Starting this topic to share and discuss Sakes.
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Shouldnt this be in the beer/spirits subforum?
Fridge temp to vessel so drank chilled to room temp.
Much fuller bodied. Caramel in the nose. Some yam in the mouth. Roughness on a longer finish.
Strangely food friendly
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Oh. Hmm, good call. Didn’t think about it.
I think Sake is closer to wine than beer or spirits, but uniquely it’s own thing. Will move over. Thanks, Mikko.
Agreed, I think it’s okay here. Leaving for Japan in a week so your timing is quite apropos!
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This thread was moved to Beer/Spirits.
I consider Sake to be rice wine. It’s higher in alcohol at 15% to 18%, but so is port, Madeira, and sherry.
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I drink many kinds of sake; but, usually, those by Dassai or Tatenokawa.
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Why those two in particular?
Aside from liking them, convenience, as those two are imported by the same company that has a nearby outlet that does same day delivery. There are others I may prefer more depending on what I’m in the mood to eat; but most of those aren’t available locally (my brother’s wife is Japanese; so they’re in Tokyo 3-5 times a year and bring home sake for me).
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Trying to phrase this without being too offensive, Dassai is usually considered analogous to one of the large production CA wineries in that it’s pretty generic across the board, though there are different levels, and it has broad appeal as well as broad availability. I would not seek it out, but have been known to drink it when that’s what’s on offer.
After full disclosure that my husband imports Kikuhime sake from Japan, I can honestly say it is something special. Specializing in the yamahai style (not all their bottlings are yamahai), it tends to be bigger and broader, with more depth and umami than a lot of the sakes we get in this country, which tend towards the minty/melony end of the spectrum. We had the Yamahai Ginjo Genshu with the king crab he made this past weekend and it was stupendous. So to the question of “what sake am I drinking” it’s almost always Kikuhime.
I do also enjoy Jikon, Shichida and Shichi Hon Yari, to name a few. I do not support the extreme polish fetish, which results to me in sake that is as clean (in a boring way) as possible, and astronomically expensive.
I also consider it partly a mission of mine to discourage the notion that junmai means better. It means there is no alcohol (or anything else) added. With wine biases behind us, we tend to think that the less added the better - “pure!” “natural!” - but it doesn’t translate that way in sake a lot of the time. Kikuhime, for instance, produces sake that ages beautifully, unlike most sake, and the brewery is convinced that the addition of some alcohol gives it the frame and structure to last like that.
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100% this.
I didn’t “get” Sake till maybe 2 years ago.
Mostly because, I would always come into contact with this very “clean,” but unmemorable experience.
I randomly was served an aged (I forget what it was, but not junmai) sake. I think it had alcohol added in. Completely different profile. There was secondary notes and tertiary development.
That was my moment, " wow there can be a really profound experience here." My mind was opened.
Wonderful! Now you need to try Kikuhime. 
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Name the time and place
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Come down to Philly and we can taste through the lineup. @Robert_Dentice will tell you it’s worth the trip.
Can you explain what this is for Sake neophytes?
No offensiveness detected on my part. Dassai (usually their 23 &/or 39) and Tatenokawa are just what I normally have handy at home. Not meant to be special; just any day house pours for whenever I have tempura or sukiyaki or simply grilled wagyu at home.
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Google can probably do a much more thorough job of explaining the polish part, so I’ll concentrate on the fetish aspect. 
Very simply, sake rice has a central core of starch that is converted into sugar and then alcohol by the brewing process. The outer part of the kernel, containing fats and proteins, is polished away to get closer to this soft starch core, which absorbs the koji mold. The more that is polished away, the higher the classification with Daiginjo being the highest at a polishing ratio of less than 50%.
A lot of people think that daiginjo is the “best” sake because it’s the highest polish (and because it’s usually the most expensive), but that isn’t the case. It’s just a different style. Broad generalization - the daiginjos tend to have more of the clean, minty, melony thing, and sometimes come across as a tad sweeter to some people, though actual sweetness is another thing entirely. As for the expensive part, it’s largely, though not wholly, a matter of yield - starting with the same amount of rice, the more you polish away, the less sake you can make from that rice.
Anyway, the fixation on polish ratio, and the idea that lower polish (more taken away) must be better, and the push for luxury examples of everything, has lead to more and more of these super-polished sake, including one (there could be others, I know of one) that called itself zero polish when the ratios were still rounded down. These crazy polished sakes cost a huge amount of money, take ages to make (rice polishing isn’t a quick process at that level) and usually come in very fancy packaging.
There are certainly exceptions, but I find most of these super polished sakes to be pretty boring, and not all that useful for food pairing except with the most delicate of flavors and textures. I have nothing against Daiginjo sakes - Kikuhime’s BY Daiginjo, polished to 50%, is fantastic, and I will be drinking an aged example of it tonight - just the idea that pushing to the extreme makes a better product. In the case of sake, I really don’t think it does. YMMV.
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Yeah, I wouldn’t take offense. More like envy.
I was in State College PA at a state store that sells the highest volume of sake. The retail selection in PA seems pretty limited.
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Perfect use of sake! I especially love Yamahai style with grilled meats.
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Seems like a decent explanation of rice polishing. It doesn’t falll into the trap of claiming the most polished rice makes the best sake.
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