Sake Sunday

We decide to try some sake this weekend. We knew very little about sake but had recently watched a video of Lucy Brennan, owner of Mint/820 in Portland, Oregon making sake cocktails. We received some sake from SakeOne, a premium craft brewer in Oregon and decided to do some research and taste it too. Sake is more like beer than wine, it is brewed using rice rather than fermented with grapes. The process is rather involved as it requires polishing the rice so just the starch is left, then let it cool and rest and then some washing, soaking and steaming.

SakeOne first polishes the rice until only 60% of it is left to get down to the starchy center. Then it is left to rest and cool for a few weeks and pick up some moisture from the air. Next it is soaked and steamed and moved to tanks where the Koji spores are added. The Koji digest the starch and convert it to sugar so the yeast can convert that to alcohol later. Just as with wine, different yeasts can impart different flavor profiles. Much like wine the Sakemaster must know the exact time to move from one process to another.

In Japan, sake drinking and brewing has been declining for many years while in the USA it has been increasing. Here in America it is served by itself, usually chilled, or mixed in a cocktail. There are many different kinds of sake including infused sake that does very well in mixed drinks. We decided to approach our experiment by trying the sake straight up first and then making a couple of cocktails with the same sake.

We started with SakeOne Moonstone Asian Pear Sake and the SakeOne Moonstone Plum Sake. These come in beautiful blue bottles with the bottle decoration the color of the fruit.

The SakeOne Moonstone Plum Sake was a translucent pink color with a very obvious nose of cherries and flowers. The flavor is a combination of sweet plums and cherries and it has a long clean finish.

For our first cocktail we decided to make a Sake Cosmopolitan – We used 1-1/2 oz. vodka, 1/2 oz. SakeOne Moonstone Plum Sake and the juice of 1/2 a lime. Shake well with ice and strain. This was excellent! Really refreshing with a great taste. If you want to add another layer of flavor add about 1/2 oz. of Triple Sec.

The SakeOne Moonstone Plum Sake has a very light straw color. The nose was citrus and ripe pear. We jokingly tried to guess what kind of pear but don’t have them often enough to tell. The flavor of pear was predominant along with a little citrus rind bitterness. This sake also had a long clean finish.

We tried a couple more experiments that failed so we decided to go with a recipe from SakeOne named ‘Falling’. Combine 2 oz. of the SakeOne Moonstone Asian Pear Sake and 1 oz. of the SakeOne Moonstone Plum Sake with 1/2 oz. Pear Brandy and a splash of lime juice. This was a very nice cocktail, really clean pear flavors and very refreshing. It is also a low alcohol recipe since it doesn’t use vodka or other high proof spirits.

These were both very enjoyable on their own and really excellent in a cocktail. It would be fun to have a sake party where everyone tries to make their own best cocktail and share it. We are going to do some more experimenting and in a couple of weeks we will post the results. Meanwhile we are headed to the backyard to sit and sip our sake.

Disclaimer: These beverages were provided to us as tasting samples.