I'm Beau Timkin, master sake sommelier, and
in this segment, we're speaking about Junmai
sake, the category. But first, we got to talk
about sake to begin with. What is sake? A
lot of people have different misconceptions
about sake, what it is. A lot of people think
it's a hard alcohol, a distilled beverage,
a booze if you will, but it's not. Sake is
a fermented alcoholic beverage. A lot of people
call it rice wine but, technically, sake is
built like beer, but drinks like wine. So
you're converting a grain, rice, into a glucose,
the glucose then gets converted into alcohol.
Now wine, a grape is glucose. Add a little
yeast, wine. Beer, they have a two step process,
where they have to break the mold into the
grain, the grain, the hops and barley and
then they ferment it. But sake is built in
a way where they do it all in one step. It's
called multiple, parallel fermentation and
it is God's gift to human beings. Where you
actually sacrify, where you chain, you take
a long chain starch molecule, break it into
a glucose and then you ferment that glucose,
using yeast into an alcohol, all in one vat.
So, when you think of sake, people are like,
"oh, it's that's fiery distilled booze." It's
not. It's a very gentle, it's delicate in
some instances, alcoholic beverage made of
rice in water and a little bit of mold and
some special brewing yeast only. Very simple,
very clean, probably the cleanest burning
fuel out there.
