Dankake - Building a Sake Mash

0:20Welcome to Sake Deep Dive, the sake podcast for the beyond beginner. I am your host, Jim Ryan, joined as always by my friend and co-host Andrew. Russell, how are you doing today, Andy? I am good, Jim. Very hot, but we are in the midst of the hellish Japanese summer. It is the worst in memory so far. I don't see any sign that it's going to be getting any better anytime soon, so I guess we just have to keep our heads down and muddle through as best we can. Yeah, plenty of cold sake, I think, is an order. yeah make sure you drink drink at least as much water as you do sake though yeah avoid that dehydration yeah so uh well you know i think we should probably just die right in instead of you know breaking things down and letting things add up little by little let's just jump into our topic today andy what are we talking about today well that wasn't missed on me Jim that was typical Jim Ryan genius wordplay there that was fantastic as always you don't you don't let me down but I think you probably rehearsed that one that was too I didn't no it just came to me in a flash well yeah right anyway we're talking about well we were going to talk about three-stage mashing, sandanjikomi, but it's actually not really the best conversation.

1:57We should be talking about danjikomi or dankake, as it's more colloquially known inside breweries, which is the, not just three-stage mashing, but mashing in stages, which is such a very crucial part of making seishu. Yes. right and uh yeah it it is probably a really good idea to to be very clear about this because i think a lot of people who study sake and start learning about sake one one of the very early lessons is about sandanjikomi or the three-stage mashing which i think leads a lot of people to to some perhaps incorrect uh assumptions about the process but uh yeah that's what we're here for We're going to try and clear some of that up, talk a little bit about history as we are known to do.

2:54So should we just start at the beginning? Do you want to do you want to start get the starter fermentation going for us, Andy? Sure. You really can't have this conversation without drifting into other areas of brewing. or how they got there really is also quite interesting the history part of it let's start with what it is let's start with with why it has become sort of a a standard part of the brewing process so just to lay things out right what we're talking about is the fact that when you are brewing a a sizable fermentation of sake you don't just add the all of your rice and all of your koji together at once, you have to break it down into stages.

3:46Typically, people think that there are that three is the standard. It's maybe not so universal. There are four. There are many more. Some people do many stages and there are, in fact, some breweries that only do one. But the idea is that if you just add everything together at once, you kind of cause the microorganisms that you're working with, particularly the koji at the beginning and then the yeast, to be able to do their jobs. There's too much food. There's too much nutrition. The chemicals that they need to survive are in sort of a different balance, and it can lead to a failure of fermentation.

4:31And so by starting off particularly with a starter and then a sort of an intro stage where you slowly add rice to that starter, you let all of the microorganisms flourish and increase in number so that you get a stable base for a complete fermentation. Do I have that mostly right, Andy? I shouldn't be talking. You're the brewer in the room. No, absolutely. That's it. If I'm ever asked that question, this is just my explanation, and you need to give a quick answer. The reason would be multiple parallel fermentation. It's not the only reason. We're going to get into some of the other reasons. But if you want a quick bite sized explanation for why brewers mash in stages as opposed to, say, beer brewing or wine making, where everything is just added to the mash at the beginning, then the reason in sake brewing is multiple parallel fermentation.

5:39It's an extremely complicated form of fermentation. So just as a quick recap, grapes are quite possibly the most ideal raw ingredient for making alcohol. They have pretty much everything you need. They have sugars, they have juices, they often have yeasts living naturally on the skins. So you have everything you need for fermentation. Really all you need to do is put it in an environment that's conducive for fermentation and Mother Nature will take effect. Now I'm not diminishing winemaking, it's not quite as simple as that, but the fermentation part is. And for that reason, they call that a simple fermentation.

6:36Some people call it a single fermentation. I prefer the simple fermentation translation. that's how Philip Harper chooses to translate it in the Nada Gogo's brewing guide that they have online. If you then move up to say beer brewing which is starting to have a little bit more in common with sake brewing I'm not one of these people that says sake brewing and beer brewing are basically the same that's categorically not true. Beer brewers have a similar problem and that their raw ingredient also does not have an awful lot of natural sugars. It has mostly starch. And so they have an extra step that they must convert starch into fermentable sugars.

7:27But they do it by a completely different biological process, which is obviously malting. So usually barley is essentially tricked into thinking it's time to produce enzymes. They do that by soaking it and heating it. And the enzymes that are produced convert the starch into fermentable sugars. But that stage is done separately from fermentation. So they call that parallel fermentation. Sake brewers obviously And I know this is all basic stuff for everyone that's listening But sake brewers do both the saccharification part The starch to sugar conversion And then the sugar to alcohol conversion Simultaneously in the same tank So for that reason they call it multiple parallel fermentation Now it does produce supposedly the highest alcohol content of any non-distilled beverage or any naturally fermented beverage but it comes with a price in that it is highly complex and when you have all these things going on in the tank at the same time as you said during that explanation if you just were to simply add everything at once all the various elements that are that are working away doing conversions and turning things into doing their magic then they would get weakened things like acidity which is necessary for protecting the mash would would get diluted the yeasts would get weak and you've it's really the yeast initially it's the the acidity that's protecting the mash but then it becomes the yeast So you're going to start to get unwanted microorganisms infiltrating the tank and the yeast isn't going to do its thing properly if there's too much water or too much rice added at the same time.

9:29So the solution in modern brewing, and we'll come to why it's a solution for modern brewing and not necessarily for traditional brewing, is to add them in stages. Right. Yeah. And, you know, it has just become such an absolutely sort of accepted part of the brewing process that it almost goes ignored at times. But if we were to talk about sort of when this got started, right, let's look at the history. Because, you know, you're talking about things like, I don't know, microbiology, right? So, you know, the nutritional environment of microorganisms and how to preserve that. Like, that sounds like modern knowledge.

10:24But this process is not a modern process, right? Definitely not. No, it's got a very long history, actually. Yeah. So from what I could find, the earliest records are going back to the Muromachi, right? Yes. And this is where I have a little bit of contention, actually, with certain narratives around it. So you've obviously got the same thing as me. The Gosu no Niki is, well, there's two dates for it, isn't there? There's 1355, there's 1489. Now, when exactly that was actually is quite important for this because there's another document, the Tamo in Niki, which was, which it's a diary. Niki means diary.

11:17So it wasn't like it was written on a certain date. It was written for a period of almost 250 years. This is a temple, a sub-tempo of Kofukuji in Nara. If you do a quick Google now and ask Google for the origin of Dankake or three-stage mashing or whatever, there's quite a few sources come up and they trace it back to Shorakuji. So the whole bodai moto thing. I sort of have a bit of concern about that because it doesn't seem to make sense. If we've both been avid readers of Horie Shuji, who wrote the wonderful Nihonshu no Kitamichi, and as you know, that book is basically, here's every recipe for sake that's ever been.

12:19and here's a description of them. And when you start to get to these two periods, the Tamo-in-niki, there's detailed recipes that Horie has compiled for this. And I think he's used some very reliable sources. And so the goshu has things like bodai-sen. Now we've covered bodai-sen. That is the brand of shorako-ji. Because it's not bodai moto, it's not what it means. It means bodai sen, it's the brand from Shorakuji. But it also has tenno no sake, I think it's called, the one from another temple in Osaka. And more crucially, it has a recipe for yanagi sake. Now, yanagi is from Kyoto, and it has, as far as I know, it was a private enterprise.

13:17It's widely regarded as the first ever sake brand It was very popular But it was a Kyoto city sake So it had nothing to do with these temples Other than the fact that they were They had their hands in the sake brewing industry And the only one of these three That isn't stage mashing Is bodai-sen It's one stage So if the goshu Noniki is In fact as most people agree Older than the Tamo-in Noniki Then it wouldn't be Shoraku-ji that came up With this first Because back then Quite clearly they weren't doing Stage mashing they were doing One stage mashing Now it might have been with a moto But that's a different story We're talking about Dan-kake tonight so yeah i don't know your thoughts on that but well so i because i was thinking perhaps like it's a matter of interpretation where people are interpreting like the creation of a moto and and and and a fermentation starter as an initial stage and then adding your your full mash rice and and koji to that as a kind of two stage just thinking about you know why that kind of uh confusion would exist because yeah i mean it is clear like the there are records of the process used uh for wood ice n and it doesn't have what we would consider perhaps what what you would consider as a brewer as stage mashing but i don't know maybe there is another way of thinking about that because if if this controversy survives like i don't know why why do people still insist that it may be bodai sen as the origin yeah i think it's just because it's in the tamiline nikki And the Tamoe Niki tells us a lot about You know, the narrative That Nara, which I agree with Nara is the origin of modern sake brewing In terms of, they did a lot In terms of making a moto And they were apparently the first to use kiyoke And things like that And it just seems like dankake Because it's written there It's just going to become a set Sort of thing we'll just throw that in as well but it doesn't yeah I'm not so sure not that I'm ever going to try and attempt to translate the goshu naniki I will take Horie sensei's word for it but it's quite clearly written there Yanagi is two stage the tenno, the temple in Osaka which was very famous with Hideyoshi I believe that was one of his favourite sake that's three stage and then bodai sen is one stage so it's really the only one which didn't have a clear attempt whether it was a similar or not at three stage mashing so anyway that's that's just my theory but I guess one thing that I mentioned there would be quite key which is kioke Kiyoke I think is quite strongly linked to Dankake and Moto we're not going to cover Moto tonight, we've done that but I think the two are linked, when we talk about Kiyoke this can't be underestimated the importance of it because really this is the point where brewing really changes for me anyway this is the point where things start to become necessary that weren't in the past when the scale of sake brewing gets increased so it looks as though that places like Itami initially and Ikeda are the ones that inherited this scaled up type of brewing using kiyoke and things and they commercialised it but all the evidence seems to point in the direction that Nara were the ones that did it first and sort of showed them the blueprint for it but of course what you've got going on at the time is that the tokugawas are coming into power and they greatly marginalise Buddhist temples and start to take control of these kind of industries and that's where the baton, if you will, is passed from Nara to Itami, Ikeda and then in a later conversation, Nada.

18:34So yeah, that is when Dankake becomes a necessity whereas before when you've got this very scaled down type of brewing there's actually no need for a moto and there's no need for that stage mashing to the same level. And that would explain why bodice was only one stage as well. Yeah. And just to sort of remind people, what you're talking about is the fact that for a large period in the very early history of sake brewing, it was all done in kame, right? Ceramic pots. and there's a very strict limit as to how big a ceramic pot you can make, particularly in those old manual labor days. But when, I guess we could say barrel making technology allowed for the creation of much larger kiyoke, the kind of thing that several people could fit inside of.

19:39Yeah, that's where that scale issue comes into play. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. When you're talking a standard size keoke, this is the beginning of what is known in Japanese, but very standard in the industry, itonjikomi. So one ton of white rice. That is the recipe for a lot of brewers, the smaller to medium sized. they're typically brewing about one ton to one and a half tons of rice and that does necessitate stage mashing because we're in a completely different level now. Like you said, if you're brewing in Kame, these don't really typically hold very much. I think most of our viewers have probably seen them anyway.

20:32They're usually, you can find them lying around in breweries and things or if you ever go to Inbe in Okeyama, there's bizen ones and things that you can see they're they're in a lot of the museums and nada as well you can see them if you take my tour for example they're not big so you could you could fill them to capacity in terms of the the shikomi haigo the the recipe and it's still not an awful lot of rice and water and koji that you're putting in them but a kiyoke that's a different thing a whole ton of rice you're definitely going to have to to separate that into batches and that is the i guess the standard brewing that we've talked about sandanjikomi or three stage mashing it happens over four days so they call the first one hatsuzoi you then have the odori which is a day of rest where you let the yeast build up ahead of steam.

21:35Then you go on to naka or naka zoe. From soe to naka, you typically double the rice. You then have the third and final stage, which they call tome zoe or just tome. It just means to halt. And that is typically double the naka so three stages soe naka tome which happens over four days which is soe odori naka tome so that's a lot of japanese but yeah yeah no i think it's essential right and yeah so that's the the sandan jikomi and like we i kind of mentioned at the beginning this is what everyone considers the standard. And, you know, I think it's maybe the textbook version. There are more. I think the most common more is yodan jikomi or yodan jikomi.

22:36But I don't, there's, there is a sense where I think yodan is actually far more common than people think. Am I wrong about that Or is everybody else wrong? You're absolutely right So, okay, let's consider it We haven't prepared the stats I mean, they change every year But we all know that the majority of sake on the market is futushu Now, not all futushu is aruten There's quite a lot of sake out there Futsushu out there now that is actually junmai I bought one from Hatashuzo It's their local brand Their brand is Daijiro This is just to give an example There's lots But that is a Futsu shoe Only because they make one just for the local market It doesn't take the Daijiro label But they use Togai Mai So it gets declassified But that's the only reason it gets declassified It's Futsu shoe For everything else, it's a Jumai They don't use added alcohol.

23:49So there is that. But the majority of futushu does have aruten. And then obviously you have from the tokute meishoshu, you still have a high percentage of sake that are aruten, all the competition stuff, etc. Now, if you've added alcohol, there's a very big chance you've done yodan jikomi. And just to clarify, it is yodan, not yondan. Yondan would be the grammatically correct way to say it, but in brewing speak, it's yodan. So you will get picked up on that if you say that in a brewery. Why it became that, I don't know. I've heard a few tojis say that there's a lot of vocabulary that gets shortened down like that.

24:38Probably just people are busy. So Yodan became, or Yondan became Yodan. but it doesn't happen at the time of sandan, do you call me? It happens much further down the line into fermentation. Now, if you've seen it on a label, it's because the brewer wants you to know that they've done yodan and those are normally junmai. But if you don't see it on the label, it doesn't mean it isn't yodan. Like I said, if it's got added alcohol, it's almost certainly yodan. If you're fermenting a mash, and we all know about dryness and sweetness and the SMV and things, added alcohol is extremely dry, obviously.

25:31It's a distilled beverage. So the SMV on added alcohol gets added at 30%. It's way on the plus side. So if you just put a big dollop of added alcohol into a fermenting mash, it makes it bone dry. So what they do to counterbalance that is yodan jikomi, a fourth stage. Now, there's a whole spectrum of ways they do that. There's just simply steamed rice. There's mochi gomi. you can get ones where they add koji as a fourth stage so just koji you can get a mixture of the two so rice water and koji can be added in a fourth stage that's actually quite rare and there's some really unusual ones like actually making a second moto but the the purpose of all of them is to is to counterbalance that big dollop of dryness that we are going to add when you add alcohol which happens last so you do the yodan stage first so you make it really sweet and then you balance that with the alcohol to get it back to whatever you're intending for for the finish of fermentation and that's that's essentially the the practical aruten usage of yodan right so i wasn't mistaken everybody else was i like the sound of that yes yeah you can be smug for for a bit, Jim.

27:11I'm always happy to be smug. Now, I have heard of more. In fact, there's one sake I had that claimed to be a 10 stage. What is that? Jūdan? Tōdan? Jikomi? Jūdan, I guess. Yeah. You're talking about Ōzeki, right? Yeah, there was one. So, like, what does that look like? Do you have any idea? Because I find it hard to sort of imagine. Well, there's two things I could sum up. Well, there's one up in Shimani, which they did that for the Yashiro no Orochi no Sake. Yeah. The one that's folded eight times, I think it is. So that's a completely different type of brewing that they think was in the Kojiki.

28:03This is the mythical origin story of Japan, which puts Shimani as the birthplace of sake. But it was a completely different type. It's like eight folded sake. But I think there's a brewery up in Shimani that does, so it'd be like Hachidan. But Ozeki do one which is a lot more commercial. It's an almost permanent fixture at airport duty freeze. so if anyone's come to Japan go to the duty free at your airport and I almost promise you they'll have it I think it's literally just called Oseki Judan and it's it's that it's 10 stage mashed Oseki and the reason they've done that is to make it very sweet and very luxurious because it's priced accordingly as well I think it's about 5 ,500 yen for a Yongo bean and it's I think it's about minus 30 on the SMV so it's a very rich sweet sake by design and obviously expensive because if you're adding 10 batches of rice water and koji assuming that's what they've done then it makes things quite expensive yeah it is delicious I've I actually tried it once and it was really nice.

29:29I'm not sure I'd want to buy a bottle of it. Yeah. That's definitely something you'd want to serve it like a group. You'd want to finish it off in a night with lots of people. Yeah. It strikes me as something a bit like a Kijoushu. Like, you know, it's going for that. Something different for a special occasion kind of thing. But yeah. Who knows what goes on in the minds of a large sake brewers, Publicity department Coming up with that kind of idea But yes Danji Komi Is Far more Complex and varied than simply San Danji Komi that they teach you In all of the sake textbooks Yes That example With Ozeki is quite an extreme one Going to 10 Editions Again like you said what they were aiming for, what was going through the marketing people's mind.

30:30Who knows? Maybe luxurious. It's like I said, it's always at the airport duty free. They've been making it for years, so it probably does quite well. But there are a lot of other breweries that seems to be more and more, actually, that are realising that talking about Dan Kake more than three stage mashing, I guess it's a little way to differentiate your sake from the mainstream. I mean, my recommended sake, give the game away now, I won't say which one, but it's going to be a yodan. So a four stage one, but not one with added alcohol. So if you're doing it without, for reasons other than added alcohol, if it's a jimai, then you know it's a stylistic decision.

31:21you're trying to add sweetness or richness or maybe even more aroma and there's quite a few breweries that seems to be increasing anyway that are that are pushing that is something that they are doing that's unique i think there's one up in niigata harashuzo that talk about that this was the way that they always used to do it and this is the the way that they've decided they're going to concentrate on for the future. So they have a whole thing on their website about this very traditional process of yodan, but their new sake that they're making and that they're pushing are jummai. So it's not quite the same.

32:04The traditional method would have been for aruten, but this is obviously a modern take on it where they're not doing it to balance off the dryness. They're actually doing it to add something to the sake. Yeah. And having mentioned the sort of the variety of danjikomi, even within sort of, I guess, the accepted standard of the sandanjikomi, there's also room for variations, I guess you'd say, like variations on a theme. I know one thing that people do that's a little bit different. Like Gangi maker, Yaoshin Shuzo, they use a technique called Edaoke. And what that means is that for the initial stages, when they're building up, I think basically up through Odori, They use a smaller tank, so there's less surface area in relation to the volume, which allows for a little bit even more safety and a little bit more stability while you're nurturing the yeast into a really strong fermentation.

33:18As I understand it, I'm no brewer. This is what they told me at the brewery. And then when it comes time for the nakazoi, when you have to really boost up the volume, they basically just dump the whole tank into a larger tank and start from there. It's not, I don't think, a particularly common practice, but it is one that they are quite fond of in that brewery. I don't know. Your experience, of course, is far wider than mine, Andy. Have you seen any other kinds of those variations? on the theme of sandan jigomi? I have seen some variations, depending on the progression of the mash and things at the early stages.

34:03I've seen breweries doing futsuka odori, so two-day odori and things. So actually, the soe odori naka tome becomes soe odori odori naka tome. but what you're saying about the eda ok I think it is probably not commonplace but in my brewing experience the way I was always explained it is that by doing this eda ok it gives you slightly more control over the fermentation that you can't do if you do the opposite of that which is actually called souponjikomi, which is, so for example, you have soe, and then from soe to the odori, you put it straight into the biggest vessel. So you would go typically from like a tank that's maybe like five, six hundred litres into a tank that's three thousand litres.

35:10If you think of that, that's a very small amount going into a very big tank. And so your ability to control the temperature is compromised until it starts building up and up and you've got more volume. And then like the jackets and things, the cooling jackets, they start to come into effect. If you put it into this medium-sized tank, the Eda Oke, that's the name of that, which you just said, Eda Oke Jikomi, then it's going from small into medium and then into large. So for just that day that it's in there for the Odori or from soy until the Odori, then you're able to control it. And I guess that's just the difference that some brewers feel is worth the extra effort because it is a lot of effort.

36:03You've got to, moving sake around is never easy. You're either doing it by hand, which I've always did it by hand until I went to Kenbyshe. They use a pump, but that's just because of logistics either of those was actually fine but then you've got to clean that pump and then you've got to clean the extra tank once it's out and move it around and everything it's it's extra work so it does seem to stand to reason that if if there wasn't any merit in it like some brewers say because of modern cooling equipment and stuff being so improved then then why would the Brewers do it. So I'm on Camp Ed Alke and I think that it is probably worth the extra stretch.

36:53It does seem to have a shared sense of small batch quality, maybe we could say. Yeah. I think the takeaway is that of course we need very concise explanations and textbooks and things you know these courses that you do online and stuff like that and they need they need one for for sandanjikomi or dankake because well it's always sandanjikomi isn't it because we need to be able to understand things quickly and things but the takeaway is that this is actually a very nuanced conversation there's a whole spectrum of different connotations and different philosophies that exist within the, what, maybe a thousand sake breweries out there now.

37:46There are a lot of ways to do this and it really isn't sandan, you call me, that might be the I guess the standard at the beginning of fermentation but actually probably yodan is more common for stage mashing But it's done separately Yeah, and I guess it has a very specific reason For that The art of 10 thing Yeah, and I guess There's another Niche that is emerging In that these are people that are doing Additional stages Stylistically But it's not a simple Thing Lots of different permutations To particular brewing technique which happens to be very specific to sake brewing I guess yeah I guess that takes us to the highlight is it time for a recommendation Andy or is there more that you wanted to cover no I think that's it so yes and I think with that takeaway there for us it is time time for the recommendations and I have a sense that there's going to be a little commonality in our recommendations just because of the topic being what it is but why don't you unveil the secret that you alluded to earlier what's your recommendation for us this time well this is another one of these topics we seem to be in a lot of these it could be literally anything because it's stage mashing so if any sake that has more than one addition is is got to be acceptable on this list but i feel like that's a bit of a cop-out so i've picked one that isn't sandan jikomi i've picked one that is yodan and i haven't picked an added alcohol one because that could have almost been anything as well so I've gone with a brewery where the more I learn about them and the more I drink their sake the more admiration I have for them which is a hanatomoe and I'm going to go for their yodan natural yeast they do the yodan specifically for stylistic purposes they do a fantastic Honjozo, which I always say is the real, you can see the Kenbishi influence in them, that it's Yamaha and it's Yodan.

40:31So that makes sense because Hashimoto-san trained at Kenbishi. But this one is different. They've done the Yodan, which is an addition of steamed rice. That is the way they say, although they do sometimes use a moto which is a more unusual version but it the reason for it it creates this incredible kind of mango passion fruit type of aroma and and flavor as well it's really juicy but I picked up a bottle from the brewery actually and it had been aged I specifically asked for an aged nama and they gave me this bottle and it was about maybe four years old and i opened it recently with with friends and it was massively popular it just the the fruitiness kind of fades and you just get this beautiful kind of rounded richness which is is different from when it's fresh and you get these really kind of bright mango passion fruit aromas but It's an incredible sake and it shows the potential that brewers have from just a simple further addition from the orthodox Sandanjikomi.

41:49That sounds fantastic. Everybody's going to be searching for that aged nama now. Well, mine, I guess, is also going to be exactly in that same stretch. It is another junmai that is a yodan jikomi, intentionally done to sort of boost that kind of depth and sweetness. And I think it does it successfully. It is BD14 from Yachiyo Shuzo. It's a hagi sake brewer. And it's the only one that I know of in Yamaguchi that is openly advertised as a yodan jikomi. And this one, the name BD14, it refers to Bohm degrees, which is a measure of sweetness. I don't know what that translates to in your typical sake meter value, but I think it's going to be a decent plus value on that, maybe a plus 15.

42:55It's really quite nice. It's well balanced. instead of really being a sweet sake, I think it's a little bit more complex than the normal junmai that you would get from yachio. So I think it demonstrates how that fourth stage can be just a choice for the brewer in how to express a different kind of sake from what they typically make. and this one is thankfully quite reasonable it's 1650 yen for a yogo bean so if you can if you can ever get to Yamaguchi prefecture particularly the eastern half where they sell lots of hagesaki look look for the look for the blue bottle with the label that says bd14 and I think you'll enjoy it.

43:53Fantastic. Interesting name. It's not what you'd call poetic. No. No, it isn't. And the label actually looks almost scientific. It's just like a white label with a purple stripe with black lettering and it just kind of looks like the kind of thing you'd see on a drugstore shelf almost. But all of that sort of packaging talk aside, what's inside is decent stuff. well worth a try fantastic alright so I think that brings us to the end of another Sake Deep Dive thank you so much for hanging out with us special thanks as always to our Patreon patrons you all do keep this show going and you know we are still on there patreon.com slash sake deep dive that's all one word and it is summer that means we're coming up on time for the sake matsuri things being what they are it's been a little bit tricky to schedule this year but it is coming soon and we will make that announcement on our Patreon page when it is ready so once again I have been your host Jim Ryan you can find me on my recently revamped blog at jimryan.com where I pretty much never talk about sake, but you may learn some other things about my rapidly evolving career.

45:25Where can people find you, Andy? They can find me in Nada giving tours. So if anyone wants to join me in Nada for a tour of Japan's number one brewing region, then they can get me at originsaketours.com or you can find me on Instagram or my other website, originsake.com. Fantastic. And yeah, you know, I've said this before and I'll say it again. It's a great tour. I have taken Andy's Nara Tour and it was absolutely a highlight. So do make it part of your trip to Japan. Okay, folks, thanks again. And as always, keep your tokuri full but drink responsibly. Kanpai. Kanpai.

46:14We'll be right back.