We really do hope that you’re enjoying Sake Revolution. If you’d like to show your support for our podcast, there’s one way you can really help us out. That would be to take a couple of minutes and leave us a written review on Apple podcasts. It’s a great way for us to get the word out about our show

John Puma: 30:53
And when you’re done leaving your review for an Apple podcast, please go ahead and tell your friends that’s a really direct method. and uh, two, they say,

Timothy Sullivan: 31:04
family and

John Puma: 31:06
And family. Yes. Friends and family. You can get them into sake too and then get them to subscribe. Especially the family members. Yeah. This way. Every week when we put out a new episode, it will show up on your device of choice and you will not miss a single episode.

Timothy Sullivan: 31:23
And as always, if you’d like to learn more about any of the specific sakes we tasted in today’s episode or anything about the topics that we talked about, please visit our website, SakeRevolution.com. And there, you can check out all the detailed show notes.

John Puma: 31:39
And for all of your sake questions that you need answered. Please reach out to us. The email address is [email protected]. So until next time, please remember to keep drinking sake and Kanpai!