Nigori - Clearing up Cloudy Sake

0:19Welcome to Sake Deep Dive, the sake podcast for the beyond beginner. I am your host, Jim Ryan, sitting down here in Yamaguchi Writing about, thinking about, translating about sake whenever I get the chance Joined as always by my friend and co-host Andrew Russell How are you doing today, Andy? I am good, Jim Been drinking a lot of sake recently, so I'm in a good place Good to hear it, good to hear it Enjoying some of that fine Kyoto sake up there? Yeah, the local restaurants do support Kyoto sake But also some other stuff I've got a weird thing about Niigata sake at the moment Oh really? Yeah I think this is the new Andrew now, isn't it?

1:08I revealed last week that I've been drinking wine glasses and stuff like that And now I'm drinking sake from Maybe this is the beginning of the end, Jim Maybe it is You know the thing about that Niigata sake It's got that Tangnei Karakuchi reputation, that clear, clean flavor. And the stuff down here is not so clean and clear. We're getting into murky territory here. It is murky. It's muddying the waters a little bit, getting some sediment mixed up in things. You could almost call the topic a little bit nigori. Nigotteru. Nigotteru. Right. So, Andy, what are we talking about today? We are talking about everyone's favorite unfiltered sake, nigori.

2:09Wait, unfiltered sake? No, of course. Wait, that would be breaking the law. Yes, it would be breaking the law. That's why it is filtered sake, but it's cloudy sake. We are, of course, talking about nigori. Nigori, right. We are not talking about noburoku, which is just a topic that we're going to have to clarify later. So then, nigorisake. I think everybody probably, if you're listening to Sake Deep Dive, you have probably had nigorisake. You know that it is sake that is not particularly clear, not crystalline, not as purely transparent as the name Seishu or clear sake would have you believe. But I think maybe that is the first question we need to answer, Andy.

3:00Is Nigorizake Seishu? Yes, it is. I'm sure actually Nearly all of our listeners will know this anyway Nigori sake is seishu It is filtered sake So we'll get the basics out now Nigori just means that the sake has been coarsely filtered But of course that is a requisite for all seishu That they are And this is actually quite a good episode to listen to once you've listened to our episode on shibori, because there's a lot of this, is it shibori, is it pressing, is it filtering? All seishu must be pressed, as in what some people would call filtering. However, you can do that with a coarse filter and leave a lot of the solids in the sake, and that is what nigori is.

3:58If it isn't filtered, then it isn't seishu, And it is called Doboroku. So we've just established a very quick sake fact that is the difference between Nigori and Doboroku is that Doboroku is unfiltered or unpressed and Nigori is pressed or filtered. Yes. Now, this is one of the things that I actually was kind of looking forward to asking you about, because mechanically, I'm just thinking about that sort of big Yabuta accordion press. uh do they have like is it specific i guess you call them bags like the like where it physically mechanically does that filtration take place and what do you change when you are pressing nigori sake okay so my experience with making nigori is actually quite short i've only made it at one brewery and it had nothing to do with the yabuta the nigori part now i think you can probably read this in one of john gauntner's very old essays actually or sorry should i say articles or maybe it's in his book and he hits the nail right in the head if if you look back to the history of this and we are going to get into this brewery later but the the brewery that came up with nigori sake is kyoto's masuda tokubai shoten they're they're within fushimi but they're way out on the outskirts a very famous brewery and they make very delicious sake but they came up with the concept of nigori sake back in the 1960s so this is when people were trying new things Junmai was about to become a thing and the sake industry was was starting to change and people were kind of looking for new new ways to reinvent themselves and put themselves on the map and they came up with Nigori sake and you can actually see I think on their website how they did this and there was a lot of wrangling with the tax people and everything until they got it The tax people said, okay, we'll let you away with this It isn't Doboroku But it looks like a kind of cage that they put into the tank And we mentioned this before It almost sounds quite similar to what we were talking about With Yucho Shuzo and their filtration press So there's a lot of crossover starting already And we've only just begun But from what I can see on their website the few pictures that were there is it literally is a cage like device and they must have been like pushing it down through the mash and the sake would have been coming up through the mesh and into this kind of cage system that and then they're siphoning it off or something in in all honesty I don't exactly know how they did it but that is completely different from how I did it on the two or three occasions that I got to make nigori perfectly legal nothing uh nothing against the rules but what we were doing is we were taking a batch of sake and before we were pressing it We were taking, siphoning off some of the Muromi.

7:37So this is obviously got, it would look something very similar to Doboroku. And then the rest of the sake would go through a Yabata press as normal. And then we would take that sake back and we would pour the Muromi through a very coarse mesh. and we would put an amount equivalent to what we were hoping to achieve flavor-wise and style-wise back into the pressed sake. Now I'm told that is how a lot of breweries do it nowadays because unless you're planning on really kind of distinguishing yourself as a nigori maker Then you're probably only going to be doing it Maybe once a year So to be kind of retooling And setting up a system Robust in the way that it used to be It's probably a bit overboard Which is why I think most breweries Probably did it the way I did it Or do it the way I did it And the people that are doing this Habitually It's part of their core product But like Masuda Tokube, or there's a few other people that have really kind of established themselves as nigori makers, they probably have specialist equipment to do it.

9:01All right. See, I find that very interesting because I had trouble sort of picturing the physicality of making nigori with a yabuta. So there you go. Thank you for that clarification. So now here's the thing that I think maybe gets a little bit confusing is that sort of nigori is not one of those sort of specified labels. Like you don't have to label it nigori and there's no rules about how to label it as nigori. So we see some variation in labeling, right? and some of them don't even in fact use the word like a origarami and things like that orizake are names that we see a lot on labels that uh that do indicate a sake that is cloudy but i think there is some there is some some some subtle shading going on in in how these sake or label because in my mind uh origarami it indicates something a little bit different from what you might call just a nigori sake right and i think the way i always understood origarami was that it was sort of sake that had been taken from a different level level of a storage tank after what they call uh ori what is it oribiki oribiki right that's that was my understanding of origanami but am i right in that andy yeah you're actually spot on so as much as i've only made nigori or proper let's call it proper nigori i have i have made origanami or orizake several times and i always think it's a little bit misleading you hear this the explanation of origarami is that it's it's sake that that hasn't had this process of oribiki but really it's just it's just the bottom of the tank yeah so so yeah for my money they are two different things but you you pretty much always see if you google something particularly in english about what is nigori you you often get there's four types of it one of which they say is orizaki or origarami by the way these these just mean the exact same thing you you hear so you hear that and you hear sasa nigori usu nigori and then kase nigori these these are the four categories now Now, the three, the bottom three that I just mentioned there, they are proper, proper nigori sake and they'll have been made in the way that I just mentioned.

11:56But orizake and origarami is different. So when you make a batch of sake and it's finished, it's been pressed and it's been put into the tank, the orthodox brewing method was to wait for about a week, maybe sometimes longer, until the residual solids that are left, the ore, they sink to the bottom of the tank. Now the next time if our listeners ever go to a brewery, if you look at brewing tanks, they typically have two what they call nomi. This is the place where you can attach a hose at the bottom of the tank where the sake flows out of. There's typically two of these. So there's a higher and a lower one.

12:47and that is specifically for Ori Biki Sagiol, the technique of removing the Ori. So what happens is that Ori all sinks to the bottom and then what they do is they attach a hose onto the top and then they siphon off the sake from that tank and then the bit at the bottom, the last part that has all that Ori in it, then they separate that off and that becomes something different. Now with Ori Zake and Ori Garami, what you're basically getting is that bottom part of the tank. Or maybe, I've never did it this way, but maybe you're just getting sake that has been pressed and they've just completely ignored that step altogether.

13:32and then I guess over time if you left it long enough you probably get some Ori sediment anyway that does happen from time to time but I can't imagine people would be confident enough to label it Orizake or Ori Garami if it wasn't that bottom part that's that's definitely going to show that you have Orizake in it if that makes sense yeah and I think it's probably a good idea just to clarify that that the reason that i think these get lumped in together nigori sake and orizake is literally just a physical description because the word nigori just means cloudy it just means it's got it it isn't clear and orizake is not that clear because of those residual i don't know if we want to call them sediments but the the the solids right there's whiteness in there whiteness from the rice, bits of, you know, dissolved matter that can be visibly verified.

14:34And yeah, like if you set a bottle out, it will sort of sift to the bottom and leave a little bit of a residue. So yeah, even though the process behind it, and in fact, the flavors and the profiles and all of the things that you get from them, They're going to be different from You know the way that people make Nigori sake But they do have that one thing in common And that is that they are literally just not as clear Yeah As other sake And we should point out as well The reason I said it was orthodox To do Oribiki sagyo So the process of removing the Ori Is it would have been Unspeakable to have that In your sake back up until quite recently if if you can imagine customers saw it as a fault so this is quite a new thing where people don't necessarily worry about taking out the Ori a lot of breweries some of which I've worked for as well they just simply put on the label now that if you experience Ori in your sake this is not a fault it won't it won't affect the quality of the sake and that's just their disclaimer because they know that if you if you do leave it long enough it is probably going to get some sediment at the bottom but it's really not necessarily a bad thing but of course the industry back at its most monolithic the people were heavily filtrating sake and this is where we're again go back to the shibori episode to talk about the difference between filtration and shibori people were using charcoal filtration very heavily to so that you had an almost clear sake because color even back in in the very recent past color was considered a fault as well so there was a lot being stripped out of it is now brewers are being a bit more confident with it and they're saying you know what it's fine it's there's nothing there's there's not a fault it isn't affecting the quality of the sake and like one of the breweries i worked for we only filtered one of our products and that was because it was a very particular product and it did have it would produce a lot of ori enough to maybe be considered something different other than that we just completely ignored it because it is fine so it isn't a fault yeah right yeah so that's So, orizake and origarami, which I think have very clear definitions.

17:18And I don't think anybody would not label a sake that was like that with one of those words. Now, we're getting into some other terms. So, sasanigori and usunigori. Maybe a little bit less cut and dried. Yeah, this is where it starts to get blurred. It's very vibes-based. Yeah, well, pardon the pun But this is where it starts to get a bit murky A bit murky So Sasanigori The kanji explains it But the kanji is very rarely on the label But there is a kanji I don't know about you, but I always seem to see Just the sasa In hiragana Whereas there is a kanji And it means thin So if they put the kanji on more You go, okay, it means thin nigori brilliant understood very simple that that is what sasa nigori is you sometimes see people say that this is a good one to to recommend for beginners to nigori nigori zaki because it really doesn't have a lot of the the nigori part in it the solids and stuff like that it's it's been lightly clouded, if you will.

18:38Wait, wait. Just a second. We want to be careful about this because the sasa, it does mean thin. It means fine. It means small. Because the reason we want to be careful because usu also means thin. Right, yeah. Right, yeah. Sorry, the translator's giving me a row here. No, no, no. Because it's going to be a little confusing later when we get to Usa. Usu. But, yeah, it's really delicate. Yeah. Jim, no one promised you this would make sense. This is the sake industry. Yeah. It is pretty wild how they kind of decided to use words that mean the same thing. Yeah. I kind of feel like they could merge these.

19:29to be honest I don't honestly know I don't, are there any breweries that make both? Like, do they put out a sasa or put out an usu? Could it just be like a regional thing? Maybe, yeah This is our sasa Listeners are going to have to help us out on this. If anyone knows of a brewery that does sasa and usu nigori, I've only ever worked for people that use the term usu So you've only ever made Usunigori, maybe you should Maybe you should challenge yourself and try to make some Sasanigori next, just to figure out What the difference might actually be Yeah, that's Yeah, that could be difficult I mean, the wording Aside, how you How you define Sasanigori versus Usu From what you read In any guides about Nigorizaki, is that Sasa is the lighter of the two.

20:29So if we're looking and if it was ranking in levels of thickness and nigoriness, then Sasa would be the entry level. Usu nigori would be the would be the next level up. Yeah, I've seen like, I guess it would be Sasa nigori. You really had to struggle to tell, right? If you had like a Janome kikizake kiki joko right the one with the the blue bullseyes you could say oh okay i can see that the the blue is looking a little white um but usunigori is is typically pretty uh easy to see it's it's because it does look cloudier but in terms of like a binary relationship like this one is this and this is that ah i think it's much more of a sliding scale so that's where the vibes come in well you know but yeah i i would i i think probably uh if if it's if if it's really easy to tell that it's a nigori then you're currently getting in an usu if it's like hmm i'm not really sure maybe it's sasa but yeah your guess is as good of mine yeah and interestingly there isn't a term for something that's like really nigori like like cho nigori or something yeah yeah because i because because uh here's a little bit of a spoiler the one that i'm going to recommend today would have that label right right it's it's it's thick it's full on chewy yeah chewy it's like it's like porridge sometimes so i think there should be right yeah so i guess it's just nigori so sasa nigori usu nigori and then nigori nigori i guess if you maybe if you wanted to stand out you could call it dakushu yeah that's that's a statement that's getting quite close to doboroku though isn't it i mean people are going to think it's doboroku so because that that is the interesting thing about these if you look at amazaki doboroku and nigori at a glance you wouldn't be able to tell the difference so what what separates them is brewing process or lack of brewing process in the case of amazaki but they do look at first glance very similar particularly the ones that are really full-on nigori yeah because yeah we i mean we should say doboroku we we haven't done an episode on doboroku and i'm not sure we're going to maybe yeah i mean it doesn't really seem to fall in our particular yeah i think probably we should wheelhouse yeah yeah we should stay in our lane and let someone yeah i i just know that it's it's effectively the the japan equivalent of moonshine it was being made mostly by farmers and people in their own households and then in 1899 they made it illegal and they did the very sensible thing that they they knew the best way to outlaw it was to bring in the rule that you had to press your sake because they knew even back then the equipment would be the most expensive piece of equipment in the entire brewery and it would be very easy to to see what was Doboroku and what was Seishu because Seishu would have all been clear and Doboroku would have obviously looked like what now looks like Nigori so this is another Important distinction Nigori and Doboroku Have almost nothing in common They're always kind of Used in the same Conversations but they literally almost have Nothing in common other than their appearance Nigori Really is If it is going to have something in common It's more like a throwback to the sake of the past So it resembles Them in appearance but not Taste and not brewing Process Right.

24:40Yeah. So that, what do you call it? The Doburoku process is, I mean, it's almost all, what do you call it? Ichidan jikomi, right? And it's very low fermented unless you're getting into sort of the really professional people doing it. You know, most of the small household operations that are in special districts that allow it to be made now. Yeah, it's really difficult to call it a brewing process. Yes, it's much more of a brewing attempt, I think is maybe what you might want to call it. Yeah, very, very simple, direct, unrefined. but nigori is quite like it's the same process as basically any seishu with just the added complication of how they get the cloudiness into the sake and I think there was one more that you mentioned earlier that we still have yet to talk about and that is kasse nigori yeah I'm curious how you're going to handle that kasse Yeah, active Active Living Living Breathing Explosive Yeah, so Kase nigori is To me, it serves as a bit of a party piece At events and things Often with ruinous consequences So the kase If you look at the kanji for it It does literally just mean active.

26:32So if it's coarsely filtered, then what you're leaving in are things that normally get extracted out of the sake when you press it. Now, we're talking about things like yeast, enzymes, rice solids, koji. so if you don't pasteurize that because obviously pressing is one way to kill a lot of these things because when you press a lot of the yeast and enzymes and things they get caught up in the so although you're still left with something that is a little effervescent because it's just it's namazake it's it's not going to be quite as explosive if you left in to the extent of a nigori but there are some people that deliberately leave it in that state so this is another thing we could talk about that actually helps define nigori zaki outside of kase nigori as that they are usually pasteurized if you don't do that what you're going to get is you're going to get secondary fermentation very light but enough to give you a real explosion when you open the bottle and if you look around on youtube or some of the breweries that tend to to do this there's one in Hyogo I think you're bound to see a video they kind of do it at events and stuff like that and they deliberately open one of these bottles and they just let it explode everywhere and it is it's like oreos in coca-cola level i mean it's explosive it will be mentos mentos and sorry mentos yeah mentos and coca-cola um don't ask me why that is a thing but that that does seem to be real i haven't tried it myself but we're talking sake everywhere all over your the roof and the ceiling and what have you so that's what kase nigori is however if you're responsible and it takes a while to do this if you open it very very gradually or what some people do is they actually pierce the top of them so that that only gas can can can get out then you can over the course of about 20 minutes you can open one of these things enough to just get a very very sparkling nigori and that's what kase nigori is i think i've seen i maybe or i even talk to someone where you know like it took them 45 minutes to open the bottle safely it's it's pretty pretty wild yeah i do i do have a little bit of experience with these kase nigori because the the brewery i used to work for they used to give you a bottle of sake every time you pressed and we would do nigori once a year and it was up to us really if we wanted to pasteurize them or not and I never did so I would just take mine home because if you leave them for any amount of time it's it's going to start fermenting so there was one occasion where I did leave it in the fridge too long and as I was opening it you could just see this eruption in the in the bottle happening and luckily I noticed it and of course I had to coax this thing open over the space it didn't take quite as long as 45 minutes but it was a good 20-25 minutes just to get it to the point where you could open it and it wasn't going to explode everywhere so yeah I don't know it seems a little silly to me if I'm being honest I don't want my sake on the ceiling I want it in my glass And when I'm ready to drink it I kind of tend to just want to open the bottle And not have any of that stress to deal with But like I said, it's a party piece Yeah It's probably done its part to promote sake And maybe it's a bit of fun every now and again Events or matsuris or something like that To open up one of these things I could see the occasional appeal Yeah, I'm not sure I'm into it though Well, the obvious thing then to talk about now is ways to drink And I've always been fascinated by this Because I have a question for you now Why is nigori so popular in your home country, Jim?

31:14In my home country? In America, yeah it's distinctively popular in America compared to other places and I always wondered why what is it that's appealing to the American market about nigories is it a food pairing is it something that happened in the past where a brewer was getting it to people quicker than other places what was the impetus for this what seems to be a bit of a fascination with nigorizaki i don't know uh so you please please remember that i i did leave america over 20 years ago um on my my my experience with sake drinking in america is like a bottle of mishandled hakutsuru at a teppanyaki place in tulsa oklahoma so you know i'm not really sure what to say about that other than I can imagine a couple of things.

32:17One, the visual of it, it makes it seem a little bit more unique. It could be some kind of just – it's just easier to see that it is different from, I don't know, wine or some other thing in a large glass bottle. um it is also probably a little bit more the mouth feel is a little bit different if you get a nice nigori it's creamier smoother on the mouth so maybe that's more appealing but honestly i don't know americans out there let us let us know you send us throw us a bone because i had no idea that it was markedly more popular in America than elsewhere. Right. Okay, so you failed as our American correspondent, Jimmy.

33:10Yeah, I'm sorry about that. You'll have to take my passport away. Please take my passport away, in fact. I don't, yeah. Well, maybe a good time then, because we're going to announce our summer matsuri very soon over on Patreon. So let's mark that one in the calendar. hopefully someone that participates will be able to answer that and then we will talk about that on a later podcast as an american then regardless of whether you want to get rid of your passport or not okay i mean are you a nigori guy do you drink nigori do you buy nigori is it is it on your annual purchase list no it's not on my annual purchase list there is like there is one like you know when i go to a sake shop if they have this one i will tend to buy it particularly um this if it's aged i quite enjoy an aged nigori but it's not like something i go out of my way to hunt at all um i don't know that i've i don't know that i've ever bought a bottle of nigori sake yeah i was hoping we would disagree on that but it's the same for me as well i i i have bought one bottle as in I've paid for it with my own money once and that was when I visited Masuda Tokube so I thought that I'm at the birthplace of Nigori then I should at least buy the sake that continues to put them on the map so that was the one and only time it was very good did I want to be sitting drinking a Yongo bean all night definitely not but the more you research this topic there's so many ways that you can enjoy nigori so it maybe is something that i need to revisit i'll probably say as well there there seems to be more ways to enjoy nigori than there is regular seishu i you know what i think maybe you just maybe hit on something with that america thing because if so if we take seishu i think people tend to be a little bit maybe stiff about it yeah you drink it warm you drink it chilled but nigori already has this kind of outside that framework position so maybe there's just it's easier to to play around with it so like maybe yeah pour it on your ice cream or mix it with coffee or i don't maybe it maybe people are just a little bit more uh into the variation with it maybe that's it i don't know because yeah people people do play around cocktails maybe it's a cocktail thing right americans like their cocktails both of us are going to be useless then at this so i have i found the kuboto website up in niigata and it's actually a fantastic website if if you can read Japanese.

36:09They have fantastic suggestions for warming sake, chilling sake, drinking sake in the summer, the winter, whatever. It's actually a fantastic website. And they didn't disappoint with Nigori as well. So they gave a number of ways that I would never even have considered was a possibility with Nigori. There's some obvious ones. So mixing with soda. I think we can both agree that Nihonshu, or Nigori, sorry, it has a taste of Nihonshu. I know that's going to sound, but do you know what I mean? When you buy like a Kit Kat that's sake flavored, that flavor, it tastes like that. So obviously modern sake nowadays, they taste like sparkling fruit flavored water or something, but that Nigori tastes like, it's the flavour of sake so I quite like that and to have that in a soda over ice that actually is going to be the first thing I do when after I've recorded this episode I go out and buy a bottle of something but the other one that was very interesting was mixing it with umeshu and that actually sounds delicious as well but again we're going to have to wait for a later episode to see if that one works but that's kubata's recommendations from up in niigata and they actually do about three different styles yeah i i think i you know drinking it over ice is something i hear a lot of people do in summer um mizori sake as well yeah uh but yeah i i particularly find because you know like you say it has that that sort of very iconic kind of sake flavor um and it's got you know some some richness to it some body to it that you don't get with a lot of the the really high polished stuff that's like you know you know elegant and delicate and all of those things uh it is by its nature going to be a little bit heavier of course we are talking about nigori nigori like sasa nigori it's probably not going to be all of that different from from your typical seisho experience yeah i mean usunigori is is quite nice it just gives the sake a lot more body a bit more bitterness maybe a bit more acidity but they they tend to be sake that i i go for when i see them because they tend to be a bit more interesting than than the regular sake but again i'm not sure we want to to call them true nigori i don't know i I think I'm an Usu level consumer.

38:56I think the full on heavy ones, I've still not found a situation for them where I would want to sit down at home and crack open a Yongo bean and just sit and sip on it all night as I'm sort of picking out bits of rice from my teeth as I'm doing so. So I don't know. Maybe this is the answer then for me as a consumer is to do these, you know, Mizorizaki in the summer, which is like semi-frozen. It's a slushie. Yeah, slush. It's a slushie. Yeah, it's very good. Actually, very nice. You know, something like that would probably work better than regular Seishu or something with soda on the rocks. I always quite like a really, really thick Nigori warmed up.

39:51Nice and hot. Yeah, so you... Drinking soup. Yeah, so you broke ranks first. If you Google nigori, particularly in English, there's almost no one will recommend warming it. But just to point out now, warming nigori is definitely a thing. Definitely in Japan. I'm not sure about overseas, but warming nigori is completely a thing. It is completely okay to do that. And there are a few people that will put that on their website. obviously Tamagawa is one of them and they actually get that get that right off the bat they talk about that if you're one of the best ways to enjoy their sake is to to heat it up and you get a you get a completely different experience whereas most people if they've got it on their website will only recommend chilling it so yeah it definitely is a versatile beverage yeah I mean I don't know that Kase stuff Maybe heating it up It might Maybe cause it to explode who knows Just how much carbonation is in there But I'm not sure about that but Yeah there's no reason not to heat up Anigori sake at all I don't think anyone's got time To heat up Kase they've already waited About 45 minutes So yeah no one's got time for that Fair enough right so Yeah It's always just one of those things where the only really good advice I can think of when you're looking for ways to enjoy a drink is to try.

41:26Just try what seems to stick out to you, right? If you've got a sake and you take a sip of it and you think, you know, that would be really nice over ice, try it. Do it. Nobody's going to stop you. There's no sake police coming to arrest you for experimenting with your own drink so yeah give it a try let people know how it went absolutely so is it that time andy yeah let's do it yeah let's do it so uh it is time for a little bit of recommendations just to just to see what you can get and see what you can try see what you think is going to be good andy what's your recommendation for a nigori zaki this month so like i said i'm not a big nigori drinker so I don't want to give the impression that this is like a regular sake that I drink but I have had it a couple of times it's from Nakao Sake Brewery in Hiroshima in a beautiful town called Takihara and it is Seikyo Jumai Nigori I remember drinking it on one occasion in the summer and I remember thinking that this is a good balance for me so it wasn't full-on but it wasn't too light it was just a regular nigori and the the reason i picked that one is the brewery we're not going to go into on on the episode but the brewery had some pretty sad news so i just thought it would be a good way to to pay our tribute to a fantastic brewery um who the the seikyo brand or probably actually better known for maburoshi locally as well down in takihara which is is a real hub for sake brewing actually there's two or three um fantastic breweries all all clustered together so yeah that's not not my usual lengthy gushing procession tonight um but hopefully a good recommendation nonetheless yeah i think that that's great thank you so i am i'm just gonna have to do it i i hesitate because i i talk about this brewery a lot but um literally this is a nigori that if I see it, I will drink it.

43:38I haven't bought a bottle because I haven't had to buy a bottle because every sort of sake bar that I go to has this one. It is a Nakashimaya Junmai nigori. And we're going to have to hunt down a picture, see if I've got any pictures of this. It is the thickest nigori I've ever seen. I have literally had doburoku that was not as thick as this nigori. I have no idea what kind of wild filtration they put it through. But, you know, if you set a bottle of nigori sake out and don't, you know, shake it around or mix it up, it separates, right? You've got the solids fall to the bottom and the clear sake rices to the top.

44:21If you set this bottle out for a week or so, three-fourths of the bottle will be ori. and there will just be like a just a few inches of clear sake at the top uh it is almost all solids and this is it's like it's like a soup but it's rich and it's heavy and it's meaty and you feel like you're you're getting a meal with it when you and you have it and yes this is a sake that i drink warm whenever i get the chance this is also one that i've had uh aged for like 10 years. It gets like chocolatey brown. It's amazing stuff. So Nakashimaya Junmai Nigori is my recommendation. If you get the chance, try it.

45:06It is never not interesting. Sounds like they filtered it with a wired fence or something, but yeah. It's wild. Yeah. Wow. Yes. And so, that I think brings us to the end of another Sake Deep Dive. Remember, nigori sake it comes in all kinds of styles all kinds of variations but all it really means is it's a little bit cloudy right so as Andy mentioned our patreon that's www.patreon.com slash sake deep dive all one word we will be posting the dates and times for our annual sake matsuri where you get to come on zoom and hear Andy and I talk a little bit about sake and maybe enjoy a couple of drinks with us.

45:58It's going to be probably late August when that happens. We're still hammering out those details. A couple of busy times, but we will be putting that up soon. All our patrons do get access, so we'll just put the link on the Patreon. if you are not yet supporting us the door is always open and those of you who are supporting us, thank you so much you do keep us going so, with that news out of the way I have been your host Jim Ryan, you can find me on my website www.jimryan.com Andrew where can people find you these days? on my website www.originsake.com or you can get me on Instagram Thank you again for listening.

46:49I hope you have had a lovely time. Keep cool. Keep your tokuri full. Drink responsibly. And kanpai. Kanpai.