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Koji mold, the national fungi of Japan, is used for making sake. Koji, steamed rice, water and a fermentation starter are combined. According to NRIB, koji enzymes convert the starch in the rice ...

Basically, when it comes to brewing sake, making koji rice is the first step in the process. Just like you can’t brew beer without yeast (without it, there wouldn’t be fermentation), you can ...

Sake is made of Japanese rice, water, yeast and koji (a type of mold). It traditionally takes about two months to make through a series of precise steps that involve steaming, stirring and fermenting.

After 28 years of making Champagne as chef de cave at Dom Pérignon, he’d begun brewing sake in western Japan. Iwa (derived from Shiraiwa, the village where it’s produced) is the result.

These people were intent on finding brewers across Japan making small batches of unusual sake, often fermented using old, pre-modern techniques that were a world away from the more mainstream ...

What do the locals make of him, and vice versa? Where does he source his rice? How far does his finished product have to travel before it reaches the nearest sake connoisseur? How does the desert ...

An curved arrow pointing right. The Gozenshu Brewery is one of the few in Japan using bodaimoto, a 600-year-old fermentation method, to make sake. They use it to make junmai, or pure rice sake ...

Japanese tipples sake and shochu – and the knowledge and skills honed over centuries to make them – have been added to Unesco's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. AFP looks at how sake ...