It’s On Tap

Until recently, I had heard (and believed) a lot of things about sake. Things like there was no such thing as “good sake” (coming from a wine lover, figures), that sake was just like wine but made with rice instead of grapes, or that sake’s alcohol content increases when it’s served warm. After finally learning a thing or two about sake, I learned none of these were true. There is certainly “good saki”, it’s quite different from wine in many aspects, and warm sake is usually crap with alcohol added served warm to hide odors (that explains why Uncle Fred always gets hammered at Sushi Land). Last week I finally learned just a little bit about sake.

For Valentine’s Day, the old lady and I went out to a restaurant in the Pearl District of Downtown Portland called Bay 13. A brick-walled warehouse-turned-restaurant, Bay 13 specializes in what their website describes as “sustainable seafood - fish that is caught or farmed in a manner that protects individual species and conserves marine habitats.” (Just call it fresh sushi, guys). That’s nice, save the whales and all that, sure, but I wanted to know what they had in the booze department. I don’t write for no food blog, after all.

Bay 13, like many other Portland restaurants, has a pretty big wine list that it’s very proud of. With a focus on local wines, they hand selects each wine on the list by hand to compliment the various flavors on the menu. I’m going to have to take their word for it though. If there’s one thing to know about me and sushi, it’s that there is always sake involved.

I have been around the sushi block, or should I say conveyor belt, and always get sake, but I never really knew about it. To me, it was simply “rice wine”. All of it was basically the same. What could possibly be all that different between two varieties of mixed up rice, water, and koji? I enjoyed the taste, couldn’t tell the difference, and just drank it. But this place was pretty good about teaching you something about their sake. Each type of sake had a little description on the menu telling you what it was, how it was made, and what to expect when you taste it. That made it a bit interesting when it came time to drink.

With a fair amount of premium sake to choose from, I opted for the sake flight: 3 small glasses, each with a different style. Sakes included in the flight were White Crane - a nigori sake, which is unfiltered, Ten Thousand Ways – a honjozo sake, which has alcohol added to release the flavor, and Seven Samurai – a junmai sake, which is “pure sake”, made with only rice, water, and koji. All 3 were served chilled, and they were delicious. If I had to rank them, I think I liked Seven Samurai the best, then White Crane, and then Ten Thousand Ways.

Now, I’ll let you read Wikipedia for all the details about sake, but what was interesting for me to learn was how sake is made and what distinguishes various kinds. Sake is made by fermenting rice essentially, and the alcohol is produced when the starch in rice is converted from starch to sugar to alcohol. It’s brewing process is much like beer in that regard, except beer goes from starch to sugar, then from sugar to alcohol. Two steps. Sake does those two steps simultaneously. Unlike wine, where quality is based on region, year, grapes, etc., sake is judged based simply on purity. The rice to be fermented is usually polished, or milled, to remove proteins and oils, leaving starch. Proteins and oils are considered impurities, so the more the rice is polished, or in other words, the less the end batch of rice weighs (called Seimai-buai, a concept used in sake brewing) the higher quality the sake. It’s like vodka in that regard. Many bottles of sake have the milled percentage on the bottle just like the ABV % on beer. The higher the percentage, the higher the sake’s quality. It’s a unique and interesting process, that’s for sure.

After a delicious flight of sake, a couple Sapporo’s, and a mojito, (oh, and I guess I had sushi too), I was done. It was a great place with good food, good atmosphere, and good sake, and it taught me a thing or two about booze, something I’m always eager to learn about.