The Hao and the Why of Tasting Sake

0:28The people of sake actually brought me into sake. sake, shochu, and of course, awamori. Our show is made possible with the support of the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association. My name is Frank, and today we are joined by Aaron Howe to talk about tasting. Hi, Aaron. How are you doing? Hello. Hello. So before we get started about our topic today, Aaron, let's learn a little bit about you. Because I mean, we're friends. I should mention that up front. Aaron and I have been friends for a couple years now, and we actually do a tasting experience sometimes as well in Tokyo. But how did you get into sake in the first place?

1:06Yeah, so I moved to Tokyo in 2019 from the Bay Area, San Francisco. And initially, I actually knew nothing about sake. But I had it in my head to do a sake business. And that's where I got started on sake so you know um i wanted to open a essentially a sake uh tasting slash bottle shop and in order to do that we must learn about sake why'd you why'd you want to do that in japan and not in the u.s so i saw a youtube video or multiple youtube videos of a place called poncho con which essentially has a lot of sake vending machines in one place and you essentially put a coin in you get a little shot of sake and i thought hey i can do this idea in tokyo and probably be good business so you know initially it wasn't like oh i love sake from drinking it it was purely a business thing but when i started studying for it i thought wow like this is very delicious and at least in japan very uh the cost performance is very very good yeah that's i didn't know that that okay so you you really were not a sake guy before you came to japan oh not at all i in fact uh drinking for me before i came to japan was how can i get drunk the quickest uh without tasting something really really gross okay is that not kind of how you still are no no i have to drink deliciously before i get drunk and i if if it involves drinking crap i'd rather not drink at Fair, fair.

2:46Okay, so you came to Japan. Has that worked out? Do you own a Ponshukan-like place now? So the Ponshukan idea is kind of on the side because of logistical challenges, but now I am a part owner of a sake shop called Sake Base in Chiba. I also am owner of a sake zakaya called Craft Sake Shoten and Kitchen. Very long name, but we do creative food and a revolving seasonal sake menu. And on top of that, Frank, you and I do a tasting course together. It's called Sake Studio. And we do it certain weekends of the month. Yeah. So like now it's mostly sake all the time for you, though. Yes, now it's sake all the time.

3:37I do drink wine on the side, and I do like tasting different drinks, but sake is my main thing. Yeah. What was the sake that got you into, because I guess it's like business decision to move to Japan, business decision to kind of try to do the ponshukun thing in Tokyo, even though that hasn't really worked out. What was the, oh, wait, this isn't just a business for me, maybe, thing? um i think when we taste sake outside of japan especially outside of any type of guidance we tend to think that oh it's this really kind of gross alcoholic ricey drink that you sometimes get at like japanese restaurants and it's kind of a novelty more than a um actual pleasant thing to drink but then when i came to japan um there were a couple of sakes that really changed my mind i I think one of the first that I thought was really interesting was Kazunomori from Naro, which is made with hard water.

4:43So it's mineral-y. It is a little bit bubbly as well with relatively high aroma for something that's very bubbly and mineral-tasting. And then I remember the first sake when I thought, wow, sake can be this delicious is Hana Abi from Saitama, which is a very fruity, very high aroma, Jumai Dai Ginjo Murokanama Genshu style sake. um and my palettes evolved a lot since then but uh you know having these sakes that are basically only available in japan and really difficult to get anywhere outside those are the ones that really changed my mind where did you have those like did you go to the brewery as you were like learning about sake or like where did you find them um so i would go around different shops to see what type of businesses people are running and you know how many people were in the restaurants and whatnot in the bars and one of my go-to places became a place called craft sake which might sound familiar because i didn't introduce my restaurant but um the owner of craft sake is an american gentleman by the name of brian and he has a standing sake bar where you can try out uh one of his 30 40 sakes for just 500 yen a piece and occasionally he'll have some really special things that are hard to get so you know i used to be quite the regular there and uh in fact brian and i became friends and we became business partners very soon after oh okay so brian kind of introduced you to sake and then um i was going around drinking a lot of different places but I think Brian at that time had been in a straight couple years already and he knew his sake a lot better than I did back then.

6:46And, you know, he's someone I could talk about sake with in English. And I don't know, just having someone to, you know, bounce notes off of and having someone who knows their sake to kind of show you what they think is good and all of just having guidance is a really nice way to get started. yeah and you did sake training too right you got some sommelier certifications and stuff yeah so you know initially i read john gottner's book which gave me um very good basic knowledge and then after that i took wsc um sake level three it's the highest um sake course they offer that gave me a more in-depth uh breadth of knowledge and then after that i also participated in um japan sake and shochu associations uh yearly sake shochu seminar okay um and lastly i recently got a certification from japan uh sake sommeliers association were those useful in like because what we what i really want to talk to you about today is kind of how to improve your palate as just like a sake drinker but like i assume that when you came you were kind of thinking sake was like ricey and boozy and not much else and now at least when we do the tastings together i'm always very impressed at how much you can kind of pull out of the sake but did was that something that you were able to do before the training or after was that kind of after the training it was i think I think tasting and knowing the facts are different things.

8:33So I think you can actually taste as deeply as anybody without having the base knowledge of why things taste that way. But I think in some of the certifications I did take, they'll give you a tasting sheet, and they'll teach you how to put the taste into values. So, for example, WSCT, they will teach you to put sweetness or dryness on a scale of seven, to teach you to put the strength of aroma and so on, so that you have a standardized base to talk about the flavor. which I think is really helpful to anyone who's trying to learn how to taste because if you don't have a standard set of language to talk about the tasting you're just not going to be able to really convey you're not going to be able to convey what you really think because you know one person saying oh this has a strong aroma would be different than someone else saying this as a strong aroma because strong to them may mean very different things right um but you know i don't think it's necessary to to really take a course to know how to taste that's more about just drinking a lot and and focusing on uh the taste itself does your sense of taste change like the more sake you drink you think yeah absolutely i think um everyone i met if if you're really paying attention to what you're drinking you're spending time to understand it your palate will change so initially when i first started i really liked high aroma very fruity sakes and now i tend towards more um umami uh calm style with a lot of depth whereas it's those really high aroma wise i'm kind of getting tired of uh-huh what do you mean by depth a long finish uh complexity of flavors and aromas um you know not something that's very light tasting but something that kind of really remains in your mouth remains on your palate gives you a lot to think about even after you swallow that this is this is what i'm talking about when i say that i'm always impressed because i don't it's hard for me to imagine exactly what you mean even then maybe it's a it's it's a limitation of my explanation right but i think it's one of those things where as we're talking about tasting really the best way to learn about tasting is to have things you can compare and i can be like oh yeah you know this one is light like water it doesn't have that many flavors and after you swallow it nothing's going on versus this other one you know you leave in your mouth it tastes like coffee it tastes like the earth it tastes like dried leaves and then even after you swallow it you get uh more of how those flavors evolve.

11:26So, you know, it really, when you have something to try and compare, that's really the best way. That makes sense, yeah. In terms of that level of tasting, noticing, oh, this one is fruity and sweet versus this one's very light, this one's very rich or heavy. Like, when did you start being able to put that into words? Yeah, so in terms of tasting notes and being able to describe how you taste, you know, I think a lot of my guests that I serve are often impressed because they're like, oh, wow, you can pick up all these things. You must have a really good palate. And what I think is most people can train to have a decent palate.

12:16They just never try to because, you know, it's not like you're born being able to say like, oh, yeah, this smells like lemon or this smells like a sort of flower. But when you go and actually go smell those things and try to remember those smells and then compare it to whatever you're drinking, you start developing vocabulary for it. So it's really more about practice than how good your nose is. And what I recommend is when you first start, just have a sheet of tasting notes, ideally categorized by fruit, by nuts, whatever, by flowers. and as you're smelling and tasting something go through that sheet and just see what this reminds you of right there's no wrong answers because we're not tasting actual juices of any fruit we're just tasting something that that reminds you is reminiscent of that that note that you're thinking of do you go around like smelling other stuff i sometimes do to build that vocabulary i do i pay more attention to it now like when i go to a restaurant when i have a meal i'll always smell the thing first if i have nothing better to do and i'm at a supermarket i will go and smell all the fruits okay um but look you don't have to do that you just just you know remember what you smelled and and describe other things with those smells that that's really the the main exercise that it takes are you are like a perfume guy at all or just just with like food aroma just with food aroma but i i think it translates to anything so like you know as a sake uh professional i can also taste wine my wine vocabulary isn't as well trained as my sake but the way you taste the way you smell it's basically the same and I can do the same with whiskey, with rum, whatever it is that you want to drink.

14:11Is there much flavor overlap? Or aroma overlap? Yeah, absolutely. For example, apple, pear are some of the aromas that you get frequently in sake. And then in certain types of white wine, you also get those. But then you have stuff like lactic notes in sake. You might get yogurt very often, which is more rare in wine. But then an oaked wine could that often tastes like butter. And buttery notes in sake is a little bit more rare. So, you know, you have certain categorical overlaps, but they're not exactly the same most of the time. Even, like, for apple, the apple aromas in sake tend to be, like, light green apple versus in wine, it's more ripe red apples.

14:58Okay. Huh. And that's just, like, a function of the different esters and stuff in the sake? I believe so, yeah. because you do so i should say we do a lot of tastings that most everybody is kind of a beginner with sake often a beginner with like doing a tasting in the first place um what how do you get somebody up to speed i always explain the basics um and of course it depends on who my guests are I changed the content uh based on how much people know but uh originally I well okay hold on not originally but like initially I will always explain that sake is for ingredients rice koji yeast and water and I designed the course in a way that we explore different types of sake and then we do a comparison where usually only one ingredient or one process is different to show people, you know, here's what could happen just with that one difference, right?

16:03So initially what introduced to sake is usually one dry and umami and usually one that's sweeter and fruitier. And, you know, through these comparisons and explaining what's in the sake and giving the guests a chance to taste the differences, um it's going to really show people oh okay i get a very good baseline now of what this is supposed to be uh-huh is that like is explaining the process important do you think because this is something i've just been thinking about recently um that like with beer i feel like most people most people don't necessarily know much about how beer is made other than it's made from a grain and there's something called malt that's involved in some way but beer is very very popular these days where wine because it's just grape grape water age like the the factors are very simple but sake is much more like beer where you can do a lot of different things to make a lot of different flavors do you think that explaining like so there's nothing in this but rice water koji and yeast is helpful yeah or is it just kind of the way most people talk about so i actually think it is helpful because i have a lot of guests saying like oh so there's no apples in here right so they don't understand that like all these flavors are from the yeast and from how fermentation works as opposed to some kind of additive and then on top of that um a lot of guests think that sake is distilled or they'll be like oh the distillery does blah blah and you know those are very different processes now of course um but depending on how much you know about tasting and alcohol and how much you know about fermentation the way that you know fermentation versus distillation um the amount of actual knowledge that you'll get from understanding some of these base facts may be limited but at the same time if you don't have these and you're just talking about the taste you're kind of lacking a base on why certain things taste certain ways or how those tastes are becoming a factor in the drink you're drinking right so like you know in sake it's really common for people to compare it to wine for people who especially for people who don't know much about sake but then because of the way it's made and because of what's important in a good sake versus good wine you know sake is really not about tarot right and without explaining some of these basic facts people won't really understand that yeah that makes sense I guess um yeah I just don't I wonder I've been wondering about that recently just cause it's so the way we talk about sake is like very different from the way I feel like most people talk about wine or beer or even distilled beverages there's so much more focus on like the intricacies of production rather than the flavor I guess Because I think sake has a wider range of flavor than most other brew drinks, in my opinion.

19:32You know, you can have something that's completely dry and water-like, and then you can also have something that tastes like really sweet yogurt, which is not a range that most other beverages have. Yeah. So I think, you know, focusing purely on the flavor, you do have kind of an infinite space to go on, which is not so productive when you're talking about understanding tasting in a way that relates to a beverage versus for wine. Again, I'm not a wine expert, so I don't want to say too much. That might be wrong. But for wine, my understanding is that it's really all about the terroir. what kind of climate does this region have what kind of weather was that year and that's why this wine tastes like this and that's why i think a lot of um blended wines and a lot of natural wines don't get as much respect as um you know single varietal uh wines from really good uh wineries really good plots of that versus in sake it just doesn't really matter but you know when someone uses a different koji or when someone uses a unique yeast and it creates a very unique flavor that's what gets people talking yeah because like yeast is the source of most of the flavor of sake right i would say most of the aroma of sake or at least the fruity ones um you get umami from rice you get like ricey kind of richer you get lactic flavors um from a combination of the rice and the yeast and of course like you know depending on your hardness of the water how you perceive those flavors are are different too so you know like i don't like to put a single ingredient two two forward because i realize you know it's really the combination of everything can you generally guess the yeast if it's like one of the one of the usual ones no okay short answer is no i i think there are a handful of east that are really uh has really distinct character but like ultimately you can cover it all up that's how you uh-huh so you know i think it's really difficult too i i've never met anyone who can yeah are there any sakis that you can just you know it off the bat if you taste it you're like oh this is blah occasionally um i've done blinds before and very occasionally i'll have a sake that it's like ah this is most likely that and especially if you have like a list of sakes that you can choose from it makes it a lot more likely that you can guess what it is if you had a lot but i think it's still very difficult because like even temperature and the type of glass you drink it from is going to change the taste and unless you have an extremely good palate and extremely good memory some of sake is really hard to tell just without you know looking at the bottle so what does it mean to be like a good taster of sake then i think being able to identify flavor differences and of course you know if you're in in the service industry especially if you're hosting people being able to talk about what flavor a sake has it's extremely important um sake can be very delicate and it can you know not have that much differences between sake and sake b and if you're a good taster you should be able to one taste those differences and to understand and verbalize what those differences are so you know one might be lighter body than the other another one might be more umami and whatnot and um if you want to go to the next level after you're able to taste all of that be able to explain why that may be so okay it's less umami and it's lighter because sake b has a higher polishing ratio yeah and do you think it's important to do like formal tastings to get better or is just bringing a notebook and writing down as you like go out to eat and stuff like that and more like a casual way to get better i mean i am not a fan of sitting down and studying for long periods of time so a lot of what i do is going out tasting something and then focusing on it taking some notes and i think for most people that's what's gonna work but if you really do want to get to the next level you do need to sit down and do formal tastings so what's helped me a lot um in the past and what i found to be very challenging as well is number one um doing kind of flavor matching exercises so for example you you'll have seven sakes come out you won't know what they are they'll be numbered one through seven you try those out and then you take those back you change the order and then you match the order with what you've had so for example sake number one could now be sake number seven and then just through flavor if you can match that that's really going to train your palate in terms of recognizing certain flavors and remembering them how do you do that how do you do that by yourself though it's really difficult to do by yourself admittedly um it's ideal if you have someone who can help you set it up okay but like get a get a sake tasting group together or something yes that would be the most ideal now of course if you don't have as many uh friends uh just space it out a little bit i mean ideally your memory is not good enough that like you know you make one order and then you make the second or you just hopefully don't remember it um yeah but you know i think without a group it's difficult to perfectly do by yourself and you just like what kind of glass would you use for that just like an ochoko like a smaller one or um i always think ideally if you're tasting use some something that's akin to a wine glass something that's gonna you know hold the aromas but if you have like six seven different sakes i know it might be hard yeah honestly if anything works you just don't want to change the glass uh like halfway through you want to make sure everything uses the same glass through the whole exercise anyway um i I think number two, I recently went to a sake blind tasting, which I thought is not quite possible.

26:04Okay. It's not about, you know, where you got the sake. It's really about the sake itself. And what I've learned from that was, you know, they'll have certain hints like, oh, this sake has 13 % alcohol or like this made with number seven yeast or whatever. You know, this is Kimoto. um and also like they'll ask you for uh with sake you think it is like one number um and then they'll also this is like this is like uh you get six sake and it's like one of these is a 13 percent one of these is a kimoto one of these is number 70 east match the six sake that you got to these six characteristics kind of thing exactly so we actually got 10 sakes which i thought was everyone there thought it was really challenging that's why yeah um and then you get just certain hints you know uh for each of those 10 things you might get one or two hints about the sake like a spec okay um yeah so that you know that helped somewhat because i think without that it's completely impossible yeah yeah um and then the second question they asked was which one of these which sake do you think this is and then they'll have names of different labels and you just have to write down the...

27:21Ah, like multiple choice kind of thing. Yeah. And then, like, you know, within that, for example, there was a Hanatomo-e. It was very funky, very cheesy, and very sweet. And I knew instantly that was, like, the Hanatomo-e, Mizumoto, Mizumoto. Because that's just a very, very distinct sake. Like, how many sakes are very cheesy and very funky, and then at the same time quite sweet? Yeah. Just not that many. Is there, like... So was that just like for fun? Was that like a party game that you did? Or was that like an event? What was that? It was an event hosted by one of the popular sake restaurants called Hidejiro.

28:05They don't do it very often. I think, in fact, that was the first time they did it. And I thought it would be good practice. And it's something that I wanted to do on my own, like host on my own as well. Because I think it really does help sharing your palate. because you know how many chances do you have to really sit and focus on the drink and have to think very hard about the differences between a number of different drinks it's it's quite a rare uh experience yeah so it wasn't like a competition or something like that where like you got a prize if you did well it was just let's have a fun yeah they didn't prepare anything like that okay unfortunately well no they ended up someone ended up mentioning it they ended up giving like a little bit of a price okay um i didn't win it though so bummer so what about for somebody who's not living in japan though well how like i think america has a lot of good sake available now depending on where you are but in general how do you like maybe maybe somebody wants to be like you come to japan and work in the sake industry but they're not there yet how would they go about maybe like building their palate oriented towards working in this industry in the future?

29:18Yeah, so I think without being in Japan, you're never really going to get the depth of sake that we have here just because there's a lot of seasonal stuff that don't really leave the country. There's a lot of them in addition stuff. But at the same time, if you are in an area that where you can get a certain, you know, a decent selection of sake, whether it's online or at a shop, what I recommend is get the same or like get different sakes from the same producer. Okay. So, you know, if you can learn to taste differences based on different rice, for example, or different polishing ratio while everything else is the same that's going to be the most ideal way of getting started on learning differences because if you're getting two different sakes from two different breweries you're essentially just drinking very different things and how much you can learn from that well of course you can compare the taste and then be able to verbalize the taste differences but understanding what's actually causing those differences you need to really uh taste the same sake just one difference so you know i try to do that a lot and i think even if you're not in japan you're going to be able to get you know like the same sake from the same producer just different rice or like you know a jimai daiginjo with 50 % punishing and then a jimai daiginjo with 60 % um and then those will be great ways to to learn and i think a lot of distributors whether you're in japan or not will carry things like that that you can look for and that's just you want to decrease the number of variables that are going to be different basically exactly as a way to learn you want to have variables that uh you only you want to have just one or two different variables that are different with everything else being consistent interesting has there ever been is there are there flavors are there flavors in sake that like you don't like um i am a pretty open-minded person when it comes to taste i think more so than most people i've met who are professionals um i can't really think of something that straight up just don't like um you know i think off flavors off flavors are not great uh so in this case you know like something that's very namahine what what is namahine though yes namahine is a off flavor that you get when uh unpasteurized sake is not stored perfectly that that said you know i think uh it happens a lot even with the most carefully stored uh unpasteurized sake i think it's just a natural uh flavor that occurs when you don't store uh a natural flavor that happens in Nama sake, in a fresh rice sake, but it tastes like this kind of sharp, grassy note that is not that pleasant and it's overpowering.

32:28Although some people actually like it. Okay. When you say grassy, I kind of have an image of sharpness and grassiness is a little confusing to me, maybe. um it kind of goes up your nose i guess is what i mean when i say it's like quite sharp kind of yeah and then at the same time you know it's not this mellow taste you think the opposite of mellow gotcha and that's that's about it in terms of like kind of like oh this is gonna be maybe not so nice yeah you know i used to not like really earthy or like really alcoholic flavors but recently I've been finding those quite pleasant yeah so you know again this is a really personal thing where some people might have a lot of likes and dislikes I just don't as a person so can you use aroma though to tell other than like the namahine aroma can you use aroma to tell if your sake has gone bad it depends there are certain aromas like you know if you smell something that's like burnt hair uh that means the sake has been left out in the sun okay for too long and it's gone bad if you smell something that's kind of like oh this smells like a stale sake it probably means it should have been in the fridge um and it's been left out other than that you know i think your body is really good at telling you what's not good for you so when you smell something that tastes that smells like oh it's food gone bad i think it's the same for sake like if it smells like it's gone bad maybe it has gone bad um but other than that yeah you know i don't think you can really purely tell from the smell yeah well how would you describe staleness exactly when you have a very fresh sake it's going to give you very fresh smelling notes so you know fresh fruits uh freshly cut grass for example and then when you have something stale it might taste or smell a little bit more like uh stewed fruits okay or for example or you know it smells like grass that's half rotten.

35:04So it's not necessarily as like acidic maybe. Not necessarily flavor wise but like smelling wise. When I smell acidity I think it's a little bit different for me because to some degree you can smell sort of things that smell like sourness. Stale doesn't necessarily reflect that. it's it's more of like a lack of freshness and i think it's a better way of putting it yeah and you know for anyone who smelled um room temperature aged sake it's going to smell very calm and kind of like dirt soy sauce and those are a lot of stale-ish smells and of course it's different from a unpasteurized sake gone bad stale but you know comparing that with a very freshly pressed unpasteurized sake you get a lot of the difference yeah so it's more it's like maybe an aged sake is really far far far far to the one side of the spectrum of staleness and then like the reason the reason staleness would be bad is not so much that it's like maybe a bad flavor just it's like it's not enough of a particular flavor it's it's balance going away right you know when something's made to be fresh it has a balance to emphasize the freshness versus when something's made to be aged and you know tastes aged it's not going to have those uh nice fresh notes but then we have those nice fresh notes uh but it's not stored properly and those fresh notes are stale it's just not good uh-huh gotcha because yeah i'm just wondering for me wine i feel like you taste wine and you're like oh this is now vinegar cool but with sake i kept sake in my fridge for years open for years and it does not it does not vinegarize in the same way so it's hard to know like if you open a bottle of milk and it's gone bad you you know exactly you know exactly when it's gone bad but well you know ultimately i think it's about it's a pleasant to drink because you know milk that's gone bad uh whether it's pleasant or not to drink hopefully not it's gonna make you sick or it says i think wine or sake when it's gone bad it's not gonna make you sick it just won't taste good um so you know i think ultimately it's do you think it tastes good or not and And if you think it doesn't taste good, then for all intents and purposes, it's gone bad.

37:56Gotcha. That makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. That's kind of it for the questions I had that I wanted to ask you about. Do you think I missed anything? Or do you want to answer a question I didn't ask you? um i think in terms of tasting um it's really about practicing drinking a lot of different sake and writing down or at least in your head memorizing what you thought of each um there's not a right or wrong answer to any of this right when we say something tastes like apple there's no apples actually in the sake that we're tasting but it's that you know this reminds us of apple and we're able to verbalize it like that um and you know i think for people who don't have as much access to sake is taste what you have try to get uh do some research online maybe of what types of spec does the sake have so that you have some semblance of idea of what you're trying to drink.

39:10And that way you're going to really be able to practice. Other than that, also try different glasses. Because a choco or shot glass is not going to give you very many aromas, versus a wine glass is going to give you all of the aromas. um other than that also like you know just because you're a sake person doesn't mean you shouldn't try out other drinks and learn other drinks i think you know learning about wine learning about rum uh i'm a huge cocktail person as well uh it really gives opens up your mind to different flavor notes and the differences between the different drinks that are out there and it teaches you range of flavors yeah i my experience is limited in terms of tasting i would say i don't really have a refined palate but um i think that all makes sense to me at least well you know i think it takes time to really develop a palate because when i first started you know I wanted to be very good and I was very confident but then comparing now to then I just know so much more now and I've tasted so many more things and my palate's truly I think pretty decent now and honestly the better it gets the less and less I'm like oh I know everything just because there's always so many more things to taste and like the more you test yourself the more you realize like oh yeah you're wrong a lot more than often than you're right um with sake just because it's you know again not about any specific ingredient or any specific process it's a combination of everything and you know if it took me six years of being in japan and drinking sake almost every day to develop a decent palate nobody should really be rushing right um And I think if that goes for drinking much of anything, you really need to have a lot of that, put it in your brain and repeat that process enough times to really remember and really understand.

41:19Yeah, that makes sense. it definitely feels like to develop your path though you kind of do have to be a little scientific about it and not just not just enjoy sake but but treat it as a little bit more like work maybe yeah i mean look i i think drinking for a vast majority of people should be a fun activity not something you do purely for work and i think that's the same for me if i didn't find it fun i don't think i can continue it um at the same time you know like i think your fun can be deepened if you have some knowledge of the thing that you're doing for fun so in in this sense you know if instead of just drinking and enjoying the taste and getting drunk if i'm able to also think a little bit about oh why this tastes this way um or be maybe be a little bit surprised about oh it tastes like this, even though the specs are completely different, it makes it more fun, right?

42:17So don't treat it as work. I think keep it fun for yourself. Just find out what's fun for you. I think that's a good place to end it probably for today. Thank you, Aaron, for coming on the show and talking a little bit about tasting and your experience becoming a professional sake guy, a professional taster in some respects. So. Well, thank you for having me. And I hope that was helpful to people who are starting out in tasting um again try different things and take some notes but keep it fun and you'll learn naturally awesome thank you so much we'll put some uh information about where you can find aaron and learn more about his activities in the show notes that will do it for this episode of sake on air please take a moment to review and rate us on apple podcast or whatever platform you may be enjoying the show on and feel free to send your questions and comments to questions at sake on air.com or at sake on air on instagram twitter or facebook you can also find us on youtube as well we'll be back with more sake on air very soon and so all for today kanpai

43:29sake on air is made possible with the generous support of the japan sake and shochu makers association and is broadcast from the japan sake and shochu information center in downtown tokyo It is produced by Export Japan, and our team is Shuso Imada, Justin Potts, Arlene Lyons, Cindy Bissig, Chris Hughes, Chris Pellegrini, John Gottner, Marie Nagata, Miho Ota, Rebecca Wilson-Lai, Sebastian LeJuan, and me, Frank Walter. Until next time, kanpai!