Why?:

12.5 cups distilled water- any taste from the water will strongly carry over to the finished product. Sequoia brewery is located in SF in part because of the steady source of water. They don’t switch up resovior sources. On top of that they filter their water. No hard water (minerals) and especially iron. Iron will interact with the koji/yeast (I don’t remember which) and will provide bad flavor and change the color I think. However they need to create the same product over and over again. I’m just using distilled water. Arrowhead, because I’ve visited the lake and peed in it.


4lbs koji rice
Do you have any hobbies? I collect spores, molds, and fungus.
Koji is a mold. It’s actually used with soy sauce, miso, natto (fuck you steele) and Sake. You can use it to tenderize steak as an aging substitute. Depending on the temp grown it deals with protein or turns starch into sugar. THAT is what we want. When making beer, you crack the grains and boil it, to get the sugar. Rice? We use the koji to “crack” the grain (my term, not accurate) and “get the sugar”. The rice needs to be tough/undercooked enough so the koji produces a chemical to penetrate the grain. I don’t remember what this chemical does. It also needs to be soft enough so the koji can turn the starch into sugars once it gets in there.

4teaspoons Morton’s salt substitute
I don’t remember. This is a certain chemical version of salt but I don’t remember the direct importance. Hopefully I can add this later in another comment.

5 teaspoons lactic acid
This counteracts lacto bacillius, the yogurt bacteria that makes yogurt sour. I’ve made Sake without this (followed a traditional recipe w/o this acid and no real temp control, and the Sake turned sour. I didn’t enjoy it, but a couple friends still liked it. Mostly big sake drinkers and hippies.

5 pinches of Epson Salt
Don’t remember

Just under 4 teaspoon of yeast nutrients
This is to kick off the yeast. Is it overkill? Maybe. But the stronger jump the yeast get, the better they put compete the lacto bacillius. Think of it like insurance?

Moto is a term I don’t remember for the begining stage of brewing sake. Unlike honest rice wine, sake is repetitive again and again steps because the Japanese are like that. You can get a very similar product without months of fuss, just using rice/yeast/koji balls from your local Chinese store. But mookie ain’t about that. I have japanese friends who I like to upshow because I am a fundamentally vile person.

Rice mill:
So- you know there is Sake grades? You do know. The sake grade has to do with how much of the rice has been milled off. This is because there are nuterients on the outside of the rice. You can make fine sake from table rice- which has about 40% of the rice milled away already. The good shit has 60% milled off. That requires more rice. That requires more time. That requires more machinery use. But that has less undesirable chemicals.

Rice type:
California rice? Guess what. When they selected rice for California, for some reason they selected Sake rice. It actually has more starch than japanese table rice.

Crack rate:
the other downside is the crack rate of table rice after milling. If the grain is cracked, the koji gets inside too easily and doesn’t release all the desired chemicals.

In this walkthrough, I’m going to probably just use cal rose table rice, but I do have a 60lb bag of Japanese 40% milled away rice for a special occasion. This has a better crack rate than cal rose table rice.

The last thing, you can pair your rice with the proper koji. There are many kinds of koji. There are many kinds of rice. Sequoia brewery has three people. A koji person. A brewing person. A money and materials person. The koji lady Studies koji. (I made koji I’ll show that thread one day) the brewer gave me this information and a tour. (About water, crack rate, pairing koji with rice). The last guy was a materials guy that built a lot of equipment.

Okay, that’s the basics of what we are doing here. Tonight I’m going to make slightly undercooked rice. We are going to add the koji to the Moto water. The koji will eat the rice it’s on then dig into the other rice that we add. We will repeat this process a few times then let it sit and let the solids settle away from the liquids.

Don’t forget to hit that upvote button and watchlist my se profile! I’m kidding. Fuck you guys.

*Engage Beer Nerd Mode*

Technically in beer you don't boil the grains to get the sugar. You perform a mash where you hold the cracked grains at 140F-160F. This is the range at which the natural enzymes in the barley (and some other grains) active to convert starch to sugar.

When you boil the beer, you are actually breaking down those enzymes so that they can no longer be active (which is one of the reasons why beer doesn't continually ferment in the bottle). The boil basically helps you "lock down" the amount of sugar you have available for fermentation (which is a key component of controlling the style of the beer).

*Beer Nerd Mode Disabled*

Thanks for the extra info!

Valid point!

But we wanted natto.

Hello, where can I file a complaint about this website and its owner? 😒 don’t ban me bro

I hope you will add a bit of text to describe what you are trying to accomplish in each step. (For example, what is "Moto" water and why does it need lactic acid and Epson Salt?)

Sure!! I’ll have to do it from memory because I lent out my book but I have read it through, understand the process, and have visited a awesome Sake brewery and they explain everything well.

I spent 10 years brewing beer. I stopped making beer and then spent the past 7 years making wine. I've never head much interest in spirits, but reading this makes me want to make sake.

Make vodka and use winter wheat, like Stoli.

Awesome. I look forward to the subsequent posts.

All I have ever brewed is ginger beer but, having recently been gifted a old 6 gallon glass carboy, I am ready to try something a bit more ambitious. I would love to hear some suggestions on what to start with. Preferably something simple and fairly forgiving of error. I am thinking ( particularly moving in to the fall) that hard cider is probably the way to go.

When I was in highschool we made random fruit wine in my organic chem class. It's been a long time, but I think all you need is fruit, wine yeast, and some acid (to adjust the pH). It's probably one of the simplest things you can make as pretty much your only variables are the fruit and the acidity.

Later in life, I've made beer and I don't recommend it as a simple thing. The "fun" of brewing comes from micromanaging every step, and honestly I think it's kind of a pain until you invest some money in equipment.

I hear mead is fairly simple and can be amazing.

I'm sure you are right, but personally I've never been a big fan of mead. I think it's too sweet for my tastes.

I don’t think I’ve drank any in ages. Any wine tips? I have some grapes and I made a nice wine that had notes of money piss and battery acid.

Nope, I went to beer and never looked back. I don't think I ever made anything worth repeating.

I made a really good espresso stout (I don't even like stout) that I low key sold in a restaurant and people paid for and liked. Lemmie try to find the recipe. I think it's on my phone...

http://www.craftedpours.com/homebrew-recipe/coffee-milk-stout-homebrew-recipe

Site is dead. Wayback machine recipe is:

I haven’t. I do t have experience with ginger beer, root beer or ale and I plan to correct that sometime.