Akaisake: The Rare Red Sake

[Taylor-MadeAK]

My wife laughed herself to tears over that video. :mrgreen:

 

[percival]

I reckon the more familiar you are with wasabi the more funny it is. We grab some sushi from time to time, always with wasabi ofc. i love it, but that weird thing it does to your head is just one of the most intensely bizarre sensations ever. A real pain/pleasure barrier thing, way more odd by far than anything chilli does to you. i just cannot imagine how that guys head felt, his nose; i can guess intense pain .... but his head!

 

[jamesb]

I've been eating wasabi by the bucketload lately. Grab a tuna steak from Toscos and a load of wasabi and picked ginger and gulp it down. It's lovely.

 

[BrewStew]

i've not had wasabi i reckon i might like is cos i'm a big fan of the Jamaican Red hot chilli sauce and smother it on anything :lol:

 

[Taylor-MadeAK]

This batch is nearing completion, with today being the day I racked the settled akaisake off of its ori and into clean vessels for fining and pasteurizing. The final gravity of this batch has dropped a bit since pressing, settling at 0.994 (SMV +8.7). That's very dry, but it doesn't taste dry because the red koji makes it so darn fruity! I'm going to hold off on trying to do a full review of the flavor and aroma for a while yet because this batch isn't done, but I can tell you now that this batch is coming pretty much exactly into line with the other akaisake I've tasted (which is still in my fridge, waiting to be compared to my homebrew version).

In the photos below, you'll notice a clear jug that I've racked the akaisake into. Somewhere along the line I lost one of the four green 4L jugs that I bought for making sake years ago, and I don't have a lid that fits the clear one, so I'm stuck using as nothing more than an intermediary vessel to hold racked sake while I clean out the green jugs as I empty them. I'm posting a picture this time to show off the color of this batch of sake. I'm sure you see why. :mrgreen:

On to the pictures!




Just a head's up to everyone: it's going to be another three weeks before I get around to bottling this batch. Normally I would bottle it after allowing two weeks for the bentonite to clear the sake, but we're headed out of the state for a week of vacation two weeks from now. So, bottling and updates after we get back!

 

[percival]

Looking good Taylor, nice colour. i like your DJ's too ;-)

by the way you seem to be keen to bottle it asap, is there a reason for that apart from needing the empties?

 

[Taylor-MadeAK]

Well, usually I like to get my sake into bottles as soon as is feasible, but I don't have any real aversion to bulk aging either. In this case, the real reason I want to get it bottled is so that I have the photos I need to write a full Taylor-MadeAK.org article about it. So, it's really a web site content thing.

 

[Taylor-MadeAK]

It's bitter!

It's grainy!

Weighing in at around 17% alcohol by volume, it's indescribably the fruitiest thing* I've ever tasted!
*That wasn't a fruit juice, that is.

It's...freshly bottled akaisake. I'm pasteurizing now, but the above are my preliminary final results for this batch of sake. My wife doesn't like it, but this is nothing new (to date she has pronounced only my last batch of ginjo sake to be fit for feminine consumption). Here are a couple pics to tide you guys over until I get around to writing up the full Taylor-MadeAK story on this style of sake: