How to Make Sake: Your 10-Step Guide to How Sake is Made

Sake by definition only seems to be a simple fermented rice wine. Sake is centuries deeper than its current trend and quick description.

Today, we have cooking sake, sparkling sake, and 1.4 million-Yen bottles ($9,000 dollars each) from the very best sake brands—and also, the priceless sake hand-crafted with your thought, care, and invested energy that you'll learn to brew below.

Sake—like so many spirits—is more than an alcoholic drink. It's associated with the highest forms of culture: spiritual offerings, traditional weddings, and even symbolic of true connection between business partners or colleagues. 

While sake’s history is firstly ceremonial, the social world of “the West” has quickly embraced sake brands as fine friends of casual bars, full-service restaurants, and fine wine lists.

Key Takeaway: Seeing how to make sake proves that purpose and precision interconnect in every drinking experience or creation of real value. How sake is made reveals the depth of its global appeal.

Essential Ingredients to Make Sake Wine

Traditional Japanese sake betrays its inner elegance by needing remarkably few ingredients. All of them should be acquired whole—without processing—and chosen with intention. 

Rice, yeast, and mold strains (even the source of pure, natural water) steer flavors in distinct directions. Consider the flavors you want to produce and enjoy before collecting its deceptively short ingredient list for wine:

• Sake rice: Use premium varieties to start the process.
• Cold water: Ensure water is pure and low in minerals.
• Koji mold: Specific molds of this class belong to Aspergillus oryzae.
• Yeast strain: Kyokai is formal, but many strains (like no. 7, no. 9, and no. 14) are popular.

Basic Equipment for Brewing Sake

Like wine types charted from Napa Valley or Tuscany, every detail of wine production has consequences. Choose your technology with the attention you would have reproducing your most-prized beverage inventory.

• Thermometer: Heat levels shift wine flavors and yeast activity during fermentation.
• Machine press: Commercial food presses are hydraulic with alternative styles.
• Charcoal filters: Activated carbon filters remove impurities and pollutants.

10 Steps on How to Make Sake

In all, the steps for making sake wine can require at least 8 and up to 14 months. The first 2 months are spent in the brewing and fermentation stages. Those last 6 to 12 months are spent aging the sake, as long as desired.

 1. Prepare the sake rice.

Premium sake rice needs to be polished, but unbroken, to remove 30% to 50% of the grain from its outer layers. More-polished rice (closer to 50% reduced) creates Junmai, other varieties fall below this standard. 

Sake rice should be pristine and thoroughly washed in cold water before being steamed. Ensure the grain is fully cooked fully—and yet slightly firm. 

Allow your perfectly steamed rice to reach room temperature before taking these next steps. 

 2. Cultivate koji mold.

Cultivating the koji molds demands that sake rice stays in a slim range for temperature and humidity. With koji strains introduced, rice should show spots (small, pale, and white at first) after 12 hours.

 3. Prepare yeast starter.

To brew sake, combine the koji-grown, steamed rice with water and your chosen type of yeast. 

This ushers in the fermentation process that should be closely monitored for the first 12 hours. In total, the koji rice and yeast should be allowed to ferment for 2 weeks.

 4. Ferment for 3 to  5 weeks.

In sake production, the third week starts the critically important phase known as moromi. Roughly translating to “mash,” the wine alcohol levels should start with rice while the sake mixture ferments in parallel: 

1. Rice starch is yeast-converted into sugar..
2. Sugar is koji-transformed into alcohol. 

 5. Monitor temperatures and ABV.

Now, watch closely. Heat produced through sake fermentation rises with the chemical action of the mold and yeast. 

Each variety of sake asks for different fermenting times with very small temperature variations, influencing your sake’s alcohol levels (ABV) 

However, if the fermenting heat level is not monitored, the potential sake can go bad, souring at the most delicate stage of brewing.

 6. Press liquid from fermented solids.

After fermentation, the sake mass needs pressing, squeezing the alcoholic liquid from yeast, mold, and rice solids. Carefully collect this precious sake liquid for next-step purification.

 7. Filter with activated charcoal.

Purification with charcoal removes most pollutants and impurities—whether visible or microscopic. Filtering is critical for sake made for drinking, helping to balance and lighten color while clarifying flavors.

Multiple phases are used to purify higher-quality sake.

8. Pasteurize hot or cold.

The first pass of pasteurizing should clarify the sake considerably. This step surprises some breweries: comparing soju vs. sake shows these drinking trends belonging to vastly different categories.

9. Age for 6 months or more.

Under controlled conditions and stable temperatures, aging helps cultivate the unique brew of your sake wine, supporting the development of its flavor body under a close eye. 

 10. Dilute, bottle, and enjoy.

After one more pasteurization and your desired level of dilution (to limit alcohol content), bottle the sake wine and prepare guests and customers for deliciously unique sake cocktail recipes.

Frequently Asked Questions on How to Make Sake

Find out how to make sake sparkling, premium, or intended for cooking. Compare the differences in making sake for drinking or recipes below. 

What is the process for making premium sake for drinking?

Premium sake demands highly polished rice, a lengthy fermentation period, and much more control over temperatures throughout production. The standards for its strains of yeast, types of koji mold, and sources of water are also stricter.

How do you make brewed sake into sparkling wine?

Carbonation in sparkling sake can be natural or forced (through part of the organic fermentation process, or added with dilution). Bubbly sake features secondary fermentation, inside the bottle, that continues until opening. 

How long does cooking sake ferment?

Cooking sake uses rice of less premium polish and matures over a shorter aging phase (rarely more than 6 months). In its use for cooking, sauces, and reductions, cooking sake is made more quickly.