Bad juice
- Thread starter SFJoe
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Chris Coad
Chris Coad
Does rice have 'juice'?
scottreiner
scott reiner
Is this what people mean when they talk about 'killer juice'? Am I no longer allowed to type killer juice? This is getting confusing...
Eden Mylunsch
Eden Mylunsch
The methamidophos problem in Japan is confined to the mass market sake producers who aren't involved with growing their own rice. This situation is not unlike what happened in 1985 in Austria when diethylene glycol swas discovered in wines intended for export.
Not much to worry about over here (if anything)... if you stick with the good stuff (Junmai, Junmai Ginjo, and Junmai Daiginjo) you'll be fine. These sorts of artisanal producers source their rice locally and work with the farmers so the rice in question in the Decanter article never enters the picture.
-Eden (sake can get pretty geeky if you let it)
Not much to worry about over here (if anything)... if you stick with the good stuff (Junmai, Junmai Ginjo, and Junmai Daiginjo) you'll be fine. These sorts of artisanal producers source their rice locally and work with the farmers so the rice in question in the Decanter article never enters the picture.
-Eden (sake can get pretty geeky if you let it)
Putnam Weekley
putnam
Wonderful.
lars makie
lars makie
I agree... I like it, too (especially the higher end Daiginjo). But it really does seem to be situation specific, I can't see myself hanging out at home just drinking it. Maybe it's just me, but I need food while drinking sake. That said I miss this little izakay that was around the corner from me in new york. Nothing like stumbling home with a sake buzz.
The rice in question was sold in the lower priced-high volume end of the bulk rice market to be sure. So I doubt any of the smaller, quality-oriented producers were involved.
But I wonder how many of the artisinal producers source all of their rice in the way you mention. I could find only one of the producers listed at the website you provided who said something like this, and the wording was pretty ambiguous. Many of the others are happy to mention that they get rice shipped from highly regarded growing regions that are often far, far away from the brewery. [NB: I didn't check all of them, only ten picked at random.]
A quick phone call to some friends who make the stuff suggests that the number of producers who do this for all their sakes is probably quite small, less than a half dozen or so in all of Japan.
Oh, and Ginjo and Daiginjo?..... spoofulation, pure and simple.
russell briggs
Russell Briggs
Really? Tell me more about that, please...
The recipe:
-Take specific types of rice that are prized for their neutrality, lacking in substances (proteinaceous compounds, fatty acids, etc) that might yield complicating or competing flavors
-Mill the hell out of the rice to remove any slight traces of those same undesireable substances, leaving essentially a kernel of pure starch
-Convert the starch to sugars using the koji microbial starter and then ferment the sugars to alcohol at very low temps using specially selected yeast strains (purchased from the national sake manufacturer association's approved stocks) prized for the flowery esters they pump out
-Filter and fine the crap out of the sake to remove any traces of complexity, naturally occuring color, etc
The popularity of the Ginjo and Daiginjo classes is attributed directly to an attempt to manufacture showy, atypical brews to please contest judges.
As the story goes, one young Japanese gentleman, born into a family that owned a liquor store in Tokyo, went out on a fact-finding, sake-buying tour around Japan. He was pretty much without a working knowledge of sake, having been uninterested in the family business until recently, when he was called upon to follow his father in running the place. In his inaugural tour he visited one sake brewery where he tasted through a range of sakes, disliking all of them but one: a very flowery, aromatic brew. When he tried to place an order for that bottling the head brewer apologized, saying that the brew in question was unintentionally included in the tasting line-up, was made in very small quantities to be entered into competitions for the express purpose of winning awards, and was not for sale.
The young liquor store owner persisted, and eventually got some. It sold very well, and the rest is history...
A lot of the Tojis, the old guys who make the stuff, are pretty scathing in their criticisms of the whole class when they feel free to express themselves. This is usually later in the evening, after a lot of sake has been drunk and they get tired of making jokes about the gaijin with the funny accent.
Some comments I've heard directly from them about this type of sake include:
-"That's not sake... that's just some rice-based beverage made for people who don't like to drink sake".
-"It's all wine's fault... Japanese people started getting a taste for wines, and now they don't appreciate the subtleties of traditionally made sakes. So we have to make it taste like wine."
-"Bah! Only office ladies (20- and 30-something Japanese women) drink that swill."
-"Atsu geshou da yo!" Which translates into "thickly applied make-up" or "maquillage".
As the old guys die out and the collective memory gets shortened, these brews will come to be the norm.
But they are heavily reliant on current technologies (mostly the selection and dissemination of certain yeast strains, combined with cold-fermentation techniques) employed to produce something heretofore atypical, something based on market pressures more than tradition and craftsmanship.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
Very interesting. When I was in Japan, I had heard that the only thing that really distinguished daiginjo was the high price (which was needed to cover the large tax bill that the brewery paid in order to get the right to use the word 'daiginjo' on the label).
Ginjo and daiginjo are classified in Japanese alcoholic production laws, and the classifications are dependent solely upon the degree to which the rice is milled.
Ginjo brews have to be made from rice that is milled so that between 40% and 49% of the original weight has been polished away.
For Daiginjo, the rice has to be polished to 50% or less of its original weight.
Taxes are based on alcohol content alone, and since there's no correlation between alcohol content and Ginjo- or Daiginjo-ness, the taxes aren't necessarily higher for these types of brews.
The higher cost is mostly based on the raw materials. Ginjo and (especially) Daiginjo are made from only a few very highly prized, hard-to-grow strains of rice. These cost more per kilo. Beyond that, the heavy milling that the rice undergoes means the raw materials costs basically double once you've committed yourself to this kind of production.
Ginjo brews have to be made from rice that is milled so that between 40% and 49% of the original weight has been polished away.
For Daiginjo, the rice has to be polished to 50% or less of its original weight.
Taxes are based on alcohol content alone, and since there's no correlation between alcohol content and Ginjo- or Daiginjo-ness, the taxes aren't necessarily higher for these types of brews.
The higher cost is mostly based on the raw materials. Ginjo and (especially) Daiginjo are made from only a few very highly prized, hard-to-grow strains of rice. These cost more per kilo. Beyond that, the heavy milling that the rice undergoes means the raw materials costs basically double once you've committed yourself to this kind of production.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
Thanks for the insight. I knew about the milling but, obviously, I thought the tax structure was different.
Anyway, I liked junmai and nigori sakes better than the *ginjo types. Moreso even than the drink itself I like the names they give them!
Anyway, I liked junmai and nigori sakes better than the *ginjo types. Moreso even than the drink itself I like the names they give them!
U
Unknown
Guest
Budweiser uses rice as a percentage of their malt bill. Shouldnt be long before Augustus appears on the tube to tell us how committed he is to safe, tasteless American lager.