Sake, or Rice-Beer
Ingredients
Directions
Make the koji
Mix steamed rice with wood or plant ashes.
Sow spores of a fungus on the mixture and keep it at a high temperature for 10 days.
Once a green fungus forms, use the spores to produce yeast by sowing them on steamed rice and keeping it for a few days.
Ferment
Mix the yeast with steamed rice and water.
Stir for 10 days.
Heat to 95°F (35°C) for 8 to 13 days to convert starch into sugar.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Steamed rice
- Provides the starch that is converted into sugar and then fermented into alcohol.
The step that matters
Holding the temperature during the 95°F heating. Keeping the mixture near 95°F lets enzymes break starch into sugars that yeast can ferment. Too cool slows the conversion, and too hot can kill the microbes doing the work.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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