January
13, 2005 - Drunkards (Day 2)
Dead Backhoe
How Hakutsuru brewery makes sake (from their website)
Courtyard garden at Kiku-Masamune
This morning, after pooling our cognitive skills to muse over the cause of death of a backhoe outside our door, we all headed down to the waterfront together to check out Architect Tadao Ando’s Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art. After a brief tour, Diana had to go to work so we parted ways and Laura and I headed out to tour the local sake breweries.
Laura:
I was allowed one down afternoon by default so Tim and I decided to find out just how sake was made. We left Diana at around noon on a self-guided tour of four sake factories/museums.
Tim:
Nada is famed for pure water and the region is home to most of Japan’s oldest and most renowned sake breweries. The first place we stopped, Hakutsuru, had a great museum with English language videos that walked us through the sake brewing process - which goes something like this… First the rice is washed and polished. The polishing reduces the size of the grain which in turn creates a cleaner flavor. The more rice is polished the purer and more expensive the resulting sake becomes. The polished rice is steamed (think cooked rice) and then cooled. After the rice has cooled a mould culture “koji” is added. The mould is given some time to propagate and create sugars. Afterwards, water is added and the mix is stirred aggressively until a mash is created. Yeast, "kobo", is then added to mash. The whole mess is transferred to large tanks where it sits for several weeks allowing the yeast to ferment the sugars. After the fermentation is complete the mash is transferred to cloth bags. An enormous press is used to squeeze a cloudy liquid out of the bags and the liquid is given some time in a holding tank to allow the particulate matter to settle out.... The resulting clear liquid is sake, a potent and uniquely Japanese drink.
Laura:
At the first sake factory, Hakutsuru, after learning about koji and kobo we visited the tasting room. We were given samples of the factory’s best sake, several shots of shouchu, a hard alcohol that closely resembles gasoline, and plum wine. Four blocks into our expedition to the second factory, Tim turned to me with a question, “Uhhhh… have we crossed a river yet?”
Tim:
The first tasting session left us in a bit of a mental fog that was not at all unpleasant. After overcoming a bit of confusion as to our location we stumbled through three more sake brewery tours the only one of note being Kiku-Masamune, the oldest known sake brewery in Japan. They had our favorite courtyard garden and we sampled some of their specialties including sweet unfiltered sake that was sevred to us hot.
After the fourth tour we found ourselves somewhat tipsy and tired… Laura was at the tail end of adjusting to a new time zone and was all but a zombie at the time. We decided to claim victory on our sake tasting endeavors and head back to the apartment.
Laura:
The rest of the afternoon was spent on the couch watching a bootlegged copy of “The Incredible’s”.
Tim:
After Diana got home I treated the ladies to mushroom pasta, salad and garlic bread. We shared some sake that we bought at Hakutsuru and hit the rack early anticipating a big day in Kyoto.
