Japanese sake brawing project (2) ~ Started making a starter (SHUBO)

Started making a starter (SHUBO)

The first batch is started!

All materials are ready and I started the first batch of Japanese SAKE based on a traditional process modified for a home brewer.  The first state is making a starter, which is traditionally called SHUBO in Japanese.

The starter consists of some steam rice, some malted rice (KOJI), some water, the yeast, a little citric acid and a little epsom salt.  The followings is ingridents:

•  Steamed rice -- to simplify the process, 2 cups of rice is cooked in rice cooker instead of steaming with a bit less water than a regular cooking.
• Dry KOJI -- 135g
• Bottled water -- 700ml
• Citric Acid -- 1 Tea spoon
• Epsom salt -- a little
•  Sake Yeast -- Wyeast 4134 SAKE #9

A traditional way, the rice should be steamed.  However steaming rice is not really easy process and I am looking for a simple and easy way.   Therefore, I decided to use a rice cooker instead.   To cook the rice, using 360ml of rice with water level 2 cups of OKOWA with a bit hard finish.
Once the cooking has completed, we need to wait for cooling down.  After that adding bottled cold water and mixing with the cooked rice.   Once the temperature is lower than 30 degrees C, adding KOJI and yeast.   Citric Acid is used to minimize the infection with acid (pH 3.6~3.8).  This process is based on "SOKUJO-MOTO" process.  In the traditional process, lactic acid is typically used.  But it is not very common, so that I used citric acid instead.   It is used for wine brewing and you may find it in brewing supply shop in your area.

Dry KOJI can be found in a Japanese grocery store such as Mitsuwa, Nijiya and Marukai in the San Francisco Bay area.   You can also find it on-line.

Fermentator 

 I got a smaller bucket from on-line.  One for beer I am using is for 5 gallon of beer.   It could be too big for Japanese SAKE and I got 2 gallon bucket from online with air-lock.

As the photo on the top of this article, it started.   According to a typical process, it may take a several days to move to the next steps that is adding additional rice/KOJI and water.


(To be continue)