Our koji nerds work hard to craft the best sake using locally grown rice and seasonal ingredients. The alchemy of transforming a simple grain of Vietnamese rice into liquid gold is our pride and joy
At mùa sake we brew using different varieties of rice. From the traditional short grain “japonica” to more unconventional long grain “indica” that is native to vietnam like our world famous ST25 that can give notes of pineapple and almond
We take the local water and strip it of all impurities. This ultra clean water is used in every part of the brewing process. From washing the rice to water additions in the mash.
We use Japanese sake yeasts that have been bred by the sake breweries of Japan for hundreds of years. These ancient microorganisms create the alcohol along with the complex fruity, floral, and spicy aromas found in our sake.
Koji is a mold that has been cultivated for thousands of years for use in brewing sake. It is the heart of the brewing process which is why we grow it in house so we can carefully tend to it until it’s ready for it’s vital role which converts the starch in the rice to sugars, which are
then fermented.
When the rice arrives at our brewery it still has flour and debris from the milling process. So washing our rice is the first step in making good sake.
We steep our rice in water. Our goal is a certain level of moisture absorption so that our rice will have the correct consistency after steaming.
We steam the rice to gelatinize the starchy inside of the rice and dry out the outside. This will provide the koji with a perfect environment to grow.
We spread koji fungus’ spores and tend to the koji as it grows for 48 hours.
We make the starter mash for the batch of sake. This is where the yeast will multiply before it is added to the main mash.
Here we add additions of rice, water, and koji to the main mash. This is a four day process. Once done, the moromi will begin to ferment. During fermentation we will stir and occasionally
add water.
Once the sake reaches a desired level we will begin to press. At Mùa Brewing we use the fune press method. This means we fill bags with sake mash and lay them into a large box.
We then add pressure and the sake is pushed through the bags and runs clear into storage tanks. The rice less that are left over are known as “Kasu”.
We let the sake rest in maturation tanks after pressing. Our fruity flavors come forward as the sake’s alcohol and acid mellows out.
This step is to sanitize the sake and bottle for long term storage. By heating up the bottle we kill any yeast and denature any enzymes left in the sake. Heating of the sake also rounds out the flavor.