Sake Revolution LIVE! Sake Day 2025 with Byron Stithem of Proper Sake

0:21Hello, everybody, and welcome to Sake Revolution. This is America's First Sake Podcast. I'm your host, John Puma from the Sake Notes, also the administrator over at the Internet Sake Discord and the moderator at redditsr slash sakecommunity. And I'm your host, Timothy Sullivan. I'm a sake samurai. I'm the director of education at the Sake Studies Center, and I'm the founder of the Urban Sake website. John and I will be here tasting and chatting about all things sake and doing our best to make it fun and easy to understand. Tim, I can't get used to hearing the music when we're actually doing this live.

0:59It's like, so for people at home, when we do this normally, like we just kind of pretend the music is playing and then I do the thing and blah, blah. But like hearing, I'm like, oh, this is actually pretty cool. Normally I only get that in post. Well, John, I have to say happy Sake Day. Happy Sake Day. We are here live with all of our friends at Brooklyn Kura. Say hi, everyone.

1:26All right. And we have to welcome our VIP guest for Sake Day, Byron Stitham. Byron is the owner and brewer at Proper Sake and the owner of Rice Vice in Nashville, Tennessee. Byron, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here. Byron is no stranger to this show, though. Is that right? I think, yeah, I think you've been here a few times. Byron, do you know how many times you've been on Sake Revolution? I believe I've lost count. Well, wait a minute. Don't say that. Because you've been on three times, and I bet you can count higher than three. He'd be surprised. So yeah, you've been on a whopping three times.

2:11You've been first way back in July of 2021, which was one of the first times we ever sat in a room and did a show together. and it was you and me and Tim in Tim's apartment, Tim's living room with a bunch of mics and a lot of mic bleed, which I imagine we're going to get tonight too, which is great. Then in March 2022, we did our episode 100 call-in where we had all of our friends jump in and say hi to us and you were one of our friends who jumped in and said hi to us and we really appreciated that. But we weren't done with you yet. And it's always weird situations because it's like we had the one where we were in Tim's living room and then we've got the call-in And now going on, we've got the Craft Sake Fest where you came over to our tent after winning an award and chatted with us for a little bit and did a little episode with us.

3:02We've yet to do like the normal Zoom with you. And I think that's kind of your thing now. You're on Sake Revolution a lot, but it's never just a regular episode. I'd prefer to do this in person whenever we can. Yeah. Well, now you're a three out of four. So, yeah, that's pretty good. All right. So we've had you on three times and we've told some of your story before, but I'm sure we'll have a few listeners who didn't listen to those previous episodes. So for them, can you give us a little introduction to yourself, proper sake and rice spice? Yeah. So proper sake started about 10 years ago and we predominantly do kind of old world style sakes.

3:40So Yamahas, Kimotas, Baremotas. and since then it has evolved into a multi-location and multi-product line but the baby of the whole operation is of course still sake but we do anything koji based so we do koji based beers we do shochu we do gin and whiskey all with koji and then we now have yeah a bar in nashville a bar in new orleans where we highlight all of these things and hopefully demystify them for for people in person. I like that callback. That was nice. Yeah, that's awesome. So one thing you said is something we had not heard before. You have a rice vice in New Orleans? We do. Well, tell us, how did you get there and how did that happen and why New Orleans?

4:27Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense really, but we've always loved New Orleans. My business partner lives there most of the year and we thought it would be an interesting place to try out a second location and so far it's been pretty well received it was not uh from a permitting perspective an easy venture but we're finally open and so far it's been a lot of good times and uh yeah we were there to open up for tales of the cocktail which is a big thing um so yeah coming into month four here Wow. Okay, I've got a very important question for you. In your New Orleans location, which day is more important, Sake Day or Mardi Gras?

5:12TBD. I mean, he's here on Sake Day. But we do have events going on in Nashville and New Orleans as we speak. All right. My phone's actually been buzzing quite a bit. Awesome. So we also wanted to ask you if you have any new sake products that are coming out or hitting the market? That's interesting that you ask because it seems like you're leading the witness a little bit. Just a touch, just a touch, just a little bit. So another item that I mentioned that we started doing recently is distilled products. And part of the permitting headache that is involved with certain subsections of sake production is the distillation portion.

5:57And as of last summer, we also now have the licensure to operate a certain special style of sake called hanjozo. And although we had been beta testing in and around the fringes of legality, we do finally have the correct licensure in place to produce a very interesting style of sake called hanjozo. Nice, nice. So Honjozo, for our listeners who may not be familiar, and shame on you for not listening to our episode on Aharuten, what is Honjozo? So Honjozo sake would be sake where a small amount of distilled spirit is added towards the end of fermentation. And the idea being that you can extract some of the more insoluble compounds that would be trapped in the water and rice in a normal production process what's interesting about what we're doing is we are also using distillate that is made from previously brewed sake oh so it's it's like triple sake yeah so the the normal distillate when you make this alcohol added style of sake the normal distillate that is added is a distillate of sugar cane it's a neutral spirit that brewers in japan just call brewers alcohol and you said that you're using leftover sake?

7:22Is that right? Or you're distilling sake? Yeah, we're distilling sake. So we're carving out a little bit of every single batch and reserving that for distillate just for this purpose. Yeah. One way that I recently heard alcohol-added sake being described is that alcohol helps dissolve things. It's a solvent. And when you add it to the mash, you can dissolve additional rice, You can bring out additional flavors. You can round sharp edges. And people often wonder when they hear about alcohol-added sake for the first time, like, why are you adding booze to booze? What's the point of putting distilled alcohol into sake?

8:05And it really is boosting aromas, rounding flavors, dissolving additional rice. And it is really fun when you do a sake tasting to taste a pure rice style, one that doesn't have the added alcohol, and one that does kind of side by side. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. And any other news coming out of your world? That may involve our world? Perhaps. So we recently finally started working with a New York distributor. So with any luck in the next month or two here, we'll have proper sake products in the New York area. and yeah, that's part of this trip is finalizing all of that. Thank you for having us. It's wonderful to finally be here.

8:57That is some hot goss right there. That makes me very happy because previously in order to get my hands on delicious proper sake, I needed to contact you and then go to your vino shipper and get things sent up here. And having it just local is so much easier and I cannot wait to be able to hop into a place and get your stuff here. I agree with all this. Yeah. That's really big news. But I lured all of our guests, I lured them here with the notion that proper sake is not available in New York. So for today, that's still true. It's still true. Okay. It's not a lie. Literally is true tonight here.

9:37Tonight. So it's a fib. Yeah. Well, hopefully, will this bring you up to New York more often? That's certainly my hope, especially as I continue to rack up revolution appearances. We call them revolution credits, sir. There's another toji that you want to have more visits then, right? Yeah. Maybe. Okay. I don't know if we're going to name him. But he works upstairs. All right. So we're going to do a tasting of the proper sake tonight. I hope everyone's looking forward to that. It's going to be in just a bit. But before we get into the tasting, I wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about your philosophy of sake brewing.

10:27One of the things that, as I've studied sake over the years, that's been really valuable is to taste with the person who made it. And they can talk about what sake means to them, what aspects of sake they really value, what they look out for when they're producing the sake and what they want the customer to get out of drinking their sake. And we'd love to hear a little bit of that from you before we taste your sake. What's your general philosophy around that? Yeah, I think we came to this from a very old world perspective in that when I first started drinking sake, I fell in love with some of these more robust, rich styles of sake like Yamaha and Kimoto.

11:10And living in Tennessee, that's not something we have readily available. So a lot of the impetus for the business was just to learn how to make these sakes so that I could enjoy them myself. And over time, that has really spun into some adjacent ventures. But more importantly, hopefully learning to grow the craft of Yamaha and Kimoto sake. So we definitely lean towards the more rich side. I also find that there tends to be an interesting acidity to Yamaha and Kimoto that works really well with American cuisine, especially in the South, where it tends to be a little heavier. Our flagship products are probably more of a blend, hopefully more versatile.

11:54They're very old world meets new world in that hopefully there's some nice aroma and they have a dryness to them. That makes them really approachable with a wide range of cuisines. But the sakes that we've brought tonight are definitely more the rich, full-bodied styles. And I hope that you all are interested in going on that journey too. Yeah. Do you have any particular food pairings that you like with your sakes that you serve at Rice Vice? Anything in particular you bring in to pair with your style of brewing? Yeah, I think anything grilled is always a winner. but outside of that we try and mix it up with some pretty esoteric styles of cuisine and more often than not it seems like lately we have a lot of italian and adjacent cuisine where you're really kind of relying on the umami of tomatoes and aged cheeses mixed with the umami and similar compounds that you might find in a yamaha or kimoto sake nice nice so um you've been we're back a little bit, rewind, when you first got Rice Rice going.

13:06And it's been some time now. And so how has the Nashville market for sake changed with you there for the past bunch of years? I think it changed in a big way when we opened because there was really nothing like it at the time and still isn't, for better or for worse. But there's really not anywhere else that you can go drink sake from a purely educational standpoint and or just a purely frictionless enjoyment standpoint. There are more and more restaurants where you can access a cool list of sake, but at the same time, it's still not a place where you could go and sit down and learn kind of at your own leisurely pace and or your own expedited pace.

13:53So that really is the mission and the goal, and I hope that people find value in that as well. Yeah, and so as you mentioned earlier, your business partner lives in New Orleans. That was one of the reasons that you went over there. What else drew you to saying like, this is the second place, this is where we're going to go? Well, I kind of felt like he wasn't doing enough. No, it's more that we knew the market. We have a lot of friends there and it is obviously a well-known drinking town. I've heard that. So we knew that the food component could be minimal and people would probably still be interested.

14:32It's also an interesting place from a cocktail perspective because it is also somewhat world-renowned for its cocktail culture. And we wanted to lean into that a little bit with a lot of our new specialty products, whether it's shochu's or gin or whiskeys. things that we can leverage that community to think of new and interesting ways to enjoy a lot of these koji-based ferments and also sake, of course. But how do you just get people in the door? Because the ultimate goal is to trick people into drinking sake, right? Yeah. At the end of the day, we're all ninjas. We're just trying to slide sake into somebody's life and be like, aha, we got you.

15:14Yes. As I like to say, welcome to the dark side of the force. Yes. When we get them into sake. Now, the sake educator in me is coming out a little bit. We've mentioned Kimoto. We've mentioned Yamaha. How this is a driving force for you. And for our listeners and for our people here today, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about Kimoto and Yamaha. Just a brief description of what it is and what you mentioned, higher acidity. but what else draws you to those styles and maybe a little education piece on that? Yeah, so the process of making Hakimoto or Yamaha sake requires kind of a whole precursor that wouldn't exist in a normal sake production where you are building up a lactic acid shubo or yeast starter with which to ferment the whole batch.

16:04And the difference between that and a traditional or contemporary sake would be that you are building up this lactic acid culture naturally And along the way, you get all sorts of fun flavors and bacteria that add to the depth and versatility of the sake, in my opinion. Along the way, you also, because of those interesting bacterium, get some higher acidity components. And although the product takes twice as long to make, I think it's twice as good. Twice as good? Yeah. Shots fired. Three times. I don't know. So when I describe Yamaha and Kimoto, if I'm standing behind a table and I just have a few seconds to describe it, I often describe it as an old school brewing method.

16:47And I think that's a really good shorthand for understanding what Kimoto and Yamaha are. It's the precursors to the modern yeast starter, and it's known for funkier flavors, more acidity, more boldness. and I think people can, I don't know if you agree with this, but some people have a love-hate relationship with Kimoto and Yamaha. There's some people that really get into those bolder, richer, earthier flavors and some people, I'm not naming names, but some people prefer cleaner, crisper sakes, right? Really? Yeah. How about that? Interesting. It is interesting. But we definitely try and have a spectrum and some of myos, most inspirational sakes and sake breweries are the ones that really find that balance between old and new.

17:36And I think most of our, especially wider range distributed products, hopefully fall in that category where it has the depth and versatility of a Yamaha Kimoto, but it also has the nose, some dryness and some elegance that you might expect from something more contemporary. Yeah, I think the first time we had you on the show, you had, for me, coined the phrase, pretty Yamaha. And I think it was where we were chasing Diplomat that day. I was like, this is what he means. And yes, this is, it really, because I'm not the Yamaha guy. Neither is Tim. But having that and being like, oh, this really, it's bridging that gap.

18:20It's got that fullness, but it really does still have a little something for the ginsho heads like me. and it really is a really tasty sake. Yeah, I mean, that is the million dollar question. How do you make a sake for everyone? That's hard. Yeah. I think it's a really hard question to answer. Yeah. But one thing that I think really speaks to the Kimoto and Yamaha style that you make is that when you get into the discussion of food pairing, it just opens up a door that takes you to different places. You can pair a wider range of food with kimoto and Yamaha styles. And it all comes back to the U word, umami.

19:02This is one of the cornerstones of what we get to when we talk about sake and food pairing. And kimoto and Yamaha, those old school styles that give us that deeper flavor, more umami. you can open doors to food pairing that I think are not possible with light, clean, dainty styles, right? Yeah, I would agree with all that. And especially living in the South, that is a super prevalent concept with introducing people to sake in relatively foreign environments. So we do have a lot of Japanese cuisine, but even still, it is not a predominant part of the market. So figuring out how we can get sake into these different, more Western cuisine-focused restaurants is always part of the calculus.

19:54Yeah. And it's, you know, taking that a tiny bit further, those light sakes that I tend to like, lighter, fruitier sakes I tend to like, when you have heavier, more flavorful Western food with them, they get completely lost. when you have some of that food and then you sit that sake it's like you lose the elegance, you lose the thing that makes that sake special in a lot of cases but with the Yamahas or Kimotos those pre-modern styles it's just like nope this is fine they're welcoming it, they're just like oh come on in let's go and that's kind of the fun part about that style for me for me too so switching gears a little bit I think that one thing I've noticed this year, 2025 in particular, is that I've felt through hearing about many different breweries, yours included, that it feels like there's a real momentum picking up in the U.S.

20:49sake industry. I'd be curious to get your thoughts if you think that there's growth happening, if you think there's momentum happening. You know, people have asked me about sake and I said, oh yeah, it's the latest craze, 2 ,000 years in the making. You know, it's like always been on the cusp of becoming the next thing. And I've been in sake for 20 years. But I do feel that there is real growth happening in the U.S. industry right now. What's your perspective on that? Have you noticed anything happening? I feel like sake is kind of the little engine that could in that department because it's never been explosive in growth, at least in the time I've been here.

21:34But it does continue to grow year over year and interest in Japanese culture and Japanese cuisine continues to grow. You only have to look at Kyoto this year to highlight that. But I think all in all, that's pretty effective in the way that sake has grown into the market. It's been organic. It hasn't been an overnight success. And I hope that means that it'll have longevity and will continue to grow as well excellent uh so tim i've noticed that while we have been chatting one of our glasses has some sake in it now yes and i think that's a sign yeah i think we can transition to our first sake tasting and as we do i want to encourage all of you to write your questions on the paper if you have any questions that have come up during our initial discussion we're going to be collecting those right after our second sake tasting.

22:30So please get those questions ready. And whenever you're ready to pour the second sake, I think we can do that as well. So we are going to start our first sake tasting. And I love to taste sake with the sake maker because we don't have to introduce it, Sean. Normally I'd be getting ready to read off stats, but I have a living, breathing version of that right now, right next to me. So this is great. So Byron, in my glass here, I have the proper sake, Soft Power Kimoto Daigenjo. By the way, I love that name. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But first, tell us a little bit about this sake and what we've got in our hands.

23:13Yeah. So the original version of this sake is very much the meat in the middle, knew me told previously, but this one has actually been aged for two years unpasteurized. So this is a special glimpse. What? Oh my gosh. More hot goss. Is this normally how this goes out or is this something you did special for today? This is something that I keep around for special occasions. Hopefully that's okay. No, no, no. It's very okay. It's more than okay. Okay, okay. so yeah this one is a kimono da ginjo two styles that don't normally go together so the rice is milled to 40 percent um indicative of a cleaner more elegant style but it is also a kimono so it has that old world school production where you're trying to draw out that acid and umami and the super fresh soft power is very aromatic it's a it's a contemporary yeast so So a lot of what you get would be more floral and boisterous on the nose.

24:21After two years of aging at five degrees Celsius, it has become a very subdued version where all of that aroma, I think, goes into the body. And now you're dealing with the palate instead of the nose, hopefully. Interesting. All right. So this was hand-carried for us because your distributor is starting soon, but not yet. Yep, it's true. And I don't think they're distributing the special or special occasions bottles. Yeah. Now, when I taste this, oh, can we get a few of the stats? Yes. Oh, yeah. That would be good, too. The sake rice and the rice milling. Yeah. So the sake rice is grown in Arkansas.

25:04It's a varietal called Titan. Mm-hmm. And it is milled to 40%. So 60 % removed, 40 % remaining. The yeast is 1801. So a very modern yeast. And again, the production style is Kimoto. So old world production. It's a four week process just to get the yeast started going. And then we start brewing after that. And then you've had this unpasteurized for two years. That's correct. And is this, has it since been pasteurized or is this still a Nama? This is still a Nama Nama. Wow. Yeah. All right. Well, I can give my initial reaction very freely. And I think that if you ever need an example of what umami in sake tastes like, this is it.

25:49Get your bottle of soft power, keep it on a bottle. You can pasteurize and age it for two years. And you can experience the umami we're tasting. There is a lovely combination of savoriness and rice flavors, I think, that balance beautifully here. Thank you. Did you go ahead and sip without us, Tim? I did. I jumped ahead. You did? Yeah. Well, Byron, how you doing? Kampai. That's for the end. We can do the aroma as well. Yeah, but I think the flavor is - I like how you were so excited. You just went for it. I know. You never do that. Yeah. I jumped ahead. I know. You usually set the pace. I'm the one that usually has to hold back.

26:43So I'm getting like, it's a little cheesy notes I'm getting, but not in a bad way. I know people here may know that I do not enjoy cheese. That doesn't mean I don't dislike the aroma of cheese necessarily. It just means I don't enjoy eating it. Yeah. So the lactic acid bacteria that is present in a lot of these ferments would be similar to what you might experience with a yogurt or another lactobacillus culture. So there's definitely no dairy in here. No, no, no. But yeah, and I wouldn't be wrong. Yeah. Lactic aromas and tastes are something that are quite common in sake. You can think of cheese, cream, yogurt, butter, those lactic characteristics are common and can be very delicious.

27:34And in my mind, whenever I smell that or taste that, it opens up the idea of pairing with cheese, of course. Absolutely. Which is my secret weapon to bring people to the dark side of the force. Yes. If only you had some kind of a episode of the show where you went into cheese and sake, or perhaps a series. We'll see. Yes. So I'm very passionate about sake and cheese. So I've now caught up now and I've had my sip. And I have to say that, so the aroma really set me up for something that I thought was going to be a lot more lactic forward, heavier. And when I sip on it, I'm like, oh, this is so dangerously drinkable.

28:14And I'm really, really loving this. This is really nice. Yeah, I really was expecting something that was going to be a lot more like punch in my face. and said, there's really just something wrong with a punch in the face sometimes. What if it's okay? Yeah, no, it's just like, so it's a lot smoother than I expected. Yeah, I think the Daiginjo component of this, especially with the very cold aging, helps keep a lot of the traditional koshu aged flavors kind of at bay and hopefully gives you the best of both worlds. And let me translate for you, Byron. When John says punch in the face, he means it as a compliment.

28:50He does. Absolutely. You've had a really good piece of alcohol that's been like, pow. You know what I'm talking about. Don't pretend. It's a nama nama. That's right. Do you have any thoughts on food pairing for this particular sake? Yeah. So I think this one, similarly, if you're leaning into grilled elements, it may be on the softer side not something too aggressively charred um i think it's really great with various grilled vegetables of the yakitori variety and then you know back to the italian thing as long as it's not too heavy maybe a light pasta with a lemony sauce maybe some butter not not cream let's not go with cream because that's just gonna overdo it but yeah yeah uh and And soft power.

29:47And soft power. What brought that on? Were you like tasting it and trying to put it together? What's the name for this? Well, it's a couple of things. One is that the soft power component being you have old world meets new world. You have soft, you have powerful. But the very first sake that we put into distribution is called the diplomat. And so there's been an ongoing diplomatic theme throughout our naming conjunctions and processes. And so this was just kind of a layup in that regard. Excellent. I like it. Yeah. And we should also describe the label for the people at home. Yeah. The label is also in that direction, but there's not much to do with diplomacy.

30:34It has a cat on it. But it's a cat that is screaming kind of violently into the void. And it's also a kitten. So it's cute but powerful. Hopefully in many other ways that sums up what this sake is trying to do. Yeah. So if anyone needs a visual image for the label, if you've ever seen that poster that says hang in there and there's a kitty hanging from a rope, it's kind of like that vibe a little bit. Exactly. Yeah. And it's very cool. All your labels are cool. Thank you. Yes. Great, fantastic graphic design. Wonderful. And I think with that, we may pivot to our second sake, the spirit guide. Okay.

31:18Yes. So the second sake we're going to taste is proper sake spirit guide Honjozo. Yeah. This is an alcohol added style of sake, as we mentioned at the beginning. So Byron, do you want to give us the rundown on some of the stats for the sake, the rice, the milling, et cetera? So the rice for this one is kind of a mixed bag. we had a handful of rices that we were interested in doing from a mill rate so uh these just happened to be in house titan of course because we always have that and then we did have some yamada nishki uh but we also did have a sprinkling of omachi this was uh so everything everything in here is 65 except for that omachi which was 70 Nice.